Thompson: Montana looks vulnerable

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Commentary by Dan Thompson

PARK CITY, Utah

His Hawaiian shirt exuded calm. His deep-set eyes and chiseled cheeks had rarely looked more relaxed.

The way Bobby Hauck carried and dressed himself at the Big Sky meetings this week in Park City, Utah, it wouldn't seem as if he was toting around the heaviest weight of his Montana coaching career.

But this season, his sixth as the Grizzlies head coach, will certainly be his toughest.

Every year it seems someone predicts the end of Montana's dominance only to see the Grizzlies mince their conference foes like they were cloves of garlic.

This year, I will be that someone.

Montana is not going to be awful. But youth and inexperience are going to doom the Grizzlies to their first conference loss since 2005. Heck, pencil in two defeats.

For the first time since 1997, Montana will not win the Big Sky this year, and the knee-jerk reaction to such an apocalyptic event in Missoula will definitely rattle -- if not tip -- Hauck's chair.

Montana is just not accustomed to losing. Its 52 victories since the end of the 2002 season are more than any FCS team except Appalachian State, which has won exactly as many during that span.

To find the Grizzlies' most recent losing season, you need to recall a time when just nine current members of the team were alive. Even allowing for an unusually brisk maturation process, none of those players was walking in November 1985 when the team finished 3-8.

On top of that, it's been 16 years since Montana failed to reach the playoffs, and during that streak it hasn't lost more than two conference games in a season.

Surely the residents of Missoula -- who are much less forgiving than those in other Big Sky towns and who watched their team lose home playoff games each of the last three seasons -- would be frustrated by a team that broke either trend.

And break they certainly could.

Montana will be fielding eight new starters on defense and four more on offense -- including a running back and two wide receivers. It also must replace do-it-all specialist Dan Carpenter, the program's all-time scoring leader and a two-time All-America selection.

"We're inexperienced," Hauck said. "I was somewhat surprised that we were picked again to win (the conference). I know how inexperienced we are."

Hauck compared his team's youthfulness this season to theirs entering the 2005 campaign, when the Grizzlies finished 8-4 after a home playoff loss to Cal Poly.

Then there's the matter of Montana's dicey schedule that opens at Cal Poly, which returns 10 starters from the nation's No. 1 offense a year ago. Hauck admitted winning that game would be "a pretty tall order."

After three winnable non-conference home games, Montana ventures out for a brutal opening pair of Big Sky contests at Weber State and at Eastern Washington. Both those teams led Montana in the second half of their games in 2007; the Eagles were ahead with just 26 seconds to go in the fourth quarter before a Carpenter field goal won it for Montana.

Expectations always burden Montana, but this is the year they lack the depth to carry them to another Big Sky championship. Eastern Washington, Weber State and Northern Arizona are too good for the Grizzlies to beat them all.

Like Pac-10 power USC, a rebuilding year is often more fairly called a retooling year at Montana because it recruits great talent annually. But every Grizzly has to learn to walk before it can maul, and there are plenty of cubs on the Montana roster this season.

This year won't be Hauck's last at Montana. His record is too impeccable.

But an 8-4 or 9-3 season -- one that would make any other Big Sky team happy -- would not sit well with Grizzlies fans.

Should the team fail to win its 11th straight conference championship, Hauck will still be around to attend next year's Big Sky meetings. But it's a good bet that he won't be wearing a Hawaiian shirt.

Dan Thompson's column appears Thursdays. With comments or story ideas, call him at 239-3122 or e-mail dthompson@journalnet.com.

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