One of the greatest Bobcats of all time sold Kyle Brennan on Montana State before Utah’s Deputy Athletic Director stepped foot on campus on Monday.
“I got a great impression of Bozeman from Dennis Erickson,” Brennan said in an interview with Skyline Sports at the Stadium Club on the third floor of Bobcat Stadium on Monday afternoon. “Dennis and I are really close and he’s great to work with. Dennis is the salt of the earth, a great man and when this job came open, he tapped me on the shoulder and said, ‘I really think you should go after that.’ He’s the greatest recruiter out there. He sold me right away.”
Erickson, currently Utah’s running backs coach, is one of Montana State’s most famous and successful alumni. The longtime college football coach played quarterback at Montana State in the late 1960s. He got his first full-time collegiate coaching job on Sonny Holland’s staff in 1971. By 1974, he was the offensive coordinator at Idaho and by 1982, he was the head coach for the Vandals.
Erickson went on to lead Miami to two national titles before stints in the NFL with the Seattle Seahawks (1995-1998) and the San Francisco 49ers (2003-2004). He most recently was a head coach at Arizona State (2007-2011), helping mentor Kalispell product Brock Osweiller years before the quarterback became a $70 million NFL starter.
Since 2013, Erickson has been on Kyle Whittingham’s staff at Utah. He’s been the assistant head coach and the running backs coach the last two seasons. According to multiple sources close the MSU Search Committee, Erickson speaks highly of Brennan, a native of Lynden, Washington, just a 20-minute drive from Erickson’s home town of Ferndale.
Brennan is one of five finalists coming to Bozeman this week for in-person interviews for Montana State’s vacant athletic director position. Wyoming Deputy Athletic Director Matt Whisenant interviewed on Monday. Each morning, Montana State will announce the name of the finalist who is on campus, per advice from Parker Executive Search, the Atlanta-based firm MSU hired for $60,000 to help with the search.
Peter Fields has served as Montana State’s AD since 2002. Earlier this year, MSU President Waded Cruzado announced Fields’ contract would not be renewed upon its expiration on June 30.
University of Utah Deputy Athletic Director Kyle Brennan
At Utah, Brennan is the supervising administrator for seven departments. Brennan supervises external relations and development, compliance, facility operations, event management, equipment, human resources, and football strength and conditioning. He is the administrative liaison for football and men’s basketball and the sport supervisor for the men’s and women’s swimming and diving teams. He previously held the same role with the women’s basketball, men’s golf and men’s and women’s tennis teams.
Brennan was hired as the first Deputy Director of Athletics at Utah in 2014, his sixth year at the school. He was hired in 2008 as Utah’s assistant athletics director for compliance and was named associate A.D. for compliance in 2009. In 2011, he was promoted to special assistant to the athletics director, and in 2012, he was named senior associate A.D. for administration.
“The strongest suit I can bring to this job is my experience at the University of Utah and the passion I have for athletics,” Brennan said in his interview with three members of the print media. “University of Utah, we’ve had a lot of success at a high level with one of the best athletic directors in the country, Chris Hill. I’m competitive and I want to win. People I’ve talked to today are passionate as well.”
Brennan served as the director of compliance at TCU in 2005 and 2006. He held the same position at Ball State from 2006 until coming to Salt Lake City in 2008.
“The thing that is common at (TCU and Utah) is that we are going to be excellent at everything we do,” Brennan said. “I believe that is completely possible here. The other things those schools did which we need to do here is they think big.”
Before entering the realm of athletics, Brennan served as the state planning attorney in Denver. He graduated with a bachelor’s degree in political science from Calvin College (Grand Rapids, Michigan) and earned his Juris Doctor from the University of Denver in 2001.
“Have you ever had your will done? You should. But it’s a boring experience,” Brennan said. “That’s what I did for a living. It was boring. For me, I wanted to find something I was passionate about. I have a passion for higher education and a passion for athletics.”
He and his wife— Beth is the academic coordinator for Utah’s football team — have three sons: Patrick, Mac and Murphy. Mac, who is nine years old, was diagnosed with leukemia in 2013 and endured chemotherapy treatments at the world-renowned Huntsman Cancer Center. His condition will not influence Brennan’s future decisions, he said, and he added that his middle son approves of a potential move to Bozeman.
“He’s doing great, he’s cancer free and I told him yesterday about this opportunity and he said, ‘Great because they are an Under Armour school,’” Brennan said. “That was one of the stipulations for him.”
Brennan has worked in direct connection with Under Armour already. Utah is one of the rising apparel company’s most prestigious affiliated schools and the only one in the Pac 12.
“Under Armour is a great partner,” Brennan said. “I have a great relationship with those guys. I think it’s valuable for us in recruiting. They are a young company in comparison to some others. It’s up and coming and the kids love it. Young people gravitate toward Under Armor.”
University of Utah Deputy Athletic Director Kyle Brennan
After taking a facilities tour, meeting with coaches and student-athletes, Brennan gave praise to Cruzado for her ambition and MSU head football coach Jeff Choate for his competitiveness. He spoke of a vision to provide a “world-class experience” for MSU’s student athletes.
If hired, Brennan said he would engage with the campus and local communities first. He said MSU faces many challenges, naming facility upgrades, a new academic center, an expansion to the training and weight rooms and an indoor football practice facility specifically.
“All of those things are opportunities,” Brennan said. “I really believe that if we get those projects started and get those projects completed, we will really be able to separate ourselves in this conference.”
“Facilities, I don’t know if it’s the No. 1 need but I think it can move the needle the most,” Brennan said. “When you talk about what it takes to win, we need to recruit. What does it take to recruit? Facilities. And when they get here, how do you develop those athletes? Facilities.”
Brennan’s flight landed in Bozeman close to midnight on Monday night. He caught a shuttle from the Yellowstone International Airport. While the bus waited for one other passenger, the driver raved to Brennan about Bozeman.
When the other passenger got into the shuttle, she told Brennan and the driver that she was in town for a job interview.
“So I’m sizing her up,” Brennan said, drawing laughter from the roughly 50 people in attendance for the first of several times during a seven-minute address.
The other passenger asked the cab driver what Montana State’s mascot was.
“I thought right there, I hope she’s the other candidate,” Brennan said.
After informing the woman that MSU’s mascot is in fact the Bobcats, the passenger asked what rival Montana’s mascot was. The driver replied, “We are the Bobcats.”
“The passion of that guy in that van and the passion I’ve seen from everyone here today has really been overwhelming,” said Brennan, who first came to Bozeman on his honeymoon with his wife Beth as they stopped to visit Yellowstone National Park on their way to Spokane for Brennan’s first year of law school at Gonzaga.
The support is one of the main reasons Brennan applied to leave one of the nation’s up and coming athletic departments. At Utah, Brennan earned $197,794 in base salary. Fields earned $150,000 during the 2015-2016 year after receiving a 15 percent raise when his second to last contract at MSU expired.
“Montana State is so well situated in this state,” Brennan said in his opening statement. “When you look around this conference, there are so many schools who have a real challenge to even get noticed in their state from an athletic standpoint. You can tell right away when you get here that Montana State has captured the interest in this state and that’s a built in advantage other schools don’t have.”
Photos by Brooks Nuanez. All Rights Reserved.
