Montana Tech’s football team completed its first perfect regular season Saturday with a 41-0 win over Valley City State on the Bob Green Field.

Coach Kyle Samson’s 11-0 Orediggers are the No. 3 seed in the NAIA Football Championship Series, which is a fancy way of saying “playoffs.” Tech earned a first-round bye for the playoffs, which start this weekend.

Samson was hired as the head coach of the Orediggers in January of 2020, and he quickly won over the school and the community with his motos of “Family” and “County on Me.” The success of these Orediggers, though, just might go back farther than that. A lot farther.

Samson grew up in Helena, where he won the Gatorade Award while leading Helena Capital to greatness on the gridiron. But his coaching roots are buried deep in the Mining City. According to retired football coach Mick Delaney, Samsons’ roots go back to Butte Central and coach Jim Sweeney in the 1950s.

Sweeney coached the late Bob “Putter” Petrino, the former Butte Central coach who went onto a legendary career at Carroll College. Samson is the grandson of Petrino. Petrino coached Delaney, whose long coaching career ended with a successful stint as head coach at the University of Montana.

I like to call Coach Delaney the “Man who Saved Grizzly Football.”

Samson’s father, Mark, worked as an assistant under Petrino, his father-in-law, at Carroll before going onto a great run at Helena Capital. Then, Mark Samson took over the program at MSU-Northern and transformed the Lights from a basement dweller into a perennial playoff team.

Of course, the names in this great chain of coaches goes well beyond Sweeney, Delaney, Petrino and Samson. It also includes the likes of Sonny Lubick, Sam Jankovich, Gene Fogarty and so many more. Yes, it seems the coaching world revolves around the Mining City.

Listen in to this episode as Mark Samson and Mick Delaney connect the dots from Sweeney and his incredible run at Fresno State and the 2025 Orediggers. 

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