Obviously fans have differing opinions about which football team was the greatest ever to take the field at The University of Montana.
Some will say teams that didn’t win a national championship were their favorite and most talented, while others maintain no team could match up with the 2001 team that dominated Furman in Chattanooga and came within a tick of the clock from registering the only shutout in the history of the title game.
And of course how could you argue any team displayed more resilience than the 1995 group that drove the field for Andy Larson’s game-winning field goal to beat Marshall in Huntington, W.V.
When a school has been to the playoffs a record 16 straight times, played in the championship four times in the last eight years and six times overall, the legions in Griz Nation hold on to that special moment, that special game, that special player that was most endeared.
On Friday, Oct. 16, two seasons of Grizzly football teams that have been perhaps a bit overlooked – given all the school’s recent success – will take their rightful place in history by joining the ‘95 team as inductees to the Grizzly Sports Hall of Fame.
Legendary coach Jack Swarthout’s 1969 and 1970 team didn’t win the Camellia Bowl, which was recognized at the time as the College Division National Championship, but it went through two seasons by winning all 20 games only to fall both years to North Dakota State in Sacramento.
But there is more to the story than the loss of the title.
After suffering through a 2-7 season and a loss at home to the Bobcats in his second season, Swarthout went to the junior college ranks, especially in Washington state where that level of football was flourishing, and recruited a horde of Jucos to bolster his lineup. There were 18 transfers in 1969 alone.
And while they were eligible to participate during the regular season, the NCAA in its wisdom decreed that conferences could have their own rules allowing transfers to participate, but the governing body would not allow them to play in a post-season NCAA event.
In 1969, guys like running back Les Kent, who gained almost 1,000 yards to better the school’s rushing record established by the late Terry Dillon, an NFL draftee, fullback Arnie Blancas, safety Karl Stein, who intercepted a league-record 10 passes, and 11 other players would not be allowed to play.
Now NDSU certainly was no pushover. The Bison sported a 36-3 mark over the four seasons prior ‘69.
U.S. Sen. Mike Mansfield read the team’s scores into the record on the floor of the U.S. Senate.
But without integral parts of their fabled wishbone attack, the Grizzlies were no measure and fell 30-3.
1970 was the identical story as the Grizzlies came into the Camellia Bowl second ranked, but again without key junior college performers.
In the midst of a 29-game winning streak and in their fifth playoff in six years, North Dakota State again prevailed (37-16) at Hughes Stadium in Sacramento.
“We were recruiting to get the best players available and we didn’t think we were going to the championship game that quick,” Swarthout told me years later. “It (ineligibility) wasn’t a surprise to us, but it hurt.”
A few of these players – notably Roy Robinson, Stein and Steve Okoniewski, as well as Coach Swarthout – already have been inducted into the Hall of Fame, but about 60 members of these two teams along with their families return to Missoula this week to take their well-deserved place in the annals of Grizzly lore some 40 years after their initial undefeated season.
Players will be on hand who haven’t returned to Missoula for decades and Jack’s wife, Mary, will represent her late husband.
They certainly deserve the recognition and your appreciation Friday night at the Hilton Garden Inn in Missoula.