Montana State had — and still has — some big aspirations sitting on the back burner when it started the 2026 season. One of those, perhaps the loftiest, has now gone by the wayside.
Any chance of going undefeated and winning the national title, becoming just the ninth Football Bowl Subdivision team to do so, disappeared when Idaho quarterback Josh Woods wiggled into the end zone for a two-point conversion, giving the previously winless Vandals a 35-34 win over the previously undefeated, No. 1-ranked Bobcats.
More than half of the undefeated seasons in FCS history have occurred since 2013, with North Dakota State doing it three times (2013, 2018 and 2019) and South Dakota State once (2023). Eastern Kentucky first pulled it off in 1982, followed by Georgia Southern in 1989 and Marshall in 1996.
“Well, if it happens to you, it happens, I guess,” MSU head coach Brent Vigen said of the loss. “It can’t define you. How do you come out of that is the key. We haven’t done that yet; we’re in the process of that. I think if you end up losing a game, it doesn’t take all the things that you want to accomplish out of range. Everybody wants to win them all, and it doesn’t happen all too often.”
Vigen was on the staff at NDSU when the Bison went undefeated and won the national title in 2013.
“Been part of one of those (undefeated) teams, and that was really, really hard for us to do,” Vigen said. “That was that third consecutive championship at NDSU, so you know what? It happened to us; we gotta own it. It’s obviously what this team needed. You don’t want it to be the case; you try to do everything you can to fend off whatever. It happened, and I do think our ability to learn out of it is where we’re at right now. We haven’t proven anything out of it, but that’s the hope I have is that, ‘Okay, heavy loss, plenty of things to learn — now what?’ The ‘now what’ is in front of us, starting this Saturday at Eastern (Washington).”
Teams that fall short of an undefeated season on their way to a championship often point to a loss as the biggest motivator in propelling them toward a title. Just a year ago, MSU — coming off a national title loss to NDSU — lost its first two games before rattling off 14 straight wins en route to the FCS championship.
The Bobcats have traditionally been slow starters, especially during championship seasons. Only one of their four championship runs began with a fast start: the first, in 1956, when MSU was in the NAIA and won its first nine games before being selected to play in the first national college football championship game of its kind. Ironically, that game ended in a 0-0 tie, and the Bobcats and St. Francis (Pennsylvania) were both declared champions. It was an undefeated championship season, but not in the FCS.
In 1976, MSU lost its third game of the season at Fresno State, 24-10, before rattling off 10 straight wins and claiming the NCAA Division II title. In 1984, the Bobcats lost to Eastern Washington and Idaho State in their first four weeks before winning 10 in a row to claim the NCAA Division I-AA championship. Last year, MSU lost its first two games to Oregon and South Dakota State before winning 14 straight to capture the NCAA FCS title.
The 2026 season marked just the ninth time in school history that MSU had started 5-0 or better. The 2024 team holds the school record with a 15-0 start, while the second-best start was 8-0, achieved in 1954 and 1956 — 70 years ago. The 1958 and 1978 teams both opened 7-0, but neither advanced to postseason play.
South Dakota State was the most recent team to go undefeated, accomplishing the feat during its 2023 FCS title run.
“You move forward, you learn from it,” Vigen said. “I think we had a really productive week last week in some ways, getting back to the basics. I thought our guys took the right approach, the mature approach. I thought we had some really competitive aspects to our practices on Tuesday and Wednesday.”
MSU still has plenty of opportunities to reach other milestones. No Big Sky Conference team has ever won back-to-back national championships, and a fourth title as a Big Sky member would be unprecedented. Only Montana, with two, has won multiple FCS titles among Big Sky teams. The Bobcats have won 18 Big Sky titles, and another would tie them with Montana. If MSU reaches the FCS semifinals, it would become just the third team to make six or more semifinal appearances over a seven-year span.
After the humbling loss to Idaho, those goals have moved further to the back burner for Vigen and the Bobcats.
“The first thing you gotta do is digest that game,” Vigen said. “The good, the bad things that you need to improve upon. The things you need to learn from and then the work that we did and the practice was primarily against ourselves. Not really introducing Eastern Washington until the tail end of the week. For us, that’s a good reminder that fundamentally we need to continue to make strides. Any time we go good on good there’s a premium to those reps, and I think our guys took the right approach to that. The energy, the spirit I think was what you want it to be.
“Whether that’s coming off a loss or not, I think our guys knew that we had to get some work done and ultimately over the course of the week you can begin introducing Eastern and then point your purpose towards that.”
Getting back on track received a big boost early in the week when Vigen announced that five players who missed the Idaho game because of injuries would return. Quarterback Justin Lamson, running back Adam Jones and safety Caden Dowler — all captains — sat out against the Vandals, along with backup defensive tackles Josiah Asuega and Hunter Sharbono. Dowler, the reigning Big Sky Defensive Player of the Year, has been out since the second quarter of the second game. Lamson missed two games, while Jones played just a few downs against Northern Arizona and missed the entire Idaho game.
MSU remains without starting defensive end Dominic Solano and wide receiver Taco Dowler. Taco Dowler is listed as day-to-day, however, leaving open the possibility that he could play against EWU.
“It means a lot (to get the captains back), and it doesn’t take anything away from what Patrick Duchien and Colter Petre had done in their absence,” Vigen said. “Justin and Caden, they’re as good a players as we have on the team. Their ability to make the plays, inspire the team with their plays, with the plays they make, with the words they say, I think is just different. So, naturally, getting them both back, there is this injection of playmaking ability, I suppose, but I think that does take the confidence and belief up a certain level.”
Defensive end Zac Crews, who was a key player last season and experienced MSU’s previous loss — a bitter defeat against nonconference rival South Dakota State in the Gold Rush game — acknowledged the Idaho loss for what it was.
“Attacking the bye week was a priority, especially after the week leading into it,” Crews said. “We didn’t take our foot off the gas. We treated every day like it was a game week. We have a 24-hour rule, so we have 24 hours to take what we need from that game, whether we win or lose — the joy of victory, the sorrow of loss — and then we gotta move on. We gotta take what we learn from it and we move on. We can’t sit in our sorrows because we lost, and close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades, so …”
“You don’t want to just forget about a loss. I mean, if you lose and you don’t learn anything from it, then what’s it all for? So, obviously, we’re going to take some things from there. I definitely learned a lot for myself, and I think defensively we took a lot from that loss.”
While the South Dakota State loss helped propel MSU to the national title, Crews realizes that doesn’t mean history will repeat itself.
“I think it lit a fire under our butts a little bit. Anytime you lose a close game like that, and the defense is on the field for that last play of the game, you want to get them down. It puts a chip on our shoulder that we haven’t arrived yet. We’re not entitled to anything; we have to earn the right to everything. Our defense needs to step up and not allow 35 points or whatever it was.”
The Bobcats continue preparing for their second straight road game this Saturday at Eastern Washington. It will be their fourth consecutive road game played at night.
