Month: November 2022

There have been dozens of men that have been selected to be the head coach of the Montana Grizzlies football program, with the amount of success varying greatly from one coach to another. There have been coaches like Dewitt Peck and Clyde Carpenter who combined to go 0-11 during the first half of the 20th century, but also some fantastic coaches along the way.

Out of the program’s great history, there are five coaches that truly stand out above the rest. These five men won conference titles, and two even won a national title. Here are the five greatest coaches in Montana Grizzlies football history.

5. Jack Swarthout

The first coach on the list is the late, great Jack Swarthout who was a quarterback and halfback during his playing days at Montana. Following his college career, Swarthout coached in high school and as an assistant at the University of Texas before being named the Montana head coach in 1967.

Swarthout remained the head coach through the 1975 season and finished with a career record of 51-41-1. He won the Big Sky Conference twice and was named the conference’s Coach of the Year three times. After 1975, Swarthout decided to go back to coaching high school before retiring in the mid 1980s.

4. Mick Dennehy

Mick Dennehy knew what Montana Grizzlies football was all about since he played safety for the team in 1971 and 1972. Following his college days, Dennehy spent many years coaching high schoolers before taking a job at Montana Western. In 1991, he became the offensive coordinator for Montana and was promoted to head coach in 1996.

Dennehy led the Grizzlies for four seasons and in that time amassed a record of 39-12. In each of those seasons, the Grizzlies reached the NCAA Division I-AA tournament and made the title game in his first year before falling to Marshall.

3. Bobby Hauck

A Missoula, Montana native, Bobby Hauck attended the University of Montana but was an athlete in track instead of football. He joined the coaching staff after earning his degree from the school before heading to UCLA for a few seasons. Hauck bounced around as a coordinator in the Pac-12 and Northern Arizona before returning to Montana to become the head coach in 2003.

Hauck led the Grizzlies to seven Big Sky Conference Championships in a row before heading to coach UNLV in 2010. He’d remain in Las Vegas for five seasons, then spent time as the special teams coordinator at San Diego State before heading back to Montana once again to reassume head coaching duties in 2018.

2. Joe Glenn

Joe Glenn’s time at Montana as head coach was brief, but it sure was notable. The Nebraska native played college ball at South Dakota, and that’s where he got his coaching start. After becoming the head coach at Doane, Glenn was an assistant at Montana in the early 1980s before landing a gig at Northern Colorado that led to him becoming their head coach.

Glenn returned to coach Montana from 2000 to 2002. In his second season, the Grizzlies won the NCAA Division I-AA National Championship by defeating Furman the year after they came up short in the title game to Georgia Southern. Glenn won the Big Sky Conference in all three of his seasons and finished with a 39-6 record before taking the head coaching position at Wyoming.

1. Don Read

Don Read spent his playing days at Sacramento State and was a high school coach before getting his first taste of college head coaching at Portland State. After coaching the Oregon Ducks, Oregon Tech, and Portland State through the 1970s and early 1980s, Read made his way to Montana where he served as the Grizzlies’ head coach from 1986 through 1995.

Read had a losing record in his career by the time he got to Montana, but turned things around quickly and led the Grizzlies to an 85-36 record during his tenure. In that time, Montana had four double-digit win seasons and five NCAA Division I-AA tournament appearances. In Read’s final season before retirement, the Grizzlies won it all by defeating Marshall in the championship game for the school’s first national title.

Since their founding in 1887, Celtic Football Club has been the premier club in Scotland with a long list of championships with great players and managers along the way. Of those managers, there are some that have stood out as among the best in the club’s history. Between Scottish League titles and success across Europe, these five have helped define Celtic football and established it as the greatest club in the nation.

5. Neil Lennon

Northern Ireland-born Neil Lennon spent his career playing with many different clubs, but it was with Celtic where he had his most matches with one club at 214. The midfielder would retire after spending time with Wycombe Wanderers in 2008, and after a year off of football he became manager of the club he played with for eight years.

Lennon first served as Celtic manager from 2010 to 2014 and won 70 percent of his matches and three Scottish League titles. The then managed Bolton Wanderers and Hibernian before returning to manage Celtic once again from 2019 to 2021, and once again won 70 percent of his matches while adding two more Scottish League titles.

4. Gordon Strachan

Gordon Strachan had one of the longest senior careers ever as a midfielder, starting with Dundee back in 1974, playing with manchester United in much of the 1980s and then finally ending his career with Coventry City in 1997. He stuck around with Coventry when he started his managerial career, leading the squad from 1996 to 2001.

After a few years with Southampton, Strachan became the Celtic manager with his tenure running from 2005 to 2009. During his time with Celtic, the club won three Scottish League titles and nearly two-thirds of their matches, and added a Scottish Cup and a pair of Scottish League Cups during his tenure.

3. Martin O’Neill

From 1971 to 1985, Martin O’Neill played for several clubs, but none more than Nottingham Forest as he spent a decade with them, making 285 appearances. O’Neill’s managerial career got started with Grantham Town in the late 1980s and he made several stops including Leicester City in the second half of the 1990s. In 2000, he took on the Celtic managerial position.

O’Neill spent 282 matches as the Celtic manager, and won more than three-quarters of those matches to go along with five total titles and needed just 40.3 matches per trophy. Following his departure from Celtic, O’Neill spent time as the manager for Aston Villa and Sunderland before retiring following his brief gig in 2019 with Nottingham Forest.

2. Willie Maley

There isn’t anybody alive that remembers Willie Maley’s playing career, with 70 of his 71 senior career appearances coming with Celtic from 1888 to 1897. Celtic would be the only team that Maley managed, and he did it for a very long time. All in all, he spent 43 years as the manager, with his tenure lasting from 1897 to 1940.

Nobody will able to top Maley’s record for matches managed with 1,617. He won 1,042 of those matches and an astonishing 16 Scottish League titles. Malley retired in 1940 and would live for 18 more years in retirement. The legendary manager passed away in 1958 at the age of 89.

1. Jock Stein

As a player, Jock Stein spent eight years with Albion Rovers before heading to Llanelli Town and ending his career with six years with Celtic in 1957. Following his playing career, Stein took a few years off then became the manager of Dunfermline Athletic for the first half of the 1960s before a brief stint to Hibernian that led him to Celtic from 1965 to 1978.

Stein managed Celtic in 690 matches, winning just over 70 percent of those. He would end up winning the Scottish League 10 times and added another eight Scottish Cups. Following his Celtic managerial career, Stein was the manager for Leeds United briefly in 1978 and then managed the Scottish national team before passing away in 1985 at the age of 62.

They say that the NFL Draft is a crapshoot because you can scout a player for months and still not get exactly what you thought. There’s especially pressure for the team drafting first as you don’t want to mess up on selecting who should be the top player in the draft. 

There have been many Hall of Famers and many busts, but what about those that were neither? When thinking of these five players, you may have forgotten that they were first overall picks as they feel more like middle-of-the-round types.

5. Sam Bradford

When the 2010 NFL Draft came along, there was a lot of talk as to who should be the first overall pick. The St. Louis Rams were desperate for a quarterback, though, and made 2008 Heisman Trophy winner Sam Bradford the top pick out of Oklahoma. Bradford showed flashes of greatness, but he couldn’t stay healthy and only lasted for five seasons with the Rams before spending his final four seasons with three teams and was out of the league after 2018.

Was it worth the pick? Sadly, no. The following six selections in the draft ended up being great players, especially Ndamukong Suh for the Detroit Lions and Trent Williams for the Washington Commanders.

4. Courtney Brown

When talking about the biggest busts in NFL history, nobody seems to bring up Courtney Brown. In fact, nobody seems to bring him up at all. Brown was the Big Ten Defensive Player and Lineman of the Year in 1999, and in the spring of 2000 he was selected by the Cleveland Browns to anchor their defense for years to come. However, Brown lasted just five seasons and only 19 sacks before ending his career in 2005 with the Denver Broncos.

Was it worth the pick? 100 percent not worth it. Washington selected a better defensive player and a perennial Pro Bowler with the next two picks while Hall of Fame linebacker Brian Urlacher was also a top 10 pick.

3. Mario Williams

When you think about defensive ends that were selected first overall by the Houston Texans, you probably think of Jadeveon Clowney. That’s because Clowney was one of the most hyped college players ever, but eight years prior to him being drafted, the Texans surprised many by taking Mario Williams first overall. He certainly didn’t disappoint as he was a four-time Pro Bowler and one-time All-Pro, but unfortunately most of those accolades came when he was with the Buffalo Bills.

Was it worth the pick? Absolutely. No other player drafted in the top five was at the same level as Williams, and many of the Pro Bowlers in the 2006 NFL Draft ended up being a flash in the pan.

2. Eric Fisher

It’s hard to find an NFL Draft that received as little hype as the 2013 edition. There were some names that got floated around as to who should be the number one pick, but the Kansas City Chiefs were still able to shock some analysts by selecting left tackle Eric Fisher from Central Michigan. Fisher played for eight seasons in Kansas City and made two Pro Bowls before heading to Indianapolis for the 2021 season.

Was it worth the pick? The 2013 NFL Draft was filled with landmines and only a few players that ended up having solid and lengthy careers from the first round. Fisher was a mainstay for Chiefs and won a Super Bowl with him at tackle, so it would be hard to say they didn’t make the right choice. However, Lane Johnson was the fourth overall selection and a better player at the position.

1. Jake Long

Fisher isn’t the only somewhat forgettable left tackle from the state of Michigan as Jake Long was the first pick by the Miami Dolphins five years prior. Long played for four teams total in his career, making four Pro Bowl squads. He last played in 2016 for the Minnesota Vikings before retiring after 104 career games.

Was it worth the pick? Not really. The Dolphins had the chance to select Matt Ryan, which would have solved their quarterback troubles for years. In terms of the top five, however, Long was the second best player so it wasn’t a total miss.

When it comes to the largest contracts in Major League Baseball, many of them are signed with the teams that originally drafted the player as they don’t want to let a franchise cornerstone get away in free agency. There are also massive contracts signed by players who hit unrestricted free agency as teams get into a bidding war with one another for a star player.

Then, there are rare circumstances where a player signs a massive contract with a team only to get traded away with plenty of years left on their contract. Teams have become warier in taking on major deals that players have signed with other teams, but sometimes a franchise will pull the trigger because the player is still a star, and the team trading that player away needs the salary relief. Here are the five biggest MLB contracts that were traded to other teams.

5. Yu Darvish

The Chicago Cubs were still contenders in 2018 and thought pitcher Yu Darvish could get them over the hump and grab a second World Series in the 2010s. Instead, the team turned their focus to a rebuild, but still had Darvish’s six-year, $126 million contract on the books.

The team decided to deal Darvish to the San Diego Padres after he played half of his contract in Chicago. In exchange, the Cubs received Zach Davies in four prospects.

4. Eric Hosmer

Eric Hosmer was once the third overall draft pick in 2008 and cracked into the MLB with the Kansas City Royals in May of 2011. Hosmer was an All-Star with Kansas City and won four Gold Glove Awards before hitting the free agent market after the 2017 season. Hosmer inked an eight-year deal worth $144 million with the San Diego Padres who were looking to add the final pieces of what they felt was a World Series-worthy roster.

Hosmer didn’t quite live up to his contract, and the Padres attempted to trade him to the Washington Nationals for Juan Soto. However, Hosmer evoked his no-trade clause as he didn’t want to be in Washington, so his contract was instead sent to Boston for a pair of Minor Leaguers.

3. David Price

David Price started his career with the Tampa Bay Rays and was one of the best pitchers in baseball, winning the AL Cy Young Award in 2012. Price continued to be a strong performer when he spent 2014 with the Detroit Tigers and split his 2015 season between Detroit and Toronto prior to becoming a free agent. The Boston Red Sox won the bidding war for Price, giving him $217 million over seven years for his services.

Price would only end up playing in four of those seasons for Boston, however, and was limited by injury in much of his time there. Price was then sent to the Los Angeles Dodgers alongside Mookie Betts in exchange for Alex Verdugo, Jeter Downs and Connor Wong as the Red Sox looked to dump salary and acquire younger players.

2. Nolan Arenado

The Colorado Rockies drafted Nolan Arenado in 2009, and at 22 years old he made his debut with the team in 2013. Arenado proved to be worth the hype right away and quickly became one of the best infielders in baseball. He certainly didn’t struggle with Colorado as he made five All Star Games and was rewarded in 2019 with an eight-year contract worth $260 million.

The St. Louis Cardinals performed the heist of the century when they took on the disgruntled Arenado from the Rockies for five players. Not only that, the Rockies paid $51 million of the contract. Arenado immediately performed for St. Louis and in his first season was a Gold Glove winner and All-Star with 34 home runs.

1. Giancarlo Stanton

Back when he was referred to as Mike, Giancarlo Stanton came into the MLB through the Miami Marlins organization and quickly became one of the best sluggers in baseball. Stanton was a four-time All-Star with Miami and led the National League in home runs twice, and in 2015 he signed a 13-year contract to stay with the Marlins through the 2027 season.

However, the Marlins were sold in 2017 and the new ownership group wanted to unload the $325 million deal as part of the rebuilding process. With that, Stanton was traded to the New York Yankees after his MVP season in exchange for a pair of Minor League players, cash considerations, and Starlin Castro. When healthy, Stanton has proven to be worth the money.