The ties from Oregon State University to the state of Montana run deep, although Saturday will mark the first time Montana State head coach Brent Vigen has ever squared off against the Beavers. And although Montana State has played plenty of times at Providence Park in downtown Portland, the Bobcats and the Beavers have never played.
Oregon State head coach Jonathan Smith played most of his college career at OSU under Dennis Erickson, a Montana State alum. Smith also spent two seasons (2010, 2011) as the offensive coordinator on Robin Pflugrad’s staff at the University of Montana.
Kefense Hynson is OSU’s wide receivers coach and had the same position at Montana. Legi Suiaunoa is the Beavers’ defensive line coach after holding that same position at Montana under Pflugrad and Mick Delaney. OSU offensive line coach Jim Michalczik was the offensive line coach at Montana State from 1992 until 1998.
Vigen is in his second season at Montana State. He is 14-3 so far leading the Bobcats, including 2-0 this season with lopsided wins over McNeese State (40-17) and Morehead State (63-13). Between his time as a player (1993-1997) and assistant coach (1998-2013) at North Dakota State plus seven seasons at Wyoming, Vigen has never faced the Beavers.
“I do know Brian Lindgren, their offensive coordinator, fairly well because he was at Colorado when I was at Wyoming and we spent some time together,” Vigen said. “What they are trying to do as a team is really play complimentary football. They have a plan to run it, they have a plan to spread people out and everything in between. Defensively, I know they are multiple in their fronts and they are sound, a lot of good players on defense.”
“A lot of coaches who coach in this region, whether it’s the Pac 12, the Mountain West or the Big Sky, there are a lot of overlap. I suppose that’s just part of the ascension is running into a few guys who coached in each one of those conferences.”
Oregon State is also off to a 2-0 start with a pair of wins over Mountain West teams. The Beavers defeated Boise State 34-17 in Corvallis on Week 1 and won 35-32 in the last minute at Fresno State last week.
“Finding a way to win like they did on Saturday night in a back and forth game, going all the way down to the end, the decision between tying it and going for the win at the end, certainly a gutsy call. And they executed it, walked out with the win,” VIgen said. “Those moments as coaches and players are what you really build off of and I imagine for them, that was a really big deal.”
OREGON STATE QUICK HITS
Location: Corvallis, Oregon (Population: 59,922)
Nickname: Beavers – the school’s website indicates the nickname first stems from when the institution was a Bible college and the school’s athletic teams were referred to as the “sky pilots”, a commonly used term for preachers at the time.
Then in World War II, the school known at the time as UT Junior College contracted with the Naval War Training Service to help train pilots, who completed their flight training at a local airport.
Founded: 1868 – Oregon State, like Montana State, is a public land-grant, research and engineering university. OSU offers more than 200 undergraduate-degree programs along with a variety of graduate and doctoral degrees. It is the state’s largest university in terms of undergraduates.
The Carnegie Foundation Classification consistently places Oregon State in their most selective tier, “Doctoral University – Very high research activity” and since 2010 has also awarded it with the prestigious “Community Engagement” distinction, making it one of only 28 schools in the nation to hold both.
Chartered as a land-grant university, OSU was also one of the four inaugural members of the Sea Grant program when it formed in 1971. It joined the Space Grant and Sun Grant research consortia in 1991 and 2003, respectively, making it the first public university and one of just four in total to attain membership in all four initiatives. University of Hawaii at Manoa, Cornell University and Pennsylvania State University are the others.
Enrollment: Oregon State currently boasts an enrollment of 33,193 students.
Stadium: Reser Stadium, opened in 1953 as Parker Stadium and renamed in 1999. As renovations take place to build a new southwest grandstand, the current seating capacity has been reduced to 26,407, from a maximum of 45,674 from 2007 until 2015.
The Coach: Jonathan Smith, Fifth season at Oregon State (18-28 record overall)
Smith is one of the most beloved figures in Oregon State history. The 2001 Fiesta Bowl MVP quarterbacked OSU to arguably its greatest football season in school history. Smith walked on to the Beavers to play for Mike Riley but found his greatest success playing for Dennis Erickson, a Montana State alum who then coached at his alma mater in the 1970s before launching a Hall of Fame college coaching career.
Smith was a four-year starter for the Beavers, including during OSU’s 11-1 campaign in 2000 in Smith’s junior year. That fall, Smith threw for 2,773 yards and 20 touchdowns, helping OSU to its first Pac 10 title in 36 yards. His wide receivers on the team included future NFL players Chad Johnson and T. J. Houshmandzadeh.
Smith made stops sat Idaho (2004-2009) and Montana (2010-2011) before catching on with Chris Petersen at Boise State in 2012. He followed Petersen to Washington in 2014, where he was the offensive coordinator for the Huskies for four seasons. In 2018, he returned to his alma mater to take over as the head coach at Oregon State.
