Montana State quarterback Tommy Mellott had a preview of his coming out party two years ago when he scored three touchdowns in what was a hard-fought 20-13 win over a struggling University of Idaho team that would finish the year 4-7. A few years later, Mellott and the Bobcats visit Moscow for a much-anticipated clash of the two of the top teams in the Big Sky Conference.
The Vandals had relegated themselves back to the Football Championship Subdivision just a few years earlier and the transition under former head coach Paul Petrino wasn’t smooth. The Vandals were 2-4 during the 2020 shortened season, 5-7 in 2019 and 4-7 in 2018, a year that included another narrow 24-23 loss to MSU. That day a missed extra point was the difference.
Petrino — a Helena/Butte native who’s father, Putter Petrino, was a Hall of Fame coach at Carroll College in Montana’s capital city — had been involved in some fashion or another with Idaho football for years. He was an assistant coach there from 1992 to 94. His older brother Bobby Petrino, Jr. was the quarterbacks coach, then the offensive coordinator at UI from 1989to 92. When Paul Petrino returned as head coach for the 2013 season, the Vandals found themselves playing in and winning a bowl game four years later after winning just two games his first two seasons.
The Vandals had a high-water mark in 2016 when they won nine games, including a bowl victory. Two years later, the charter member of the Big Sky Conference left their FBS purgatory and returned to their rightful home.
“Looking at history, they’re a really strong program,” MSU head coach Brent Vigen said. “They had some success at the FBS level. We faced them at Wyoming, and they gave us all we could handle, they had talent. Moving down is a challenge. It’s not like you move down and it’s an instant success. To have an invested Idaho program is good for the conference.”
When the Vandals moved back to the FCS, Petrino seemed like a good coach to steward them through the change. He had been connected with the program when it was an FCS team and he was still under contract for what was likely going to be a tumultuous venture.
It’s easy to forget, but that kind of success was once common for Idaho. Starting in 1982, former Montana State quarterback Dennis Erickson coached the Vandals to 32 wins and a pair of playoff berths before leaving for Wyoming following the 1985 season. Idaho won or shared the league title eight times between 1982 and 1992, qualifying for the Division I-AA playoffs 11 times during that span – nearly three times more than Montana (three), Montana State (one) and Eastern Washington (zero) combined.
Other than Mellott, just about everything has changed since that 2021 season, Petrino’s final one at the helm, especially for the Vandals. Idaho has a new coach in longtime FCS assistant Jason Eck, who has been at Montana State (2015) and South Dakota State (2016-2021) most recently. Eck has brought along a restored energy that has sparked a revitalization in Moscow that has taken the FCS world by storm.
After a marquee win against the Montana Grizzlies in Missoula last season, Eck and the Vandals qualified for the playoffs for the first time in 30 years. Entering 2023, UI was a fashionable choice by pundits around the country despite a first-round playoff exit. The Vandals added to that hype by beating Nevada, leading Cal after the first quarter and beating three-time reigning Big Sky champion Sacramento State to open Big Sky Conference play.
The Vandals’ hype train hit a road block with a 23-21 loss to Montana on national TV two weeks ago. After taking last week off, now the Vandals host the second-ranked Montana State Bobcats in the game of the week both in the Big Sky and the FCS.
“You almost get kind of get a do-over,” Eck said of the upcoming game against the Bobcats after the loss to UM. “Except it’s a better team. It’s a great opportunity for us to play better. I want to play well, play our best football.”
When Eck was the offensive line coach at Montana State, albeit just for a year, in 2015 a lot transpired for him both professionally and personally. The Bobcats began developing a system for creating an offensive line machine, his youngest son was born in Bozeman and now a former Wisconsin teammate (Al Johnson) is in his old position.
Eck has already been tested in his 19 games as the head coach in Moscow. Now, he has his biggest challenge yet, hosting a Bobcat squad that has won 12 straight Big Sky Conference games and has a 19-1 record in league play since the beginning of 2021 under Vigen.
“It’s a big opportunity,” Eck said. “You don’t have to go too far back to see when we beat a No. 2 team (Montana was ranked No. 2 last year when the Vandals won 30-23). (MSU) is a better team but we have them at home. They didn’t handle the crowd noise well at South Dakota State. I see this game as having more to win than lose. If we win this game, great opportunity to get a seed. If not, we can still makes the playoffs.”
Considered by many a sleeping giant in the Big Sky Conference, the Vandals’ potential is being realized despite a rapid-fire comeback two weeks ago against Montana falling short. The Vandals are still considered a big-time threat to win a conference championship as they await MSU.
Eck is 9-3 in the Big Sky in his short career with the Vandals. Just two weeks after pulling out all the stops to work the home fans into a frenzy for their Little Brown Stein rivalry with Montana, he’s back at it this week putting out a quasi-instructional video for fans to be loud when MSU has the ball and quiet when UI has it.
The Montana loss wasn’t the only bump in the road during the Vandals’ rise. They suffered a heartbreaking loss to Sacramento State on the road two weeks after beating UM last season. After scoring twice in the final quarter to wrestle away the lead UI saw the Hornets score with under two minutes to play to hold them off. A convincing 44-26 loss to UC Davis at home just two games after the SAC game took away any shot at the 2022 league title. A road playoff loss to SE Louisiana ended last season with three losses in five games.
To stay in the league championship hunt, the Vandals desperately need a win over the Bobcats, something Idaho hasn’t done since 2016 when it was still a FBS team and eked out a narrow 20-17 win over a MSU team playing in its first game under former head coach Jeff Choate.
Kickoff is set for 2:00 p.m. MT time in Moscow. It’s the second straight game facing a ranked opponent in the Top 10 for each team. For Idaho, both games have been at home and the Vandals have had a bye week to rest and recover, while MSU will be on the road for the second straight week. Montana State earned a 42-30 win at No. 3 Sac State last week in a Big Sky After Dark game in California’s capital city.
“We just have to play our tails off and through seven games, we’ve done a pretty good job of doing that,” Vigen said. “We have to keep that going.”
