Former Montana State University head football coach Sonny Holland photographed at Bobcat Stadium in 2011. The student section behind him was named after him.
Former Montana State player and coach Sonny Holland poses for a photo with daughters Heidi Vinje (left), Jody Delaney and Wendy Rivers (far right) after MSU's 48-14 win over Montana on Nov. 23, 2019 at Bobcat Stadium in Bozeman.
From left, Al Street, Darrell Harding, Rhett Potter and Sonny Holland pose for a photo at the 71st annual Butte High Silver B's Football meeting on Sept. 10, 2010. The four men graduated from Butte in 1956.
Montana State hall of famer Allyn "Sonny" Holland (far right, in blue tie) looks up at the statue dedicated to him as MSU president Waded Cruzado (third from right) and athletic director Leon Costello (fourth from right) look on Sept. 23, 2016 outside of Bobcat Stadium in Bozeman.
Sonny Holland attends his grand-daughter’s graduation ceremony at the Brick Breeden Fieldhouse in Bozeman on May 5, 2018.
Rachel Leathe, Bozeman Daily Chronicle
From left, Al Street, Darrell Harding, Rhett Potter and Sonny Holland pose for a photo at the 71st annual Butte High Silver B's Football meeting on Sept. 10, 2010. The four men graduated from Butte in 1956.
Courtesy photo via Butte-Silver Bow Archives
Sonny Holland, pictured in 1955, played center at Butte High and helped Montana State win its first national championship in 1956.
Courtesy photo via Butte-Silver Bow Archives
Sonny Holland won two national championships with Montana State — one as a player in 1956, and one as a head coach 20 years later.
File photo
Montana State hall of famer Allyn "Sonny" Holland (far right, in blue tie) looks up at the statue dedicated to him as MSU president Waded Cruzado (third from right) and athletic director Leon Costello (fourth from right) look on Sept. 23, 2016 outside of Bobcat Stadium in Bozeman.
Rachel Leathe, Bozeman Daily Chronicle
The statue of Sonny Holland pictured outside Bobcat Stadium in 2018 ahead of a Montana State FCS playoff game.
LINDSAY ROSSMILLER, 406mtsports.com
A statue of Allyn "Sonny" Holland stands outside the new Bobcat Athletic Complex in Bozeman on Friday, Oct. 8, 2021.
BOZEMAN — Sonny Holland, the pride of Butte who is known as "the Greatest Bobcat" for his unrivaled success as both a football player and a coach at Montana State, died on Saturday night. He was 84.
Holland's death comes after "a courageous battle" with Parkinson's disease, his daughter Jody Delaney told 406mtsports.com on Sunday. Services will take place in December, Delaney said. A specific date is to be determined.
"On behalf of the faculty, students, staff and alumni of Montana State — the university that Sonny loved so much — I offer our heartfelt condolences to his family during this difficult time," MSU president Waded Cruzado wrote in an email to MSU faculty, staff and students on Sunday.
Holland is survived by his three daughters — Delaney, Wendy Rivers and Heidi Vinje — as well as many grandchildren and great-grandchildren. His wife of 50 years, Deanna, died in 2008.
Former Montana State player and coach Sonny Holland poses for a photo with daughters Heidi Vinje (left), Jody Delaney and Wendy Rivers (far right) after MSU's 48-14 win over Montana on Nov. 23, 2019 at Bobcat Stadium in Bozeman.
Courtesy photo
"Coach Holland embodied Montana toughness and work ethic but also Montana modesty and the state's deep sense of humility, traits that he showed as a player, coach and leader in his decades of dedication to Bobcat Nation and Montana State University," Cruzado wrote, adding, "Today we mourn the loss of one of the greatest in our almost 130 years of existence as the land-grant university in the state of Montana. As we continue to show our love and devotion for the Bobcats, let's remember Coach Holland as we walk past his statue outside the stadium. We will feel Coach Sonny Holland's Blue and Gold spirit when reading his famous words: 'Now is the time and this is the place.'"
Holland won the 1956 NAIA football championship as a freshman center/linebacker with the Bobcats, and he earned the Division II title 20 years later as their head coach.
“I am still in awe of how all Bobcat fans, young and old, respected and admired him,” MSU athletic director Leon Costello wrote in a tweet on Sunday. “I will miss our conversations and hand shakes but will always remember his sincerity. To the Greatest Bobcat of all-time, thank you. You set the standard and will be greatly missed.”
Former Montana State player and coach Sonny Holland, left, poses for a photo with current MSU head coach Brent Vigen in August 2021.
Courtesy photo
MSU also won the 1984 Division I-AA championship, and Holland watched the Cats reach the Football Championship Subdivision title game last season under first-year head coach Brent Vigen.
“An absolute legend in every way,” Vigen tweeted Sunday. “Coach Holland personified what our players & our coaches strive to be. The Greatest Bobcat - his legacy will last forever!”
Holland was born into a German-Irish family on March 22, 1938, in Butte. His father, Allyn A. Holland, served as the superintendent of transportation for the Butte, Anaconda & Pacific Railway at the time. One day not long after his son was born, Allyn bought him a pair of boxing gloves. That gift “began the earliest memories of competition for Allyn ‘Sonny’ Holland Jr.,” then-Bozeman Daily Chronicle sports editor Jeff Robinson wrote in 1999.
Holland was a four-year starter on Butte High’s basketball team and thrived in track and field. But football was the sport that turned Holland into a legend.
His football career at Butte began under hall of fame coach Harry “Swede” Dahlberg. The Bulldogs reached the Class AA state title game when Holland was a sophomore in 1953, and they lost that game to Missoula 14-0.
Sonny Holland, pictured in 1954 at Naranche Stadium in Butte, was a football, basketball and track and field athlete at Butte High.
Courtesy photo via Butte-Silver Bow Archives
People who knew Holland all praised him for his toughness, a trait that he and others said was forged in his hometown.
“I was very fortunate growing up (in Butte) because there was a tradition of sports and local idols that you tried to emulate,” Holland told Robinson in 1999.
Bozeman became Holland’s longest home, but his pride for Butte burned through his final days.
“As years have gone by, we’d go and reminisce and get a ‘Wop Chop’ and go to Metals Bar,” Vinje told 406mtsports.com last year. “Butte’s always been a second home to us girls, and of course my father's first and only home is Butte.”
Deanna met Holland when she was in eighth grade and he was in seventh, and they formed their lifelong connection in high school. Deanna began her college experience at the Colorado School for Women at Denver, and the distance “was a tough thing for me,” Holland said to Robinson. When Holland got to MSU, he told himself that he was going to “do something so special she would hear about me in Denver.”
“I was hearing about it,” Deanna told Robinson.
Holland started at center and linebacker as a freshman with the Tony Storti-coached Cats in 1956, and he led them to a 33-14 win at Montana. It was MSU’s first win over the Grizzlies in 10 seasons and its first victory in Missoula in 28 years.
Sonny Holland
MSU went on to win its first national title (in a share) that season to cap a 9-0-1 season.
MSU won Cat-Griz the following year as well. Late in that game, a UM player hit MSU defensive back George Marinkovich after the play was over following a Marinkovich interception. Holland didn’t take the cheap shot kindly.
“Sonny just leveled that big Grizzly like he’d liked to have killed him,” Storti told Robinson with a laugh. “I said to myself, ‘That’s my boy. That’s a true Bobcat.’ … We all loved Sonny.”
Holland finished his MSU career with three All-America honors. The Cats went 31-6-1 overall and 4-0 against the Griz during his four years. His No. 52 jersey was retired after his senior season, and he was named the “MSU Athlete of the Century” in 1999 after a Chronicle survey of MSU administrators.
“I always knew he’d be great,” Deanna told Robinson. “He didn’t have to prove anything to me.”
After completing her two-year degree at the Denver college in 1958, Deanna returned to Montana. She and Holland got married that year.
A strong performance in the East-West Shrine Bowl helped Holland earn a contract (with a $500 signing bonus) in 1960 from the Dallas Cowboys, a then-expansion NFL team that was coached by Tom Landry. Holland, who worked out as a linebacker, didn’t survive the final cut.
Holland served a brief stint in the United States Army, then came back to Bozeman and taught math and science at Willson Junior High.
Holland started his coaching career in 1961 as Bozeman High’s offensive line coach under head coach Tom LeProwse, a fellow Butte and MSU icon who died in May. Holland was hired by MSU a year later to be its assistant O-line coach, and he became the full-time O-line coach in 1963.
In 1964, Holland briefly quit coaching after a Chicago coaches convention made him disillusioned with the profession, per Robinson. Holland took a counseling job at Great Falls High the following year, but it didn’t take long for him to return to his previous job. He accepted an assistant coaching role offered by Great Falls head football coach Gene Carlson in 1965. Carlson pursued a master’s degree the following year, resulting in the GFHS interim head coaching job for Holland, who coached Great Falls CMR the following year.
In 1968, Holland joined the staff at Washington State under Jim Sweeney, a Butte native who was MSU’s head coach earlier that decade. A year after moving to Pullman, Washington, Holland came back to the Treasure State to be the head coach at Western Montana College (now the University of Montana Western), located close to home in Dillon.
After spending 1970 as the Cats’ defensive line coach, Holland became their head football coach a year later, when Tom Parac resigned from that position and became the university’s athletic director. MSU had gone a combined 3-16 in the two seasons before Holland took over and finished 2-7-1 in 1971. During his second season at the helm, MSU improved to 8-3 and won the Big Sky Conference title with a 5-1 record in league play.
After seasons of 7-4, 7-3 and 5-5 from 1973-75, the Cats beat Akron 24-13 in the 1976 D-II championship game for their second national title and the first from a Big Sky team.
Sonny Holland follows the action from the sideline in this undated photograph during his Montana State coaching career.
Courtesy of Montana State University
Those championships “never leave your mind,” Holland told 406 Sports last year.
“Something I'm so proud of, to be a part of that program,” he added. “It goes on forever. Something that never leaves.”
Holland, who players called “The Chief”, stepped down in 1977 and became the director of the MSU Alumni Association as well as a special advisor to MSU’s president. He compiled a 47-17-1 record as MSU’s head coach — more wins than any of his predecessors.
“He has been the perfect conduit between Montana State and the people of Montana,” Bert Markovich, one of Holland’s former players, told the Chronicle in 2016. “He truly is the most significant person in the history of MSU football.”
In 2011, MSU built bleachers behind the south end zone at Bobcat Stadium. The section, where students sit, was named after Holland thanks to a $1 million anonymous donation. He got emotional when discussing that donation with the Chronicle during the south end zone groundbreaking ceremony in January 2011.
Former Montana State University head football coach Sonny Holland photographed at Bobcat Stadium in 2011. The student section behind him was named after him.
Bozeman Daily Chronicle file photo
Five years later, Marovich and other former Cats who played for Holland formed a steering committee to get a statue of Holland built. The thought of such an honor “never ever crossed my mind” before that, Holland told the Chronicle.
“I’m overwhelmed by what you’ve done,” Holland told his former players during the 2016 statue unveiling. “I’m indebted to you forever.”
That statue, which shows Holland clapping and looking to his right, has stood outside of Bobcat Stadium’s north entrance ever since. Before each home game, the MSU football team walks from the Brick Breeden Fieldhouse to the stadium. Each player and coach taps the base of Holland’s statue before entering the locker room.
Montana State's players and coaches touch the Sonny Holland statue before their FCS semifinal game against South Dakota State on Saturday, Dec. 18, 2021 at Bobcat Stadium in Bozeman.
VICTOR FLORES
406mtsports.com
“He is, by all accounts, the greatest Bobcat ever,” Brad Daws, who played for Holland at MSU, told the Chronicle in 2016. “If you ask any of his former players, they would say, next to their fathers, Sonny was probably the most influential man in their life.”
Another one of Holland’s former players, Ken Verlanic, called him “intellectual,” and Holland rarely yelled. Paul Dennehey, a Butte native and quarterback on the 1976 Cats, said his former coach was firm but kind and led by example.
As his success shows, Holland knew how to motivate his players and make them mentally tough. He didn’t need to say much more than the line he’s famous for: “Now is the time, this is the place.”
Holland emphasized good grades and good behavior to his players. He wanted each of his athletes to be “a complete individual,” said Don Ueland, another Butte native and player on that ‘76 team.
“All of us owe a big debt of gratitude to him for what he did,” Verlanic told 406 Sports last year. “How he coached us and the whole ideals beyond football, that was much more important than the game of football.”
Look back at the 14 coaches to serve as Montana State head football coach since the Bobcats joined the NCAA in 1957.
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