Grizzlies Back on Top
By Chad Dundas

Tanner Hancock (above) eludes a tackle. Drew Miller (right) led Division I-AA in passing efficiency.

In a surprisingly short time, two UM transfer starters from NCAA Division I-A schools--quarterback Drew Miller and wide receiver Tanner Hancock--became indispensable to the Grizzlies’ potent offensive attack. Miller’s precision passing and Hancock’s torrid speed put the Griz back on top during what some thought would be a rebuilding year.

No one is more pleasantly surprised with both juniors’ easy transition into maroon and silver than the players themselves. Neither thought things would work out this way.

For Miller, the original blueprint of his college football career showed him guiding Brigham Young University through the competition of the Mountain West Conference. BYU’s historically pass-happy offense seemed a perfect fit for him. The All-American high school player had basically rewritten the Washington state record book while playing for Lakes High in Tacoma. And he had always wanted to be a BYU Cougar.

“They’ve had incredible success with their quarterbacks and that was very attractive to me,” Miller says. “I wanted to be part of that.”

But it was not to be. The atmosphere at BYU, with its restrictive honor codes and austere regulation of life outside academics, felt foreign to Miller. The only place he was really at home was on the field. “Football was football” in Provo, he says, which gave him the strength to tough it out for two long years.

Unfortunately, he wasn’t seeing satisfactory game time. Miller admits to feeling slighted by his second-string status and says it was the feeling that he wasn’t getting a fair chance at BYU that drove him to transfer. “I just felt like I deserved a shot,” Miller says. “Put the ball in my hand. If I can’t do it, I’ll sit happily on the bench. It came down to playing football. It came down to being happy.”

Miller and Hancock found Montana in different ways. Miller remembered the Griz from the team’s back-to-back national championship showing and had heard of UM’s reputation as a passing school. Hancock discovered the school while surfing the Internet and began corresponding with coaches.

For Hancock, growing up in Salina, Kansas, the Jayhawk football program always had been the biggest show around. When it came to playing college ball, Kansas University was where he wanted to be.

The Jayhawks were coming off a year that garnered them a No. 9 national ranking and an appearance in the Aloha Bowl. Hancock’s freshman season he was the team’s second leading receiver, but Kansas fell just short of making a bowl that year. During the off-season many Jayhawk coaches left, and Hancock was not crazy about the new leadership. The following year a shoulder separation caused him to miss vital playing time and he gradually saw his active role grow smaller. After another injury to his shoulder, he felt it was time for a change.

Hancock originally was told the Griz didn’t need any more receivers. He almost had committed to Big Sky rival Northern Arizona when transfer wide-out Mike Rigell opted to leave UM for junior college. “If Mike Rigell hadn’t left, I’d probably be a Lumberjack right now,” Hancock says.

Miller came to Montana at what seemed to be the perfect moment. The quarterback position was in transition, and the Griz were looking to rebound from two sub-par 8-3 seasons. Almost immediately he was heralded as the team’s future leader. The spotlight, he admits now, made him uncomfortable at first.

“I didn’t want to be promised anything,” he says. “I didn’t want to be told, ‘Hey, Drew, you’re going to be the guy if you come here.’ [The hype] totally concerned me.”

During regular-season play, Miller and Hancock hooked up for five touchdowns. Hancock was UM’s third leading receiver, despite missing two games due to injury. Miller had racked up 3,315 all-purpose yards and was named Division I-AA Player of the Week after Montana’s 48-27 Homecoming victory over Cal State-Northridge.

Perhaps being Grizzlies wasn’t the original idea for Miller or Hancock, but both say they’re glad they made it. “My ultimate goal is to put two rings on my fingers,” Hancock says. “Anything else that comes from that is great. I’m really happy to be here.”

Miller, a candidate for the Walter Payton Award, agrees. “It’s everything I hoped for,” he says.