BOZEMAN, Montana — On November 19, 2022, a paramount day in the history of Montana State University played out as all eyes around the state, and millions around the country, saw Bozeman in all it’s beauty.
So often in the modern era of Montana State athletics, the Bobcats tasted glory only to have it snatched away by the hands of devastating defeat.
With the quintessential Bozeman sunshine blanketing the snow-kissed Gallatin Valley, tinting and highlighting it for those watching from coast to coast to see, the Bobcat football team affirmed its ascension to the top of the Big Sky Conference.
And MSU put an exclamation point on this yearly crescendo by humiliating their arch rivals like never before.
ESPN College Game Day’s presence on the Montana State was only the beginning of one of the landmark afternoons in the history of the rivalry, and the history of this once sleepy and now booming town. The surge was also the next acceleration for a university that has harnessed and then carried the momentum within the Treasure State on an impressive level since transcendent President Waded Cruzado took over.
The irony: the Montana Grizzly football team has made a living (or died on the vine) over the last five years and four seasons on harnessing and then carrying the momentum within a game. Last fall, the Griz did it brilliantly. Saturday, Montana State exerted its authority, physically and symbolically, from start to finish during a 55-21 win that marked the second-largest margin for a Bobcat victor during the Big Sky Conference era.
The disciples, for and against the hosts, started descending upon Dyche Field in the wee hours of the morning on Saturday. Skyline Sports received videos, phone calls, text messages and liquor-chugging records just minutes after the legal bar time closed in Bozeman from people who were getting properly lubricated, each anticipating the Treasure State and the Gallatin Valley taking the national stage.
“Thank you for showing up, thank you for being great and thank you for being so tough,” College Game Day host Rece Davis said to the crowd after a 4-hour marathon that only got into double-digit temperatures near it’s end.
From the quintessential run out by MSU’s world-class women’s rodeo team to the subtly strong, yet resoundingly dominant performance the Bobcats put forward, Saturday marked one of the most important and impactful days in the modern history of the Treasure State’s land-grant university.
“What a day for Montana State and the football program, and then our fans and then to put that game together,” MSU head coach Brent Vigen said. “I felt like from the start, the look in our eyes, the execution, just from that first drive…we didn’t let up.
“Any time you can put the numbers up we did and to hold them in check, against a good football team, I was proud of our players, excited for our coaches and obviously excited for our fans, all they got to experience today.”
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What’s in a brand? Football observers and citizens alike wondered and debated how ESPN and College Game Day would represent Montana. By and large, the presentation of Bozeman, the Gallatin Valley and the fiercest rivalry in the West was served up to newcomers with accuracy, poise, and fun.
When CGD host Pat McAfee — the cult hero who went from NFL punter to likeable, magnetic media personality swiftly — was on the only member on the panel to choose against the host Bobcats, the sizeable crowd on hand gave great jeer.
When Montana State pounded the rock for the first 20 minutes of the game, the most impactful and enduring part of the MSU football brand was affirmed. And the Bobcats continued affirming why the campus ascended to national recognition, flipping the enrollment numbers on UM in the process.
That brand enforcement started on the first possession of the ball game. Montana State ran the ball on all six plays of its opening touchdown drive, exerting its authority on Bobby Hauck’s Montana Grizzlies, an outfit that has embraced a villain persona and projects an us against the world attitude since Hauck returned to coach his alma mater.
UM’s defense — which entered the game with a billing as the top attack against the run in the league — had a reputation as a swarming unit that plays with emotion and ferocity. Yet that unit had no answer for Montana State’s diverse, diligent, explosive and absurdly productive rushing attack. The emotion, passion and overall desired violence of the Griz defense mattered not against a Bobcat rushing attack that never let up.
Supporters and haters alike could agree that the Griz defense was quintessential and on-brand for Hauck. And now objective observers have more than half a decade worth of evidence that when the Bobcat face the Grizzlies (2021 as an exception), Montana State is going to run the ball right up their rival’s collective asses, Hauck or Haucks or not.
Saturday, Tommy Mellott and these Bobcats rushed for 155 yards on its first two drives, building a 14-7 lead without throwing a pass. MSU ran the ball 23 times on its first 24 plays of the game and piled up the most rushing yards Montana had given up this season before the second quarter was even half over. The ‘Cats surpassed 200 yards on the ground on its 32 rush (and 33rd offensive play) while building a 31-7 lead by halftime.
“Their defensive rushing numbers are really good but where they get you is when they get you in passing situations,” Vigen said. “We wanted to stay ahead of the chains as best we could and we felt like we could get on the edges, which we did.”
For years, folks around the Treasure State have either mocked the Bobcats as the Grizzlies’ little brother or argued, sometimes futilely, that the notion was true. And that’s in the face of a steady (and then rapid) surge by MSU to secure its place as the most powerful state university in Montana.
The Grizzlies won every rivalry for 16 years in a row, helping overshadow MSU’s 1984 national championship by winning every rivalry game from 1986 until 2002.
Since MSU steadily evened up the historic rivalry that dates back to 1897 and has now seen 121 matchups between diametrically opposed neighbors that, at this exactly moment, share very little aside from the same home state.
Saturday, Montana State seized the moment like never before, running the ball relentlessly down Montana’s throats and beating the football right out of these Grizzlies, a bitter pill to swallow considering that was Hauck & company’s trademark for so many years, so many years ago.
When the final seconds finally ticked off the clock, and the big boys on the Bobcats hoisted the 307-pound Great Divide Trophy, and Billy Idol’s “Mony Mony” echoed off the Bridgers as Bobcats past and presence chanted in glee, it’s hard to deny that the momentum now belongs to Montana State in every element imaginable.
The Bobcats rushed for 439 yards and scored 41 unanswered points on the way to a resounding, unforgettable and undeniable victory.
“Maybe we learned some things from last year but I said it at the beginning of the week: the makeup of how we can beat teams is so different than this time last year. So different,” Vigen said. “I think that showed today.
“We didn’t put up 561 yards of offense last year. We didn’t punt today. We were relentless.”
The Death Star that is Hauck’s Montana Griz have both empowered and deceived all of the faithful that bought into the head coach’s #RTD mantra. When the Grizzlies roll, they ROLL. UM cruised to its seven wins by a point differential 321-64, but that was against teams that currently have an 18-48 record.
The Grizzlies — preseason Big Sky favorites, winners of 10 games each of the least two years and consecutive Final 8 qualifiers in the FCS playoffs — now await their playoff fates after losing to their rivals for the for the seventh time since 2010.
“Pretty tough to make that look pretty,” Bobby Hauck muttered as he sat at the press conference table within the Bobcat Athletic Complex following his fifth loss in 11 matchups as the head coach of the Griz against the Bobcats.
“They whipped us and whipped us good,” Hauck said. “It felt like the inverse of last year a little bit and not as enjoyable on this side, certainty. They did a good job and we didn’t coach well enough and we didn’t play well enough to get it done today.”
“The plus-one run game, getting an extra guy to the point of attack….we didn’t stop it. We didn’t play well enough, and it just goes back to that.”
Hosting a national television broadcast comes with pressure and a spotlight, even if you’re Ohio State or Alabama, let alone the first Big Sky Conference school to host the iconic and ultra-popular pre-game show that is televised for three hours each Saturday morning from coast to coast during college football season.
From the moment the show opened with an homage to life in Montana, to Vigen’s sharp, short interview while standing on the College Game Day stage to the opening drive to the final knee, Montana State embraced the opportunity to put its thriving university on the grandest stage.
“Early in the week, we talked to everyone about how ESPN was coming here because of you guys, our players, and they wouldn’t be coming here without our record,” Vigen said. “And ultimately, what goes on is about the fans. We had a couple of guys get interviewed on Tuesday night or whatever. But our guys were absolutely focused on the game.
“We have a group who is completely focused on playing for each other. And we certainly didn’t want this opportunity to slip away.”
And the fact that the Bobcats not only washed the taste of last year’s 29-10 loss to Montana in Missoula but also gave Vigen his first Big Sky title was icing on the cake.
And the fact that the dominating win came against a Griz squad picked in the preseason to win the Big Sky…and also capped an 8-0 run through the Big Sky…and also made Vigen 22-2 against the rest of the FCS…couldn’t help but also turn the screams of those longing for former head coach Jeff Choate, the anointed “Griz Slayer”, into whispers or silence all together.
Vigen took the reigns from Choate and did nothing but compete and win last season, leading Montana State to the FCS title game for the first time since 1984. The only blemishes: last year’s rivalry game loss in Missoula and a 38-10 defeat at the hands North Dakota State, the juggernaut of the modern era in the FCS.
Montana State’s football successes have been consistent and impressive since Travis Lulay led the Bobcats to a 10-7 win in Missoula in 2002 to snap the dreaded “Streak”, a 16-game skid that made an already passionate rivalry unhealthy.
Beating the Grizzlies has been among, if not THE, paramount priority for Montana State. So much stemmed from the near-generation of the one-sided nature of the rivalry. But Saturday marked a reckoning that means UM and MSU are 10-10 since the streak was snapped and the ‘Cats have won five of the last six.
Choate became a deity among Bobcat fans because of his charismatic, intense way of preaching his vision. Then he went out and bludgeoned the Grizzlies four years in a row, no matter the exterior narratives around his current Bobcats.
That came to a head in 2019, when Montana State rolled to a 48-14 victory behind 368 rushing yards. Then came the pandemic. Then came Choate’s restless nature, resulting in him being a finalist for the Boise State head coaching job and, ultimately, jumping to Texas as the co-defensive coordinator.
Despite Vigen leading the Bobcats on one of their most successful runs in school history last season, questions lingered. Could the stoic giant beat the Grizzlies? Would his steady demeanor and attention to detail serve MSU well against the rival, the showdown that has had such a weighted priority for MSU for so long?
Saturday erased all of that. And it came on a national stage, helping Montana State University launch itself even further into the stratosphere.
“This was a huge day for Montana State and I’m proud to be a part of it every day,” Vigen said.
Montana State’s 10th victory this season gives MSU its first Big Sky title since 2012. MSU now awaits its playoff seed, which is sure to be among the top in the FCS as the Bobcats head to the playoffs for the fourth year in a row.
“Having the amount of eyes that was on this program, it was awesome to see,” MSU senior captain fullback R.J. Fitzgerald said. “As a football team, we did a great job of taking in that atmosphere of, it’s College Game Day and it’s a special moment to have those guys come to your state and come to this university and this rivlary.
At the end of the day, this came down to the football between the white lines and we got the job done. Big Sky champs, that’s pretty awesome. Last two years, we’ve finished second and it’s pretty amazing to finally hoist that Big Sky championship trophy.”
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