Montana State legend Sonny Holland passes away at age of 84

By BILL LAMBERTY, Montana State Sports Information

BOZEMAN, Montana – Sonny Holland, known by generations of Montana State fans as The Greatest Bobcat of Them All and to his players as “Chief,” passed away Saturday in Bozeman. He was 84.

Holland became Montana State’s first three-time All-America football player as a center and linebacker from 1956-59, and the school’s all-time wins leader as head coach from 1971-77. He led the Cats to national championships in each role, and later served as MSU’s Director of Alumni Relations (1978-92) and as an advisor to the MSU President. In retirement he remained in many to Bobcat Athletics functions.

Born Allyn ‘Sonny’ Holland in Butte on March 22, 1938, Holland arrived at Montana State as a freshman on the Bobcat football team in 1956 and immediately joined the starting lineup of a squad that finished 9-0-1 and won a share of the NAIA National Championship. That crown came as result of a 0-0 tie with St. Joseph’s (Indiana) in the Aluminum Bowl that December which left the Bobcats undefeated (the Pumas had lost earlier in the season). During his four seasons as a Bobcat star he earned Mid-Bracket All-America honors following his sophomore, junior and senior seasons. The Cats finished with a cumulative 31-6-1 record during Holland’s time as a player.

Holland’s coaching career began in 1961 as the offensive line coach at Bozeman High School, and one year later he became Montana State’s assistant offensive line coach (while taking graduate classes and teaching) under veteran head coach Herb Agocs. The next season Holland ascended to full-time line coach in 1963 under first-year head coach and fellow Butte native Jim Sweeney.

Holland coached high school football in Great Falls from 1965-57 before joining Sweeney’s staff at Washington State in 1968. Returning to his native Montana in 1969, Holland became the head football coach at Western Montana College (now UM Western), compiling a 7-0 record and landing Frontier Conference Coach of the Year honors.

Montana State called Holland home in 1970 when Holland joined Tom Parac’s coaching staff as the team’s defensive line coach. Parac resigned that winter to become the school’s full-time Director of Athletics, and tabbed Holland as the replacement. After finishing 2-8 in 1970 and 2-7-1 in Holland’s first season at the helm, the Bobcats produced one of the school’s most productive eras.

Montana State won the Big Sky playing home games at Bozeman High School in 1972 (8-3 overall, 5-1 in the league). MSU then compiled records of 7-4 (5-1 Big Sky) in 1973, 7-3 (4-2 Big Sky in 1974), and 5-5 (4-2 Big Sky) in 1975.

That set up one of the legendary seasons in Big Sky history. The Bobcats beat North Dakota and North Dakota to open the 1976 season, then lost to Sweeney’s Fresno State team 24-10. The Cats won a pivotal 24-20 thriller against Boise State one week later then beat Weber State, Idaho State and Idaho by a composite 101-19 score. With a share of the Big Sky title on the line, the Bobcat stormed into Missoula’s Dornblaser Stadium and beat the Grizzlies 21-12, then pounded Northern Arizona 33-0 to clinch Holland’s third league crown in his seven seasons as head coach.

Holland and the Bobcats turned an excellent season into an amazing one on November 13 when the team traveled to paradise and whipped Hawai’i 28-7 to clinch the team’s ninth win to tie a school record and also a post-season berth. The playoffs brought New Hampshire to Reno H. Sales Stadium, and the Bobcats won 17-16. In frigid Fargo one week later, MSU beat North Dakota State for the second time that season, 10-3, and then the Bobcats upended Akron for the school’s second national championship in football, the first in Division II.

The common link between MSU’s titles in 1956 and 1976, of course, was Holland, who created a strong championship tradition at his alma mater. He won conference crowns as a Bobcat player in 1956 (the school left the Rocky Mountain Conference after that season before joining the Big Sky Conference as a charter member in 1963), as an assistant coach in 1964, and as a head coach in 1972 and 1976. That 1972 squad captured Holland’s first Big Sky championship while playing its games at Bozeman High’s Van Winkle Stadium as MSU’s Reno H. Sales Stadium was under construction.

The Bobcats won five of their first six games in 1977, losing only a road game at Boise State. The fifth of those wins was a 24-19 thriller at home against the Grizzlies that marked Holland’s sixth straight win against MSU’s arch-rival. Departing Reno H. Sales Stadium that day he had won 12 of his 15 games against UM as a player, assistant coach and head coach. In fact, from the day Holland arrived at Montana State as a freshman until the moment of his retirement, the Bobcats won 17 of 22 games against UM.

One week later Northern Arizona stunned the Bobcats 28-21 in Flagstaff to end MSU’s title hopes, and the team headed into its open week with only a road trip to Portland State remaining. On Wednesday, November 9, Holland assembled his team to inform the players that the season finale would be his final appearance as Bobcat head coach. A half-hour later he appeared in Parac’s office for a press conference to make the decision public.

Holland admitted in the days after finalizing his position that it was the only coaching job he truly ever desired, and he began the next chapter in his life as Director of the MSU Alumni Association. He held that role from 1978-92, also serving as a special advisor to the university’s president.

An inductee into the inaugural Bobcat Athletics Hall of Fame in 1986, as well as the Montana Football Hall of Fame and the Butte Sports Hall of Fame, Holland had more Big Sky Conference wins than any other football coach at the time of his retirement. MSU’s 1976 national title was the first by a league school. Holland is immortalized inside Bobcat Stadium with the end zone routinely filled with MSU students named in his honor, and outside it with a nine-foot statue of him erected In 2016 which was initiated by a group of former player.

Holland was preceded in death by Deanna, his wife of 50 years, and is survived by his three daughters Wendy (husband Gator) Rivers, Heidi (Eric) Vinje, and Jody (Tyler) Delaney, and numerous grandchildren and great grandchildren.