And at the University of Montana “the best,” is quickly becoming a very elite group.
Hauck, in just his fifth year with the Grizzlies, became the second-winningest coach in the program’s history this season and has racked up 52 victories faster than any other man at UM.
An undefeated regular season, a stockpile of 22 seniors and Montana’s looming run in the postseason has Hauck on that threshold of greatness.
And he’s done it all the Hauck way, even though the Hauck way - intense, fiery and controlling within the program; cold, calculating and reserved to outsiders - alienates some in Griz Nation.
Hauck has been something of a controversial and imposing figure in Missoula and his public image as a hard-nosed guy isn’t appreciated by everyone, despite the old mantra that winning cures everything.
But Montana Athletic Director Jim O’Day says he thinks those who see Hauck in a negative light are starting to warm to him after a half-decade of success.
“Bobby is to that point right now where fans are actually starting to realize, and not take for granted that he is our football coach,” O’Day says. “They’re actually learning a little bit more about him. He’s not going to keep everybody happy, but you realize that he’s a pretty talented guy.”
Hauck’s been with the Grizzlies for five of their record 15 consecutive postseason appearances and he’s led UM to five of the 10 Big Sky Conference titles its either shared or won outright since 1998, a streak believed to be second in national prominence only to the 12 consecutive conference titles won by Oklahoma in the 1940s and ’50s.
It’s impressive, but Hauck - a Big Timber native - would rather talk about Montana’s upcoming opponent than his own past successes.
“I don’t really think in terms of milestones, other than getting a win this Saturday,” he says. “Maybe when I’m old I’ll look back and think about that stuff.”
Think about it or not, many people in and outside the program are certainly enjoying the ride.
“It’s the thrill of having a successful team,” says senior outside linebacker Loren Utterback. “He brought in a couple of huge recruiting classes and managed to keep us going to the playoffs. He came right off that (previous) success ... and had his own success. That’s the biggest thing.”
Hauck’s second-ranked Grizzlies take on Wofford in the first round of the FCS playoffs Saturday at Washington-Grizzly Stadium, starting a playoff run that many fans believe will end with Montana’s sixth appearance in the national championship game. Many also expect that kind of success will undoubtedly draw some interest from bigger universities around the country who’ll look at the 43-year-old as the next in line to ride the Division I coaching carousel.
“Bobby’s well thought of around the coaching circles,” O’Day says. “He’s somebody whose name will probably pop up for various jobs.”
That doesn’t interest Hauck, though.
The man, who many felt was a short-timer, intent on using the Grizzlies as a steppingstone in his own burgeoning coaching career, is here to stay. Or so he says.
The man in charge of one of the nation’s most successful FCS programs makes this much clear. He coaches Montana. He graduated from Montana. He wants his kids - ages 11 to newborn - to attend Montana.
“No coach in the country has stronger ties to a university than I have to this one here,” says Hauck, whose career record is 52-13 at UM. “This is a good place for me. For our staff to be mentioned in the same breath with those other staffs, it’s rewarding.
“As far as going anywhere else, no one’s more attached to a university than I am. I love this place. I did when I was a student here; I did when I was a little kid. Those are hard things for me to talk about.”
Nobody is more in tune with the Grizzlies’ coaching lineage than Bobby Hauck.
Like Tiger Woods memorizing all of Jack Nicklaus’ golf records, Hauck knows the history of his predecessors and their teams. At an institution where the head football coach is needlessly characterized as a caretaker, Hauck dares to embolden that image.
“People say there’s a lot of pressure to win already here, he’s just got to carry it on,” former Grizzly lineman Jason Frink says. “But there’s a lot of pressure that goes with carrying that on, and he’s kept it going.”
“He puts a lot of pressure on himself,” O’Day says. “But that’s the sign of a good coach. That’s the sign of somebody who’s a perfectionist.”
“Nobody wants to win more than me, which is the way it should be, frankly, if I’m the head coach,” Hauck says. “I feel the stress because I’m competitive and I want to win. I mean, I really want to win.”
Hauck trails only Read in that department.
The legendary coach, who also served as athletic director until O’Day’s hiring in 2005, brought the Montana program to its height with a full-fledged passing attack featuring homegrown talent like Dave Dickenson. Read retired in 1995 after guiding the Griz to their first national championship.
Read, whose 85-36 record still stands as the program’s benchmark, is just one of the predecessors Hauck hears about. The other, of course, is Joe Glenn, who led Montana to its other national title in 2001.
Hauck’s career winning percentage (.800) trails only Glenn, the loveable “Papa Bear,” coaching icon whose three-year whirlwind tour with the Griz from 2000-02 ended with a gaudy .867 winning percentage (39-6 record).
“Joe and Don are loved around here, and they should be,” Hauck says. “One, because they are good guys, and two, because they had such great success. People here embrace them.”
It’s Glenn, who left for a job at D-I FBS Wyoming, who Hauck is most often compared to, even though the two men are “polar opposites.”
“They’re both successful coaches and they had great success doing it their own way,” says Frink, who played two seasons under Glenn and the first three of Hauck’s tenure. “Bobby’s more hands-on, more of a hard-ass, in-your-face type of coach. Joe was more of a figurehead. He supervised more than anything.
“At practice (Glenn) took time to give us input, but he wasn’t so much a part of the leadership of the offense, defense and special teams as Bobby is. (Bobby) is much more involved.”
It’s that level of involvement that’s often gotten Hauck labeled as a control freak, but he says that’s something he’s gotten better at.
“When you first become a head coach you don’t understand that every little thing comes across your desk and it can be real aggravating,” says Hauck, who became the youngest head coach ever hired by UM in December of 2002. “You have to learn to manage that. I let every minute deal bother me, which is a strength and a weakness. But I need to let things go maybe a little.”
“He’s one of the most organized people you’ll ever be around,” O’Day says. “His knowledge of the game, you can’t question it. He knows the game in and out. As he gets older, he tends not to fight as many battles as you’re going to as a young coach.”
Still, some things irked the fans along the way. Whether it was their perception that Hauck was responsible for some conservative play-calling or a laundry list of other grievances, like firing Jim Hogan as team chaplain.
Hauck’s ways wore on his players, too.
“He has that tough-guy mentality that you have to get used to,” Frink says. “He’s not a players’ coach like Joe Glenn, who had a twinkle in his eye and smile on his face. Bobby lacks in that area. He’ll very rarely pat you on the back and say great job. He’s got his own way of doing things.”
Hauck is known to unleash a few “gut-busters” during film sessions, Utterback says, but for the most part players adhere to Hauck’s style, which is one of the hardest things to learn.
“You have to adjust to the fact that he’s all business,” Utterback says. “There’s a time and a place for messing around and he doesn’t have time for it.”
“As a player you’re never going to love the coach all the time. Sometimes (Hauck) would rub me the wrong way, but looking back at it from the day I left I respected the guy,” says Frink, who’s a retail store manager in Las Vegas. “You can’t always be a player’s favorite. You have to have that tough side. And this year, they’re a tough team.
“Whoever plays the Grizzlies knows they’ll have a physical, tough, hard-fought game; and that’s a reflection of Bobby. He sets the tone.”
Frink says Hauck loosened up in just the three years he played for the guy.
“Each and every year Bobby gets so much better,” O’Day says. “I think he’s a very misunderstood coach and I say that because I don’t think people know the real Bobby Hauck.”
Hauck was named Big Sky coach of the year this week for a second straight year. Five Griz mentors have earned such recognition. Read and Glenn were honored thrice, Jack Swarthout and Hauck twice each and Mick Dennehy once.
“Mick’s success here gets overlooked because he was sandwiched between Joe and Don,” Hauck says, “but Mick was wildly successful.”
That Hauck is included with that bunch is not surprising, but perhaps unheralded.
“Those guys did an awesome job while they were here. Don, Mick, Joe. Those are tough acts to follow,” Hauck says. “Thank goodness we have good assistant coaches, so we’ve been able to do that adequately.”
It’s more than adequate, though.
“It’s amazing that nobody’s dropped the ball in terms of coaching transitions,” Utterback says. “You had all those changes in style and each coach does things differently and they continue to go out and be successful. That’s pretty impressive.”
This season Hauck surpassed both Doug Fessenden, who amassed 46 wins in two stints as UM head coach from 1935-41 and 1946-48, and Swarthout, who tallied 51 victories in the Grizzlies’ original heyday from 1967-75. Both men established winning legacies that carried the program through down periods until UM’s most recent run of good fortune.
But Hauck is not concerned with his legacy.
“I never think in those terms,” he says. “I see myself as a guy who’s in his early 40s; legacies are for guys like Joe Paterno, who are getting near the end. I love what I do. I don’t see myself doing anything else right now. I love coaching.”
Debate on Hauck’s place among “the best” at Montana is ongoing, but there’s no denying the new level to which he and the other Grizzly coaching greats took UM.
Success breeds success. But in Hauck’s tenure, that offspring has become a “beast,” a moniker that Hauck coined to summarize UM’s rise from a small-town football squad to a national powerhouse.
“The program has changed,” Hauck says. “The expectation level, the demands on it, the scrutiny, has all made this more like a major college program.”
This change seems to have taken place on Hauck’s watch, more so than his predecessors.
“It’s just a different beast than when those guys took over,” Hauck added, “and frankly, they’re part of the reason.”
Read, Dennehy and Glenn’s successes were responsible for multiple stadium expansions. Hauck has directed his team during two such expansions and he’s also coached in 30 of the school’s top 35 games attendance-wise. He also happened to be the head guy when the university switched its policy on releasing the status on student-athlete’s injuries due to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act.
It was under Hauck, too, that several new policies regarding the media were installed. Policies like once-a-week press conferences and newspaper reporters being barred from the sidelines during games.
Hauck, who jokes that the media is the necessary evil of his job, admits he participates to the degree he wants, but doesn’t try to make it confrontational.
“I can let it go that direction, or I cannot, and that’s daily,” he says. “I’m not emotionally attached to that part of it. It’s just work and I’m going to manipulate it the way I want it manipulated - as much as I can.”
Hauck, who came here after coaching stops in the Pac-10 (Washington) and Big 12 (Colorado), says he didn’t bring the big-time change all by himself.
“It’s been an evolution” Hauck says. “And it can evolve back the other way, too. We’ve helped to make it bigger than ever, but nothing is forever. You either go one direction or the other and we’ve gotten bigger and bigger and bigger each and every year. You look at the programs like Nebraska, they’ve gone the other direction. They’ve made some mistakes and they’ve paid for them dearly.”
That’s not to say Hauck wants Montana to make a jump to D-I’s FBS. He just likes how the big schools handle things, including their disciplinary methods, which aren’t made public.
“He wields the ax pretty good,” Utterback says. “He can bring a loud room to silence with one or two sentences. He definitely has command over his environment and he’s not afraid to get his hands dirty. There’s no absence of authority.”
Of course, nothing tested that authority like this summer’s off-the-field incidents involving former Grizzly cornerback Jimmy Wilson, who turned himself in on murder charges in California. The senior-to-be was arrested following the shooting death of a man, who was in a relationship with Wilson’s aunt.
The incident was originally met with silence from the powers that be on campus. Now, both Hauck and O’Day say they believe that Wilson will be exonerated.
“There are some people out there that would say, ‘Oh, I can’t believe you guys are sticking behind a murderer...’ ” O’Day says. “Well, let’s wait to see what the case is.”
“He’s OK,” says Hauck, who receives regular hand-written letters from Wilson. “The one thing he said to me and emphasized to me is he says, ‘Coach, you gotta believe me. I had no...’ He just didn’t have any options.”
Then came the nonconference portion of the Grizzlies’ 2007 schedule, called “soft” after Montana played winless Southern Utah, Division II Fort Lewis and FCS “mid-major,” Albany.
“I would dare anybody to walk into those teams’ locker rooms that came in here and tell them they’re soft,” Hauck says. “Those guys are competitive people...
“Because we won, they’re soft, please. You can’t gauge people’s effort level before they come here.”
Then came the conference schedule, which featured a few evenly played contests. Sometimes too close for fans’ comforts. Then came the ISU trip and the distractions of three players getting arrested for assault, robbery and other charges.
The Grizzlies responded by beating MSU the last week to cap the sixth undefeated regular season in school history. This week, as the playoffs begin, the expectations are still lofty. Many fans simply won’t be satisfied by anything less than Montana’s third national championship.
“You have to get a little bit lucky to win the national championship,” Hauck says. “We’ve come close, but you’ve got to be lucky to win it. I’ve watched it year-in and year-out and we’ve been knocking on the door, but you’ve got to be fortunate to win it.”
With or without a national title, this could be Hauck’s breakout year in terms of acceptance from the Griz faithful.
“I would hope that people have gotten a chance to know Bobby better, because he is a good person,” O’Day says. “He is somebody that is driven, he is motivated, and he’s a die-hard Grizzly. He hates to lose.
“Someday history will present itself right and give him the justice that he probably - and we realize he hasn’t gotten it to this point - but he probably does deserve.”
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