Bobby Hauck Steps Down as Montana Grizzlies Head Football Coach

MISSOULA — Bobby Hauck entered the West Auxiliary Gym inside Dahlberg Arena Wednesday morning no longer the head coach of the Montana Grizzlies football team.

The all-time winningest coach in Montana and Big Sky Conference history mixed serious talk about his choice to step down after 14 seasons leading his alma mater across two stints with smiles and the occasional joke while reflecting on the importance UM holds to him and his family.

“Dealing with what college football has become is not always enjoyable as a head coach,” he said. “I just haven’t been enjoying it enough. I want to enjoy my career and my job. A lot of the head coach stuff in current day, Division I college football is not enjoyable.”

College football has undergone seismic shifts in the past handful of years. That includes the transfer portal, in which players can move from team to team every year, as well as name, image and likeness and athletic departments sharing revenue with student-athletes in which they can get paid.

“Dealing with agents and the transient nature of this and the lack of forward thinking by young people, which it’s never been a strong suit for centuries for young people, but now when they’ve got adults pushing them and pulling them in different directions, I kind of got tired of all that, the dealing with agents and the transient nature of it,” he said. “Straw that broke the camel’s back, there was nothing like that. This has been residual.”

Hauck informed athletic director Kent Haslam around 8 p.m. Tuesday about his decision to retire. Haslam told 406 MT Sports there is no buyout as Hauck’s contract includes a retirement clause. UM will pay him the incentives he has achieved this fiscal year.

“I went decades with looking forward to going to the office,” Hauck said. “Not everybody’s that blessed in their life where they absolutely love what they do. There’s different challenges every day in this job and beyond winning and losing, but I always loved facing that challenge and the competitiveness of keeping score but also the challenge of developing young men and all those things.

“But as college football has changed over the last couple of years, I’ve started to embrace my shelf life ending at some point. I’ve had more days where I didn’t enjoy coming to work very recently.”

Hauck said he came to the decision Monday after talking with his wife, Stacey Hauck, a few coaching buddies and praying on it. Once he made his decision, his wife and Jimmy Morimoto, an associate athletic director and general manager for football who has been at UM since 2018 and was with Hauck at UNLV, were the first to learn the news.

Hauck told his coaching staff of his plan Tuesday afternoon in a meeting. He and Haslam both met with the players Wednesday morning to discuss things.

“It was tough telling Jimmy that I had kind of come to this conclusion and then I saw him again in a couple hours and he said you look more relaxed than I’ve seen you in eight months, you look like you’re in the right place,” Hauck said. “I’m at peace with that decision. If you’re a believer and you trust that there’s a plan for what you ought to do next, then you can be comfortable with things.”

Hauck’s retirement came on national signing day as teams across the country sign high school recruits and transfer players. He said he had been thinking about retirement before this week but wanted to make sure the Griz got their roster set for the 2026 season to continue the program he built.

He led Montana to eight Big Sky championships and four FCS national runner-up finishes from 2003-09 and 2018-25. He’s also the Big Sky’s all-time leader in overall wins with 151 and conference victories with 86.

“I love the Montana Grizzlies,” he said. “I consider this my football program. Whether that’s right or not, that’s what I have considered it. I think I’ve been a good steward of this football program. We’ve had a lot of success here.

“But I wasn’t going to have them spread my ashes on the practice field because I dropped dead out there. There comes a juncture where it’s time to do something else.”

Bobby Kennedy, who spent 2025 as Montana’s wide receivers coach, will take over as head coach on a one-year contract. Hauck had no immediate plans for what’s next in his career.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” he said. “I’m not exactly sure what I want to do. I don’t know if that includes football or not. I love football. I dearly, dearly love football. It’s been a passion my entire life, but I do know that I don’t want to ever be a head coach.

“We wouldn’t be sitting here today if I had any desire to be a head coach because if I ever wanted to be a head coach it would be here at the University of Montana. I don’t want to do that anymore. It does not have allure for me anymore.”

This story originally appeared at 406mtsports.com.