SEATTLE — Mike Kramer’s favorite Jimmy Lake story? Easy, he says: Eastern Washington vs. Montana, 1996.



Lake was a sophomore safety on Kramer’s EWU team, an unheralded recruit out of Spokane’s North Central High, but a try-hard, instinctual player who proved early that he needed to be on the field. He had six tackles that day against Montana — a game the Eagles lost 34-30 on the Grizzlies’ path to that season’s Division 1-AA national title game — but one in particular will stick with Kramer forever.



Montana had a running back named Josh Branen, a tough runner at 5 feet 7 and 185 pounds (and, incidentally, a 4.0 student and two-time recipient of the presidential scholar-athlete award). But on a second-half carry, Kramer recalls, Lake came barreling toward the backfield from his safety position and hit Branen so hard that his helmet popped straight up into the air, “like toast out of a...