REPORTS: HAWKINS HEADED TO CFL, MONTREAL

Former Boise State head coach Dan Hawkins will be named the head coach of the Montreal Alouettes of the Canadian Football League, according to multiple media reports.

Hawkins, who lives in Boise, has not been formally introduced as Montreal's coach. He declined comment to the Idaho Statesman on Thursday.

Hawkins, 52, was 53-11 with four bowl appearances at Boise State from 2001-05. He left for Colorado at the end of the 2005 season and went 19-39 with the Buffaloes before being fired in November 2010.

Hawkins has not coached since and has worked for ESPN as a college football game and studio analyst.

The Alouettes went 11-7 last season, losing in the East Division finals and falling one game short of the Grey Cup. Coach Marc Trestman left last month to become head coach of the Chicago Bears.

Former Boise State offensive lineman Andrew Woodruff, whom Hawkins coached, is on the Montreal roster, as is former Idaho defensive end Aaron Lavarias.

The CFL season begins in June.

MONTANA HIGH SCHOOL HIRES JOE O'BRIEN

The former Boise State All-American and Montana State assistant coach is the new head coach at Simms High, 10 years after his arrest and conviction on federal drug charges.

The Sun River Valley Public School Board voted 4-3 Tuesday to give O'Brien a one-year contract, after a series of parental meetings and the objections of some community members.

While coaching at Montana State, O'Brien was arrested in 2003 and pleaded guilty in July 2004 to conspiracy to distribute methamphetamine. He served 28 months in federal prison, six years of federal probation and forfeited about $23,000.

O'Brien, who has been living in Great Falls, Mont., was an NCAA Division I-AA All-American defensive lineman at Boise State in 1994, when the Broncos reached the I-AA national championship game.

He joined the Montana State coaching staff in 2000 and resigned about two weeks after his arrest. He has since written a book "Busted Bronco: From Addiction to Redemption.''

"Coaching is everything to me. This is one of the very few things that make me happy in life,'' O'Brien told the Idaho Statesman in 2009 when he came to Boise as a volunteer assistant coach with the Fresno, Calif., franchise in arenafootball2. "I probably won't ever coach in college again, but I'm not giving up on coaching, that's for sure.''