Brent Vigen and Tim Polasek worked on the same coaching staff for seven seasons. Now they’re trying to deliver an FCS national championship for their respective program.
The postgame handshake between the two head coaches in the FCS championship game Monday night in Frisco, Texas, may turn into a hug.
Montana State’s fourth-year coach Brent Vigen and North Dakota State’s first-year coach Tim Polasek are friends as much as competitors, their lives connected since 2006, when they worked together as NDSU assistant coaches for the first of seven straight seasons.
After Vigen left the University of Wyoming in 2021 to take over at Montana State, their long-time mentor, Craig Bohl, hired Polasek to replace Vigen as the Cowboys’ offensive coordinator. Polasek and his wife Jill wound up purchasing the Vigen house in Laramie from Brent and his wife Molly.
“I texted him the other night,” Polasek recalled earlier this week. “I said, ‘Brent, this is pretty cool.’ I don’t know if it will get to like an emotional spot for us, but we have really gotten tighter and tighter over the years. I think it’s really cool for Coach Bohl and his (coaching) tree and the legacy of it.”
Vigen, 49, and an NDSU alum, was voted the 2024 Eddie Robinson Award recipient while guiding Montana State to the Big Sky Conference title, a No. 1 national ranking and a 15-0 record as the longest winning streak in the Bozeman program’s history. A 16-0 finish as national champion would allow the Bobcats to join the 2019 NDSU squad with the best record in the FCS’ 47-year history.
That 2019 Bison team was coached by Matt Entz, who was in his first season in charge. The 45-year-old Polasek replaced the FBS-bound Entz after last season, and he’s debuted with a 13-2 squad that earned a piece of the Missouri Valley Football Conference title. With a win Monday night, Polasek would match Entz and seven other coaches who have captured the FCS national title in a first season at a school.
“With relationships, how you go about your business, I think we’re very similar,” Vigen said. “I have a great appreciation for Tim. I’m looking forward to talking before the game, then walking over to our sidelines and then letting our teams go about it.”
Polasek said, “Obviously, the relationship changes when you know you’re going to play because you’re not sharing ideas and thoughts. But over the years, even going back to the years I was at Iowa (2017-20 as the offensive line coach), we shared a lot of time together in cultivating concept and program philosophy. He’s meant a lot to me – he taught me a lot in the years of 2010 and ’11 and ’12 when he was the (offensive) coordinator here.”
Under Bohl, Vigen and Polasek, who served in several roles, were part of the NDSU’s first FCS championship squads of 2011 and ’12. Polasek left for a position at Northern Illinois, while Vigen remained for the 2013 championship season before he and Bohl moved on to Wyoming. Polasek then returned to Fargo to replace Vigen as OC, including with the fourth (2014) and fifth (2015) of the Bison’s nine FCS championship seasons. He’s in his third stint at NDSU.
Vigen and Polasek are part of the Bohl coaching tree that has produced eight NFL or Division I head coaches. Bohl was tough while guiding proteges, but he let them develop individually, and that helped Vigen and Polasek learn what it takes to be a head coach.
At Montana State, Vigen has gone 47-9 (.839) in four seasons, bringing the Bobcats out a 2020-21 academic year in which they sat out football. His first squad advanced to the FCS championship game, only to lose to NDSU 38-10.
“Fast forward to this team, we’re not just happy to be there,” Vigen said. “We’ve been able to put 15 games together and to really truly live in that week-to-week moment for good reason. That was our intent all the way along – to ultimately give ourselves an opportunity to go down to Frisco. Not only get down there, but do everything we can to win a football game.”
While Vigen has lifted Montana State to an elite FCS level that’s only topped this decade by NDSU and South Dakota State, the Bobcats haven’t quite achieved the Bison standard. The ‘Cats are seeking their first FCS title since 1984; meanwhile, that’s become the measuring stick of an NDSU season.
Polasek’s glad to have that kind of expectation again. And to be back in the FCS championship game, coaching on one side of the Toyota Stadium field across from a good friend.
“Pressure’s a privilege,” he said.
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