MISSOULA, Mont. — Bobby Hauck, the coach of perennial Football Championship Subdivision power Montana and the all-time wins leader in the Big Sky Conference, announced his sudden retirement Wednesday, saying he didn’t enjoy his job anymore because of the changes in college football in recent years.
Bobby Kennedy, for whom the 2025 season was his first as Montana’s receivers coach, will succeed Hauck. Kennedy and Hauck had worked together as assistants in 2002 at Washington — part of NCAA Division I’s upper-tier Football Bowl Subdivision — and Kennedy also has been on staffs at Texas and three other schools in the power conferences that make up the top level of FBS competition.
Hauck, 61, had two stints totaling 14 years with the Grizzlies and led the team to eight Big Sky championships, 13 appearances in the FCS playoffs and four national championship games. The 2025 team went 13-2 and reached the national semifinals.
The Missoula native and Montana graduate was a combined 166-92 in 19 seasons as a head coach at Montana and UNLV. He was the winningest active FCS coach with a 151-43 record with the Grizzlies.
“I want to enjoy my career and my job, and a lot of the head coach stuff in current-day Division I college football is not enjoyable,” Hauck said at a news conference. “I just think it’s the appropriate time.”
Hauck said he didn’t know what he would do next. He said he doesn’t want to be a head coach again, though.
Hauck returned to Montana in 2018, and in 2021 new NCAA rules took effect allowing players to transfer without sitting out a season at their new school and to be compensated for their name, image and likeness. Revenue sharing with athletes began last year.
“Dealing with agents and the transient nature of this and the lack of forward thinking by young people, which has never been a strong suit for centuries for young people,” Hauck said “… But now when they’ve got adults pushing them and pulling them in different directions, I kind of got tired of that.”