There will be at least one backside that will be familiar to former Grizzly Lex Hilliard when he makes his way to the line of scrimmage from the backfield of the Vikings.
Blocking for Hilliard to reach the second level will be Levi Horn, a former Griz tackle, who recently signed a free agent contract at Minnesota.
Horn has bounced a bit around the league since leaving UM while Hilliard spent the last four seasons with Miami.
Horn’s 2008 teammate, Jon Opperud, who plays either tackle or guard, landed on his feet after being cut by Seattle. Oppy caught on with New England.
Meanwhile UM student-athletes continue to excel in the classroom by maintaining a cumulative GPA of above 3.0 for the 13th consecutive semester.
The grade-point average of the general student body for last semester stood at a robust 2.92 while student-athletes, led by the women’s cross country team at 3.69, posted an impressive 3.06.
Except for men’s tennis 93.31), distaff teams in track and field (3.45), volleyball (3.42), soccer (3.32) and basketball (3.27) paced the academic list.
It seems like yesterday when I watched coverage of the Mt St. Helens eruption only to come to the realization, as I watched the streetlights in Yakima, Wash. light up in the middle of the afternoon, that my return trip from Tacoma to Spokane had just become a nightmare.
I was tournament bowling in Tacoma on that Sunday but needed to make a hasty retreat since I was scheduled to fly Tuesday morning to attend the ABC Tournament in Louisville.
But since Interstate 90 temporarily was closed and there was much early consternation about just how to treat the several inches of ash that covered roadways in the state, even getting back to Spokane let alone having a plane fly out of the Lilac City was going to prove difficult.
After sitting for a day, then figuring the trip across the north Cascades was my best bet, I set out to head east on Highway 2.
Since I was working for the Spokesman-Review at the time, I just figured I’d use my business card to bluff my way across the state.
And what an eerie trip it turned out to be.
Barricades had been set on the road to stop traffic but since they were unmanned I crept my way through the tiny burgs of western, then eastern Washington where some townsfolk were sweeping the ash, while others hosed it to the gutters and still others wandered through it dismayed and confused by what had covered the surface giving it a celestial feeling.
I made it all the way to the top of Sunset Hill where the highway meets the Interstate before the Washington State Patrol explained I was traveling on a closed highway.
Go figure.
But that‘s where my bluff ended when I tried to explain the luggage in the back of my Explorer was camera equipment but a quick examination led to the discovered of about 12 bowling balls.
But after listening to my long explanation of my dilemma, then chastising me for lying, he allowed me to continue down the deserted Interstate to the valley.
It was two days later and another forbidden trip to Colfax on the Palouse backroads to pick up my partner before I caught the first flight out of Spokane to Chicago where I rented a car and drove to Kentucky in time to assure my team enough players to compete in the tournament.
About the only thing I remember about the 300-mile trip was falling asleep while driving through the night only to arrive, my gear still covered with volcanic, to perform in less than a stellar manner.
I’m sure my teammates would just as soon have me miss the flight all together.
You might just say it runs in the blood line. Dane Oliver was meant to be a head coach.
The former Grizzly receiver this week was named the head football coach at Missoula’s Sentinel where he’s been an assistant the last five years.
Dane’s dad, John, recently was honored for more than 30 years as a coach-educator at Central High School in Monmouth, Ore. where Dane was an All-State selection before coming to Montana a part of the 2000 recruiting class of Joe Glenn.
The personable, diminutive Oliver, who was involved in youth football coaching long before the completion of his Griz career, was a steady, possession-type receiver for Montana who played sparingly on the 2001 National Championship team that will be inducted into the Griz Sports Hall of Fame this fall.
He started 25 games in the slot his junior and senior season and played on teams that lost just eight games in three years.
His breakout season came as a senior in 2003 when he was third behind Jefferson Heidelberger and Tate Hancock with 27 catches and three scores, while also being named All-Academic his final two seasons.
He’s been the offensive coordinator at Sentinel the last four years and has a teaching position at the school.
The 41-year-old also is the head track and field coach at Sentinel which has won just 18 games while losing 53 under departed coach Pete Joseph the last seven seasons.
Joseph, who was a previous mentor at Loyola Sacred Heart, took a coaching position at McLane High School in Fresno, Calif.
Montana made West Virginia Wesleyan his fourth athletic program when he recently transferred to the Buckhannon Division II program.
It could be a play-now scenario for Montana, a fifth-year senior, since All-American quarterback Adam Neugebauer, the MVP of the Hansen Bowl for small college seniors, has graduated.
The Bobcats have posted back-to-back 9-2 seasons but graduated a pair of all Americans among six other seniors from the team that finished second in the WVIAC.
Montana just never found a stride in Missoula and saw limited action backing up Jordie Johnson last season in completing 26 of 42 for a pair of scores.
Here’s hoping he’ll find a place to contribute at the private West Virginia liberal arts institution which is closely affiliated with the United Methodist Church and sports the colors of Idaho State University .
I was on campus Tuesday for the first time since the firings of my good friends Robin Plfugrad and Jim O’Day.
While I usually don’t spend a lot of time at the Fieldhouse this time of year, I just haven’t been anxious to roam the halls as I usual do since the debacle.
But yesterday, after a radio meeting, I went looking for my longtime friend Bob Beers, who announced he was going back to the pro ranks as a scout for the Houston Texans.
I didn’t catch him but I hope he’ll still have a seat for me Friday at the Grizzly Scholarship golf tournament in Ronan where an 18-hole journey always given me perspective because you see Bob “calls it like he sees it.”
“Beersee,” surprisingly to be, came back to the University of Montana fold some two years ago at the request of Pflugrad who told him “we’re going to put the band back together,” in reference to a group of Don Read protégés he attracted to his UM staff.
But with the uncertainty currently surrounding the program, Beers opted out of the day-to-day that is college football to return to his old haunts with the Texans.
While I certainly can’t blame him it is extremely difficult when lifetime Griz move along but there’s little doubt the landscape of college sports has changed with endless references to misdeeds doting the scene.
Every day I cringe about what will surface next and it seems hardly a day on ESPN passes without the scrutiny of the Media somewhere shining a light to send bugs scattering.
What is it they say: “This too will pass.” I’m just not so sure.
While I have been tempted a few times over the years to claim such acclamation, I do not have a college degree.
For me the lack of that piece of paper is one of life’s disappointments but fortunately I have been able to obtain what I guess can be described accurately as gainful employment in my chosen field without such printed validation of my training.
Teachers and administrators have winced when I share the lack of a degree with students who are interested in knowing just how to become a broadcaster or journalist and I’m sure readily explain in my absence that the days of obtaining a job without that piece of paper are gone.
Unfortunately that is pretty accurate and as we all know even with that diploma plenty of qualified people are forced away from their desired discipline in order to survive the job market.
I am just fortunate that initially radio and then the Missoulian allowed me to hone my craft at the expense of readers and listeners and after more than three decades I still pound the keyboard or turn a spoken word mostly every day.
But I digress.
Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson became the latest casualty of inaccurately portraying his college education on his resume and was rifted after just four months on the job.
In several places, including Yahoo’s annual report, he lists his degree from Stonehill College in both accounting and computer science. He has an accounting degree.
While Thompson asserts the embellishment was ”inadvertent,” the claim of enhanced education also appeared at his earlier job as president of an eBay subsidiary, according to a story on cnn.com, while additionally asserts that since it also is listed inaccurately on Security and Exchange Commission filings Thompson could face additional legal challenges.
When I am asked from what institution I obtained a degree it is not easy to utter one of my main life’s frustrations that I didn’t obtain that sheepskin and hopefully some day it will bother me enough to do something about it.
But it is hard to understand why someone, especially on a fast track to an executive position, would pad their resume in such a way as Thompson.
It brings to mind George O’Leary, the deposed head coach at Notre Dame who in 2001 claimed on his resume to get the South Bend position that he held a Master’s degree from NYU-Stony Brook University, an institution that doesn’t exist and a post-graduate degree he does not hold.
O’Leary claimed no attempt to defraud but rather the mistakes were simply enhancements to his biographical profile that he failed to correct.
He currently is head coach at the University of Central Florida, a position he has held since 2004, a gainful position I’m sure but certainly not with the juice of the Irish job.
So for full disclosure when I have said my Alma Mater is Eastern Washington University, it has not been a claim of an undergraduate degree but simply an indication of where I obtained the best of a journalism education from humorist Pat McManus.
After all I wouldn’t want to be misleading at this point in my life.
It looks like the move to a 24-team field for the FCS Football Championships is a certainty.
I guess it was inevitable because the expansion to a 20-team field last season with five seeded teams seemed cumbersome but to tell you the truth I am a fan of the 16-team field with pure seeding like basketball.
Of course the argument for broadening the playoff field is that more student-athletes will have an opportunity to experience post-season play but with the proposed expansion about one in every five teams will advance to the playoffs.
I guess that’s not entirely different than Division 1 basketball but the FCS (formerly 1-AA) playoffs has increasingly broadened since its inception with a four-team field in 1978.
The field was doubled in 1981, broadened to 12 in 1982 then became the 16-team field four years later.
The proposal, which would become effective by 2013, would seed the top eight schools, giving them a first round bye, and guaranteeing them home games in the second round as a reward for their season.
As part of the proposal the Pioneer League (Drake, San Diego, Jacksonville, Campbell, Dayton, Butler, Marist, Davidson, Morehead State and Valparaiso), which does not offer scholarships, will be accorded an automatic bid.
In the 20-team field there were 10 at-large bids so I’m assuming the new setup would include 13 which in most seasons would guarantee a second or even in some scenarios a third Big Sky Conference team to the post season.
Given a 24-team field, there will certainly be four-loss teams that qualify for the tournament and maybe we should starting voting for a Top 35 instead of a Top 25.
As the season progresses, it already becomes increasingly difficult to locate teams in the last two or three spots deserving of being ranked.
I prefer the exclusivity of a smaller field where gaining post-season recognition is more meaningful.
There always are those in this life who inspire you not with their words but their actions.
Ruby Erck, who died this week, was one of those people.
While I got to know her and her husband, Lou, because they formerly were in the radio business in New Mexico and Wyoming before coming to Missoula to run KGMY, my friendship grew out of admiration for their love for each other and the passion with which she lived her life.
And you know her too as the owner-operator of Ruby’s Inn on Reserve Street, long before the corridor became the bastion of Missoula hotels and motels.
And they didn’t stop with one establishment. Eventually they owned several other hotels in Idaho as well as Montana, including the Quality Inn next door.
But Ruby didn’t limit herself to just being a hotelitier and readily threw her support to a plethora of non-profit ventures often at a time when such initial support was lagging.
And it had to do with a children’s cause, she was right in the middle of it, not just philanthropically but also encouraging others to join her in fundraising even when he in later life was required to use a wheelchair for transportation.
An avid Lady Griz supporter when such support was greatly needed in the early 80s, Ruby’s Texas drawl was ever-present no matter she’d loved in Montana for some 40 years.
Married some 65 years, Ruby and Lou were inseparable. I really can’t remember seeing one without the other and I’ll always cherish a football trip so many years ago when they accompanied the team to a game in their home state.
Visitation will be held Sunday afternoon at Garden City Funeral Home while services will be held at 11 a.m. Monday at Mountain View Community Church, 3821 Stephens Ave.
I have long maintained, even as far back as the Bill Moos tenure as the University of Montana Athletic Director, that a break in college football would occur placing the revenue schools in their own division, maybe even outside of NCAA control, and the remainder of the nation’s programs competing at some unnamed “lower” level.
And while it seems such a possible scenario remains a ways off, with the way schools are deserting conference affiliations, is such a Super Division not inevitable?
It sure would put an end to those “move-up” theorists who remain convinced, even with the football demise of the WAC that the Grizzlies need to play more top-notch competition and especially upgrade the non-conference home schedule.
Money games against FBS schools are a thing of the past with most conferences preventing members from playing a school like Montana but future football schedules with games against such premier football programs like Appalachian State are promising.
And now surfaces word that the University of Idaho, which fled the Big Sky Conference for the WAC along with Boise State is shopping for a league because the current WAC ensemble shrinks to just a pair of football members in 2013.
A decision as to an Idaho return is expected by early this summer.
Currently with 13 football members and 11 all-sport participants, The Big Sky seems a logical place for the Vandals and I believe it won’t be long before a two-division circuit will little resemble the league’s 1963 roots.
It can never be a bad thing when student athletes assert leadership on a team.
While a coaching staff develops goals and provides the tools, there always is a time during a season when it becomes up to a team to decide just what they want to accomplish and how they proceed.
Sometimes it’s that rah-rah kind of player but often a team leader surfaces by example and not just the way they play but how they conduct themselves off and on the field.
Such leadership can’t be mandated and it also can’t happen artificially.
Next season’s edition of Grizzly football already responded with a letter released to the public indicating their dissatisfaction about how they were being portrayed and the responsibility they felt because of their association with the University of Montana.
But this week it seems surfaces an additional indication of leadership with word that seniors decreed, and the remainder of the team agreed, no member of the football team would communicate on Twitter.
It certainly is not a novel concept and several collegiate and professional teams have adopted such a stance, but it is an outward sign that such instant communication, especially to the public, is inappropriate and if misconstrued could be harmful.
Although I have an account, I do not nor have I ever tweeted, and to tell you the truth, while I am a heavy texter and of course spend an inordinate amount of wasteful time on Facebook, I am not even sure I grasp the concept.
I am after all part of that generation.
But plenty of people do and I guess when I assemble my next Flash Mob, I’ll probably resort to that method.
But let me play Devil’s Advocate.
While I understand why this came about, I am struggling a bit with the concept that someone tells me what and how I chose to communicate.
Personally I have had my share of challenges after texting or sharing or however I choose to communicate and having my message misconstrued, but I’ll take my chances and vow to be speak-type more clearly.
But is it really necessary to have freedom of speech stifled?
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