Season opener stirs memories
11:58 PM, Aug 28, 2012
The University of South Dakota opens its football season at Montana on Saturday, with new coach Joe Glenn returning to face a Grizzly team that he guided to a national FCS title in 2001.
Many Montana fans in the crowd will fondly recall the three years Glenn spent directing the program. Fewer will remember that Glenn was fired the first time he was a coach at the school, dismissed along with head coach Larry Donovan and his staff following the 1985 season.
An offensive coordinator at the time, Glenn was back in coaching at Northern Colorado in 1987.
But if his resume were to be entirely comprehensive, his coaching gig for the 1986 season would read: “Burger King Falcons, Fifth-grade Division, Missoula, Montana.”
Glenn worked in sales with a beverage company in Missoula that year. On Fridays the salesmen would put on their Budweiser shirts and bow ties and make the deliveries themselves.
One of Glenn’s first stops in town after being named head coach at Montana in 2000 was to one of his former customers, whom he’d gotten to know during those Friday visits.
When the fellow asked him what he was doing there, Glenn told him he was coaching football.
“Really?” came the reply. “Who for?”
“’The Griz,’ I told him,” says Glenn. “There’s a pause, and then he says, ‘Well, you used to bring me my beer!’
“He’d just discovered his old beer guy was the new head coach of the Grizzlies. He had to figure the program had gone south in a hurry.”
The former beer guy will be back on the sideline – the other sideline – at Washington-Grizzly Stadium in front of more than 24,000 fans for the first time Saturday.
A great many of those will be people who once knew and rooted for Glenn. This Saturday? Not so much.
“We understand Joe Glenn’s history at Montana,” Coyote running back Marcus Sims said. “We just want to give him a win – something that we’ll all remember.”
It wasn’t long after Glenn was named USD coach that athletic director David Sayler came up to his new guy and asked him what he thought about making his Coyote debut at Montana.
There were emotional elements to consider – Missoula still maintains a special place in Glenn’s heart – but there were other issues, too.
Most notable is that Montana, a perennial FCS power, is 33-2 over the last four seasons at Grizzly Stadium. Glenn did not hesitate in giving Sayler his blessing, but he’s not living in denial, either. It’s not going to be like any past opening football games that he’s experienced.
“The word is ‘surreal,’ ” Glenn said. “The best thing about it is that the kids might know I coached there, but it isn’t in their minds at all. They don’t care. It’s still going to be odd for me, though.”
Connections remain. During Glenn’s stint as an assistant in Missoula, he coached four players whose sons are now playing for the Grizzlies.
In addition, Timm Rosenbach, the former NFL quarterback who is now Montana’s offensive coordinator, was a teenager hanging around the office when Rosenbach’s father, Lynn, was also on Donovan’s staff.
“You can go up and down the hallways there – there are a lot of good friends, people I knew very well,” Glenn said. “And I think I’ve met every guy they have on their staff right now at one time or another. They’re all really good people and terrific coaches.”
After the powers that be purged the Montana program this spring, firing head coach Robin Pflugrad and athletic director Jim O’Day, they named Montana assistant Mick Delaney the new leader of the program. Delaney and Glenn coached against each other when Glenn was at Montana and Delaney was at Montana State under Sonny Lubick. They continued to face each other when Glenn was at Wyoming and Delaney served on Lubick’s staff at Colorado State.
There’s one other thing that connects the two. Delaney is 70 and Glenn is 62. How many other college football sidelines on Saturday will have head coaches whose combined age is more than 130?
“Mick is a friend,” Glenn said. “I’m really glad he’s getting the opportunity to run this program. He deserves it, and I know he’ll do a good job with it. You remember when George Foreman fought Gerry Cooney and they called it ‘The Geezers at Caesars?’ Well, this is ‘The Geezers at Grizzly.’”
With age comes wisdom, so both sideline leaders know what’s coming from the other side.
“We’ve been coaching against each other for a long time,” said Delaney. “I know what kind of coach Joe Glenn is. We’re going to expect a very physical defense, they’ll play hard up front and they’ll be strong – a lot of blue-collar guys.”
A lot of blue-collar guys wearing white jerseys with red numbers, that is.
In a somewhat similar experience, when Glenn took over at Montana, the Grizzlies hosted a home game with Northern Colorado, where he’d spent 13 seasons. He quickly discovered that they hadn’t changed the hand signals since he’d been coach.
“I saw them signal for a screen and I started to yell ‘Scree…!’ but then I thought ‘Nah, I can’t do that to those guys,’ ” Glenn said. “I hope that Montana has changed their hand signals in the 10 years since I’ve been there.
“It’s going to be a little weird, going in there to play in front of all those people who loved me and loved us like they did, but it’s going to be a great day for the kids.”
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