From today's Missoulian:
FRITZ NEIGHBOR: The not so sad tale of Cowboy Joe
By FRITZ NEIGHBOR of the Missoulian
For the record, former Montana Grizzlies football coach Joe Glenn has not been whiling away his post-Wyoming days in a beer truck.
“Not yet,” he said Tuesday.
Glenn, who's back in Missoula for Wednesday's KPAX Sports Awards banquet, is at least semi-retired these days, owner of a new house in Scottsdale, Ariz., that he and his wife Michele will move into in June.
After being fired by the University of Wyoming in December after six seasons, Glenn collected the final two years of his contract - he was making $316,000 per - and decided to get busy relaxing.
The last time he was let go, just 24 years ago, he had two little mouths to feed named Erin and Casey.
“I sold beer and wine Monday through Thursday and drove a beer truck Friday,” he said.
Now Erin and Casey are parents, which makes Glenn and Michele grandparents, which just about makes these the salad days.
“My standard line is, ‘I'm listening, I'm not looking,' ” says Glenn, 60. “I'm getting a lot of grandchildren time.”
There are two grandkids: Erin has Henry, who's almost 4. The other brings to mind a certain U.S. president.
“Casey says, ‘Spelled the democratic way,' ” Glenn said of his granddaughter, Regan, almost 3. “It might've cost him a job, once.”
Glenn is tan and rested, and every bit the personality Griz fans embraced when he spent 2000-02 as head football coach here. His teams won one Football Championship Subdivision title, in '01, and played for another.
Things started off well enough in Laramie, too, in 2003. The Cowboys beat both BYU and Colorado State in the same season for the first time in 15 years. In 2004 they beat UCLA in the Las Vegas Bowl for their first bowl victory since 1966 (Florida State, Sun Bowl).
But by the end Wyoming was 30-41 in Glenn's tenure.
“You know, it was a chance to take a team that was really down - I think they'd won five games in three years - and just see if you could compete at that level,” Glenn says. “And I think we proved that we could. I had a great coaching staff. We made some inroads.
“And couldn't sustain it.”
He doesn't appear to be bitter, and in fact looks fondly on a lot.
“We really did some things that as a college football coach, you'd love to do,” he said. “We won a game in front of about 100,000 people in Tennessee. The bowl game win over UCLA is a marking point, very similar to our national championship here. That was a special moment. We beat Ole Miss twice.”
But
“The Mountain West Conference is a pretty tough conference. It's real good.”
In the span of five weeks in 2008 Wyoming lost to the triumvirate of BYU, Utah and Texas Christian by lopsided scores. The Cowboys went 4-7. Utah went unbeaten.
“And TCU was every bit as good as they were,” Glenn adds. “You could argue forever, but it (the Bowl Championship Series) is not a national championship. Where as here and Northern Colorado and Helena - where you have Carroll College - you have a national tournament. And there's nothing like it.”
And after three decades and three national championships, he's sated.
“People retire out of the military at 20 years, and a long time is 30 years,” he said. “I've put in 35 years, plus two years in the military. It may be time to do something different.”
Glenn then recounted a couple of bellwether moments. One was when a friend knocked on his door in the fall of 1986, asking help for his Little Grizzly football team. Glenn, fired from UM along with most of Larry Donovan's staff after the '85 season, initially said no.
Michele talked him into it.
“I had a fun run from that point on,” he said.
A year later he was the quarterbacks coach at Northern Colorado. Two years later he was on the verge of joining Donovan with the CFL's British Columbia Lions, and the UNC job came open. He reluctantly stayed in Greeley, Colo.
“I told my family, and they all started crying,” he said. “I still wanted to go to Canada, because it wasn't a great deal (in Greeley). You had nobody at the games, you didn't have a marching band, it just wasn't good.
“But we got things going pretty good.”
Eleven years and two Division II championships later, Glenn circled back to Montana. Nearly a decade after that, he's out of the college game again.
For Casey, it's a first. He played at Carroll, then jumped into coaching and spent the past two seasons coaching at Wyoming with his dad. Now, having a mouth to feed, he's hooked up with - get this - Powder River Development, LLC, putting up cell phone towers and such.
“You do what you've got to do,” says his father. “And he's lucky to do it.
“And he can always become offensive coordinator for the Burger King Falcons.”
Fritz Neighbor can be reached at 523-5247 or by e-mail at [email protected].
FRITZ NEIGHBOR: The not so sad tale of Cowboy Joe
By FRITZ NEIGHBOR of the Missoulian
For the record, former Montana Grizzlies football coach Joe Glenn has not been whiling away his post-Wyoming days in a beer truck.
“Not yet,” he said Tuesday.
Glenn, who's back in Missoula for Wednesday's KPAX Sports Awards banquet, is at least semi-retired these days, owner of a new house in Scottsdale, Ariz., that he and his wife Michele will move into in June.
After being fired by the University of Wyoming in December after six seasons, Glenn collected the final two years of his contract - he was making $316,000 per - and decided to get busy relaxing.
The last time he was let go, just 24 years ago, he had two little mouths to feed named Erin and Casey.
“I sold beer and wine Monday through Thursday and drove a beer truck Friday,” he said.
Now Erin and Casey are parents, which makes Glenn and Michele grandparents, which just about makes these the salad days.
“My standard line is, ‘I'm listening, I'm not looking,' ” says Glenn, 60. “I'm getting a lot of grandchildren time.”
There are two grandkids: Erin has Henry, who's almost 4. The other brings to mind a certain U.S. president.
“Casey says, ‘Spelled the democratic way,' ” Glenn said of his granddaughter, Regan, almost 3. “It might've cost him a job, once.”
Glenn is tan and rested, and every bit the personality Griz fans embraced when he spent 2000-02 as head football coach here. His teams won one Football Championship Subdivision title, in '01, and played for another.
Things started off well enough in Laramie, too, in 2003. The Cowboys beat both BYU and Colorado State in the same season for the first time in 15 years. In 2004 they beat UCLA in the Las Vegas Bowl for their first bowl victory since 1966 (Florida State, Sun Bowl).
But by the end Wyoming was 30-41 in Glenn's tenure.
“You know, it was a chance to take a team that was really down - I think they'd won five games in three years - and just see if you could compete at that level,” Glenn says. “And I think we proved that we could. I had a great coaching staff. We made some inroads.
“And couldn't sustain it.”
He doesn't appear to be bitter, and in fact looks fondly on a lot.
“We really did some things that as a college football coach, you'd love to do,” he said. “We won a game in front of about 100,000 people in Tennessee. The bowl game win over UCLA is a marking point, very similar to our national championship here. That was a special moment. We beat Ole Miss twice.”
But
“The Mountain West Conference is a pretty tough conference. It's real good.”
In the span of five weeks in 2008 Wyoming lost to the triumvirate of BYU, Utah and Texas Christian by lopsided scores. The Cowboys went 4-7. Utah went unbeaten.
“And TCU was every bit as good as they were,” Glenn adds. “You could argue forever, but it (the Bowl Championship Series) is not a national championship. Where as here and Northern Colorado and Helena - where you have Carroll College - you have a national tournament. And there's nothing like it.”
And after three decades and three national championships, he's sated.
“People retire out of the military at 20 years, and a long time is 30 years,” he said. “I've put in 35 years, plus two years in the military. It may be time to do something different.”
Glenn then recounted a couple of bellwether moments. One was when a friend knocked on his door in the fall of 1986, asking help for his Little Grizzly football team. Glenn, fired from UM along with most of Larry Donovan's staff after the '85 season, initially said no.
Michele talked him into it.
“I had a fun run from that point on,” he said.
A year later he was the quarterbacks coach at Northern Colorado. Two years later he was on the verge of joining Donovan with the CFL's British Columbia Lions, and the UNC job came open. He reluctantly stayed in Greeley, Colo.
“I told my family, and they all started crying,” he said. “I still wanted to go to Canada, because it wasn't a great deal (in Greeley). You had nobody at the games, you didn't have a marching band, it just wasn't good.
“But we got things going pretty good.”
Eleven years and two Division II championships later, Glenn circled back to Montana. Nearly a decade after that, he's out of the college game again.
For Casey, it's a first. He played at Carroll, then jumped into coaching and spent the past two seasons coaching at Wyoming with his dad. Now, having a mouth to feed, he's hooked up with - get this - Powder River Development, LLC, putting up cell phone towers and such.
“You do what you've got to do,” says his father. “And he's lucky to do it.
“And he can always become offensive coordinator for the Burger King Falcons.”
Fritz Neighbor can be reached at 523-5247 or by e-mail at [email protected].
