I generally really enjoy Andrew's takes on pretty much the whole of Griz football, but one thing that kind of bugs me about the whole The Standard™ stuff, especially regarding beating the cats and winning conference championships, is how he seems to have selective memory about what the conference was like back when he played.
A few bits of context that people probably forgot or never knew to begin with, starting with the record vs. the cats:
His teams went 4-1 vs. Montana State when he was playing. In those 5 years, the cats were ranked:
Not Ranked (Win in 2004), #18 (Loss in 2005), #10 (Win in 2006), NR (Win in 2007), NR (Win in 2008)
In Bobby's other 2 seasons, the cats were #21 (Loss in 2003), and NR (Win in 2009).
In Bobby's second stint, the cats have been:
#17 (Loss), #4 (Loss), #2 (Win), #4 (Loss), #9 (Win), #2 (Loss), and the #2 seed (Loss).
It's never been harder for the Griz to beat the cats. This is the best they've ever been over a 7 year period.
Two of Hauck's teams won the Big Sky in his first stint with 2 conference losses (2003 and 2005), and two prior teams also won the conference with 2 losses (1998 and 2002).
No team has won a share of the Big Sky title with more than 1 loss since 2005, mostly due to the fact that the conference scheduling became unbalanced with so many additional teams.
The Griz have had 2-loss conference seasons in 2013, 2014, 2015, 2019, and 2021 without winning the title.
In fact, this year's team is the only Griz team since 1989 that had just 1 conference loss and did not win the conference, all the other ones did (1995, 1999, 2004, 2008, and 2023). All of those teams needed other Big Sky teams to help them out by beating the other top teams.
From 1998 until 2010, no Big Sky teams other than Montana made it to the semifinals or better, ever.
Since 2010, 3 Big Sky teams other than Montana have made the semis or better 11 total times.
You could say that this is because the FCS is watered down, and while I admit that's true, the Big Sky was much weaker back when Montana was winning conference championships every year.
Again, I generally agree with what Andrew says, and there's no reason we should accept mediocrity. The goals are the goals, and they should be.
But, like Sammy Akem and Keenan Curran in their show today, the tone he uses implying that it's a personal failure of the players and coaches to have let the standard sink so low when plenty of the older teams had it easier and got better breaks, sometimes winning the conference by sheer luck, rubbed me the wrong way.