(Editor's note: Each Monday for eight weeks, MTN Sports is featuring a member of the 2022 Montana Football Hall of Fame Class leading into the June 25 banquet at the Billings Hotel and Convention Center. Tickets are available on the organization's website.)
BILLINGS - Rock Gullickson is a guy who literally throws his weight around. Enough so, that it's earned him an induction to the Montana Football Hall of Fame in June.
Gullickson jumped on board with Montana State's coaching staff in 1982 and is notable for becoming the first strength and conditioning coach in the Big Sky Conference.
He designed a weight room in Bozeman that played a key role for the Bobcats in winning their national title in 1984 when they out-muscled Louisiana Tech, 19-6.
Since then, Gullickson has been all over including college stops at Rutgers and Texas, where he beefed up NFL running backs Ricky Williams and Priest Holms. He jumped over to Louisville and then to the NFL in 2000.
That year, Gullickson designed a strength and conditioning program for the New Orleans Saints. He spent five years in the Big Easy before joining the Packers where he was named NFL Strength Coach of the Year in 2007. It's a special award for Gullickson having been voted on by all 32 strength and conditioning coaches in the league.
The Rams hired him before he closed out 17 years in the NFL and went back to college. Not for classes, but conditioning players for a year at the University of Tennessee.
After 40 years of trend setting, Gullickson says he's retired and living with his wife in Oregon. But you know he's still chiseled and and appears to be in playing form.
Raised in Moorehead, Minnesota, beefing up the Bobcats and thorwing his weight around the NFL, Rock Gullickson is one of eight inductees to Montana's latest Football Hall of Fame Class June 25 at the Billings Hotel and Convention Center.
