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Like I Was Saying

GameDay’s Dumb Decision

ESPN, after seemingly teasing us all week, announced that it would instead be going to Columbus, Ohio for the top-10 matchup between Ohio State and Michigan State

By Kellyn Brown

It seems like yesterday. Well, perhaps a little longer. On those Saturdays, as college students at the University of Montana, my roommate Josh and I would set our alarms for 9 a.m. We would then have plenty of time to tailgate before the Griz football game kicked off at 11 a.m.

After waking up a little groggy from staying up way too late the night before, one of us would yell: “Game day!” And we began celebrating what was, to us anyway, one of the six greatest days of the year. Those in which there was a home contest at Washington-Grizzly Stadium in Missoula. 

This was during our team’s heyday. The Griz were on an unprecedented streak of deep playoff runs that was capped off by a national championship in 2001, the year I graduated. The winning streak against our archrival Bobcats was even more impressive: 16 straight victories before ending the following year. 

We had the same rituals before each game. We “pre-gamed” at our mutual friend’s house before walking about one mile to the stadium. We would then catch up with Josh’s parents, who were season ticketholders, before staking out our preferred seats in the student section. 

When the smoke bellowed from the tunnel and players entered the field, we all lost our collective minds. And when the Griz scored a touchdown we would take turns crowd surfing. And, finally, when our team won at home in the semifinals to earn a berth to the national championship, we stormed the field. I think someone tore down the goalposts. It wasn’t us.

Some of the strongest relationships I forged in college were rooted in those days. The group I went to the games with are many of the same friends I still keep in touch with. I was the best man in Josh’s wedding and still occasionally see his parents and sister. He moved away from Missoula and Western Montana long ago, but when we get a chance to reconnect, it’s often over beers and discussions of football and how the Griz are faring that season. 

We recently exchanged texts about how this weekend’s home game was shaping up to be the biggest in the history of the school, and not just because it’s the 120th Brawl of the Wild and both UM and Montana State University are ranked. No, what began as murmurs that ESPN’s College GameDay, the preeminent pre-game football show on television, was considering broadcasting from Missoula quickly snowballed into an all-hands-on-deck recruiting effort. 

Democratic Sen. Jon Tester and Republican Sen. Steve Daines posted a video together imploring the ESPN crew to head to Montana. So did Academy-Award winning actor and UM alumnus J.K. Simmons and Pearl Jam bassist Jeff Ament. Our governor weighed in, as did the rest of the of Big Sky Conference. The message was clear: The Cat-Griz rivalry is one of the best in the country and Missoula is one of the best places to watch a football game. 

As more people posted on social media pleading (begging?) for GameDay to announce it’s heading to Big Sky Country, Josh sent me the lofty prices of plane tickets to fly in for the weekend. Undeterred, he followed up: “I could probably fly into Spokane and rent a car.”

It was all for naught. ESPN, after seemingly teasing us all week, announced that it would instead be going to Columbus, Ohio for the top-10 matchup between Ohio State and Michigan State. The show has filmed there about 20 times in the last 25 years. It wasn’t just a predictable move by the so-called “worldwide leader in sports,” it was also a dumb one.