{"id":742175,"date":"2026-02-10T10:08:16","date_gmt":"2026-02-10T10:08:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/742175\/"},"modified":"2026-02-10T10:08:16","modified_gmt":"2026-02-10T10:08:16","slug":"former-montana-coach-bobby-hauck-ends-brief-retirement-to-become-defensive-coordinator-at-illinois","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/742175\/","title":{"rendered":"Former Montana coach Bobby Hauck ends brief retirement to become defensive coordinator at Illinois"},"content":{"rendered":"

CHAMPAIGN \u2014 Former Montana coach Bobby Hauck<\/a>\u00a0has ended his brief retirement to become defensive coordinator at\u00a0Illinois<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Fighting Illini coach Bret Bielema announced the hiring Monday to replace Aaron Henry, who left to be co-defensive coordinator at Notre Dame.<\/p>\n

Hauck retired last Wednesday, saying he didn\u2019t enjoy his job anymore because of the changes in college football in recent years.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want to enjoy my career and my job, and a lot of the head coach stuff in current-day Division I college football is not enjoyable,\u201d Hauck said last week.<\/p>\n

The 61-year-old Hauck is the Big Sky Conference\u2019s all-time wins leader with a 151-43 record. He led the Grizzlies to four national championship games in 13 playoff appearances over 14 seasons. Montana was 13-2 and reached the national semifinals last season.<\/p>\n

Hauk led UNLV from 2010 to 2014 and had a 15-49 record. He has been an assistant at San Diego State, Washington, Colorado, Northern Arizona, UCLA and Montana.<\/p>\n

\u201cSince meeting coach Hauck early on in my head coaching career, I have had tremendous respect for who he is, what he stands for, and the program he has built,\u201d Bielema said.<\/p>\n

Illinois was 9-4 last season, finishing just outside of the AP Top 25.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CHAMPAIGN \u2014 Former Montana coach Bobby Hauck\u00a0has ended his brief retirement to become defensive coordinator at\u00a0Illinois. Fighting Illini…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":742176,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[18232,106834,7,49,48,9],"class_list":{"0":"post-742175","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-football","8":"tag-bobby-hauck","9":"tag-fighting-illini-football","10":"tag-football","11":"tag-ncaa","12":"tag-ncaa-football","13":"tag-sports"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116045788166272022","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/742175","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=742175"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/742175\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/742176"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=742175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=742175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=742175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}