Bobcats Gain Two, Lose Two

MSU FOOTBALL

Bobcats land two transfers

By TIM DUMAS Chronicle Sports Writer

The Montana State football team recently signed two new transfers, but lost another assistant coach.
Receiver Kyle Wimberly and tight end Darnell Worthy will join the Bobcats in the fall after transferring from California junior colleges.
Wimberly (6-foot-4, 180 pounds) started as a freshman at Moorpark College, averaging 14 yards per catch. He redshirted last season in order to run track and has three years of eligibility remaining.
Wimberly ran sprints and relays at Moorpark and helped the football team to a 7-4 record in 2004 after an 0-3 start.
Worthy (6-4, 250), who played at Allan Hancock College in Santa Maria, also started his freshman year. Last year, he was a backup to Matt Sims, an all-conference tight end who signed with Utah earlier this year.
Worthy is expected to fill the slot vacated by Missoula’s Nick Parker, who recently left the program.
On the coaching front, Jason Linders became the third assistant to leave MSU after last season. The defensive line coach the past two seasons is seeking another job in Division I.
“He’s moving to the Las Vegas area primarily to be near his family (Linders’ mother is sick),” Montana State head coach Mike Kramer said.
Linders was named linebacker coach in February after defensive coordinator Pete Kwiatkowski left for Boise State. Former linebacker coach Rob Christoff then took over as defensive coordinator.
Kane Ioane, a two-time all-Big Sky Conference safety who won league defensive MVP in 2003, will take over the linebackers. Ioane was a secondary coach last season under Jimmy Lake, who left to take the assistant defensive backs position with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
Lake replaced Raheem Morris, who took the defensive coordinator job at Kansas State.
MSU is expected to hire Steve Irvin to replace Ioane.

So the Bobcats landed those two transfers, Wimberly and Worthy, but lost their linebacker coach. So who is the 2nd guy they lost? Taylor Rank, who earlier had said he was transferring from South Carolina to play for Mike Kramer, had a change of heart, and will be lucky to break the top 3 on the USC depth chart. He'll be back, they call come back.

Is the outflux of coaches from MSU necessarily a bad thing? They have all gone on to better, higher profile jobs, and one is currently in the NFL. To me, this shows that MSU is a great place to groom coaches, and we should be thankful for having such talented coaches here in Bozeman. Do I wish they'd stay? Of course, but the reality is I-AA football is not where every coach dreams of spending their career. The fact that so many good coaches come out of I-AA shows we know football as well, sometimes better, than the big boys.