By CHRIS WALTERSKIRCHEN
Few dates have been as lucky for the Grizzly football team as September 13th. The Grizzlies have won their last six September 13th games. This Saturday game against South Dakota will the sixth straight September 13th Game the Griz have played at home. It was on September 13, 1980 that a new regime began at UM as long-time Division 1 Assistant Larry Donovan coached his first game for the Griz. Current South Dakota head coach Joe Glenn made his debut as offensive coordinator at UM as the Griz rolled to a 60-27 win over Simon Fraser.
The two opposing head coaches Saturday night are both distinguished gentleman on and off the field willing to be a part of their community. However when it comes to coaching Glenn and Delaney have been adversaries many times over the years. Delaney was part of the MSU staff in the early 1980’s when Glenn was a Griz assistant. For much of the 1990’s they recruited against each other when Glenn was head coach at Northern Colorado and Delaney was an assistant at Colorado State. When Glenn went to Wyoming his new archrival was Colorado. In Delaney’s final game at Colorado State the Rams staged a comeback for a dramatic season-ending victory.
The Coyotes of South Dakota have 3 wins in the past 3 seasons over Big Sky Conference teams, twice over UC-Davis and a 2011 win over then reigning FCS champs Eastern Washington. South Dakota has not beaten a Big Sky team on the road since moving up to FCS in 2007.
An interesting match-up in Sacremento this Saturday night. the Weber State Wildcats visited Sacremento State to face the Hornets. The unique twist on this game is that interim Sacremento State coach Jody Sears spent the last 2 seasons as head coach at Weber State before being fired at Ogden. Sears took the helm at Sac state after former coach Marshal Sperback’s abrupt departure.
New Griz basketball coach Travis Decuire renews a long dormant rivalry in the Griz exhibition opener in early November. From the 1940’s to the early 1960’s Montana and Whitworth played on a regular basis. In recent years the Whitworth Pirates have been nationally ranked among Division III programs.
The University of Idaho is not the first member of the Big Sky to compete in all sports, but football. From 1963 to 1979 Gonzaga was a member in good standings of the Big Sky, but had long-since given up their football program. In 1979 the West Coast Conference and the Big Sky exchanged members as football power Nevada joined the Big Sky while Gonzaga moved to the West coast Conference, which was made up mostly of non-football playing members.
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Chris Walterskirchen has been an observer of Montana sports for nearly half a century. A Kalispell native, Chris has worked in various capacities for professional and college sports organization of at various times: ranging from announcing and statistical work to the concessions and even a stint as a costumed mascot.
Chris has academic degrees in communications and elementary education. His style of sports trivia involves more than just who won and who lost, but also focuses on the obscure or human side of sports. In this blog you will learn things like the Grizzly football team has won 210 games over the 19 seasons since they have had Monte as their mascot or that UNLV is the only school that both the Griz and Lady Griz have both faced in the NCAA basketball tournament
When not following sports Chris enjoys taking care of animals of all kinds (a peacock rescue?) and reading to pre-schoolers.