Montana State walked into the Kibbie Dome in Moscow on Friday night carrying a 19-game winning streak and walked out without it, beaten by a team that was 0-4 — not because the Vandals out-executed the No. 1 team in the country, but because head coach Brent Vigen used his own timeout to help them get organized for the kill shot. The real reason that streak is dead is a decision, not a drive: Montana State’s own coach handed Idaho the time it needed to find the touchdown.
Montana State led by 14 points in the fourth quarter of a game it was never supposed to lose. Idaho hadn’t won a game all season, and Friday was shaping up to be loss number five right up until it wasn’t. With no timeouts left, Wood drove anyway: he found Tony Harste for 10 yards, then Noah West-Baranco for 23 more, down to the Montana State 25. The clock read 0:00 when West-Baranco’s knee hit the ground on the tackle; officials put one second back on it, a ruling that had nothing to do with Vigen.
That part is on the officials. What happened next is on him.
As Idaho rushed to the line to snap the ball before the clock could expire again, Vigen called a timeout of his own.
He admitted as much to the Bozeman Daily Chronicle afterward: “Do you call a timeout? Do you not call a timeout? We wanted to get regrouped on defense, and ultimately they made the play.” The Chronicle’s own account was just as direct, noting the stoppage “allowed the Vandals to compose themselves more and design a final play.”
They made the play because he gave them the time to design one.
A defense still scrambling to get set against a rushed, sideline-arm snap is a different problem than a defense facing a called shot with every Vandal lined up where Idaho’s staff wanted them. Vigen chose the second version.
On the next snap, Wood found Ryan Jezioro for a 25-yard touchdown that cut the deficit to 34-33. Idaho head coach Thomas Ford Jr. skipped the tying extra point entirely, and Wood ran in the two-point conversion himself for a 35-34 win that ended Montana State’s run as the standard-bearer of FCS football. Ford’s gamble only had a clean look to work with because Idaho’s offense got the structured snap Vigen gave them to finish the job.
I watched that final sequence four times and I still can’t find the version where calling that timeout helps Montana State. Warren Sharp watched it live and didn’t bother being diplomatic about it:
https://twitter.com/SharpFootball/status/2106266459517440304
Sharp isn’t a neutral observer by trade, but he isn’t wrong, either. College football has spent its entire 2026 calendar reminding everyone that rankings are decoration — this is the same sport where an NAIA school beats a D-I roster on a random Saturday, where the gap between dynasty and disaster is sometimes just one timeout. Vigen just volunteered to close it himself, and Montana State gets to spend its bye week explaining that decision alongside the rest of this week’s college football fallout.
Nineteen straight wins, undone by a timeout nobody needed to call.
