In his seven years as Montana’s head coach, Bobby Hauck coached more than 30 players that reached some level of professional football. Some played in the NFL, while others played up north in Canada, hanging onto their football careers as long as their bodies and the ever-churning professional market allowed them to.
Stocked with professional talent, Hauck’s teams dominated the Big Sky Conference, winning 46 of 53 games and seven conference titles in his seven seasons at the helm, playing in three FCS title games. Names like Marc Mariani, Chase Reynolds, Trumaine Johnson, Craig Ochs, Kroy Bierman, Lex Hilliard and Dan Carpenter are still household names after Missoula. The first recruit Hauck ever brought to Missoula, however, never reached that level.
Don’t worry about Matt Troxel, though. He’s doing just fine for himself.
“He’s an impressive guy in terms of football knowledge,” Hauck said of his former player and graduate assistant.
Former Montana wide receiver Matt Troxel/by Montana Athletics
Since injuries robbed Troxel of his playing days as a wide receiver at UM, he has made a smooth transition into coaching, moving from Montana to Idaho to Idaho State, where the Idaho State offensive coordinator is expected to call plays for the first time this Saturday when the Bengals come to the stadium where Troxel played his college ball. He has coached guys much bigger than he. He has mentored offensive linemen on the finer points of their position, explained route structure to tight ends, tutored special teams, coordinated scout team defenses, analyzed film and is now organizing an Idaho State offense trying to get back to the eye-popping numbers it generated with former All-American Justin Arias at the controls in fall of 2014.
Troxel has done these things, climbing from Hauck’s student assistant at UM to Mike Kramer’s offensive coordinator in a span of just seven years. The breadth of time is a short one to climb such a ladder, but it comes as no to surprise to those who have been witness to Troxel standing in front of a white board with a marker in hand and a play ready to draw up.
“I always remember when I was playing a few times and he was injured I would ask him —even before I went to coaches — what is going on on the field. He’s extremely intelligent,” said Montana inside receivers coach Mike Ferriter, who played with Troxel at Montana before coaching with him in Pocatello.
Matt is the son of Van Troxel, a former Grizzlies quarterback who also coached Missoula Hellgate before taking his family to Coeur d’Alene to start the program at Lake City High. Van is the son of Ed Toxel, a legend in the Pacific Northwest who was inducted into halls of fame in Idaho and Washington. Ed’s funeral, held in Kennewick, Washington in 2001, is said to have been attended by more than 1,000 people.
“I was very respectful of Ed Troxel and he did a great job at the University of Idaho,” said Kramer, who played for Ed Troxel as a Vandals lineman from 1972 to 1975.
Matt Troxel couldn’t talk about his football upbringing — Idaho State doesn’t let its assistants speak to the media — but Van was more than happy to share the memories of his son as a little kid trying to decipher the game’s complexities. Before leaving home for school, young Matt used to sit at a TV tray n the morning hours with a mess of pennies scattered about the tray. He’d align them in this formation or that formation and play little games with the coins.
He would follow his dad to practice. It didn’t matter the sport: If it was fall, Matt was at Lake City’s football field. If it was winter, he was somewhere near the basketball court. And he’d wander down to the track in the spring.
“From about the time he was 3 on he was always wherever athletics was,” Van said.
ISU offensive coordinator Matt Troxel/by ISU Athletics
When Matt got a little older, he rode the bus to football games and track meets. He spent the summers at the school’s weight room. During the school year he ate dinner with his family and then went to the gym with Van for basketball practice at 6 p.m., spending whatever time he could around whatever sport happened to be in season.
But as Matt grew — in age, not height as he topped out at about 5-foot-9 according to his college recruiting profiles — it became apparent that basketball wasn’t going to in his future. Football, however, would be.
“I did all these other things, but it was always football,” Van remembers. “He loved the game from the start. He used to to play tackle football with his big brother (Chad, who played defensive back at Idaho) and his big brother beat the crap out of him. But he just kept coming back and playing.”
As a sophomore Matt used to tell the seniors what to do. He knew the Lake City playbook as well as his dad. He knew the way the linemen were supposed to block. He knew the routes the receivers were supposed to run. He knew the reads the quarterback and running backs had to make if a play was going to produce the outcome it was designed to.
He set all kinds of school records that still stand at Lake City despite the play of Jerry Louie-McGee, another versatile, yet diminutive wide receiver/slot back who played for Van at Lake City before making his way to Missoula. With Matt in the backfield — or wherever Van decided to line him up — Lake City won a state championship and challenged for several others. Matt got the attention of nearly every college football program in the area before he decided in late spring of 2003 to commit to Montana.
“Immediately speaking to him and watching him play on film you knew he was going to be a contributor from the get go,” Hauck said. “We recruited his cousin and we recruited lots of folks that were tied to that family because they knew what it was about.”
It didn’t work out for Troxel as a player at Montana. An exciting slot receiver who draws comparisons from Ferriter to Louie-McGee, Troxel was often injured. Hauck remembers the receiver trying to get onto the field, but one injury after another kept Troxel from displaying the game-changing plays he so often demonstrated in high school. He played in 10 games and caught 14 passes in 2005 but managed just one catch in five games in 2006 and just four in five games in 2007.
When he finally realized the damage to his body was no longer worth it, he asked Hauck if he could become a student assistant.
“He said he wanted to coach,” said Hauck, now the special teams coordinator and associate head coach at San Diego State. “Obviously he’s been awfully good at it.”
by Brooks Nuanez
He was at Montana for one season before taking a graduate assistant position with Idaho. He spent 2009 coaching offensive linemen and 2010 with the Vandals wide receivers before Kramer offered him a job on his staff at Idaho State.
“I’ve lived in Idaho, I’ve lived in Washington,” said Kramer, now in his sixth season with the Bengals, “and all those years I lived in Montana there is an inbreeding of toughness that carries over through all sports, through all levels of classification that is very, very unique and I’m trying to get as much of it into our program as I can get.”
Now in his fifth season on staff, Troxel is in his first year as offensive coordinator. It’s a been a tough go for the Bengals as a revolving door of quarterbacks and generally subpar play has relegated them to the bottom of the Big Sky. ISU comes to Montana with just one conference victory and just two wins overall on the heels of last season’s 2-9 finish. It’s a familiar spot for the Bengals, who have just five winning seasons in past 30 years. But to those who know Troxel,they don’t expect Idaho State’s fortunes to impede his ascent up the coaching ranks.
“He’s one of the smarter coaches I’ve ever been around,” Ferriter said. “He works his tail off and he’s dedicated to his profession and loves what he does. Matt is going to go as high as he wants to go.”
Photo attribution noted. All Rights Reserved.
