BILLINGS — Last season's football clash between Montana and Montana State was perhaps the highest-stakes Brawl of them all, with the winner taking home the outright Big Sky Conference title and the league's automatic bid to the playoffs.
The Grizzlies' 37-7 blowout victory set them on a course to the FCS national championship game, while the Bobcats dropped their postseason opener at home to North Dakota State.
This year's matchup doesn't have quite the same surrounding drama. But it matters. Every year. Always. Regardless of the windfall.
The Cats and Griz — ranked No. 2 and No. 10 respectively entering last week — will kick off the 123rd Brawl of the Wild on Saturday at 12 p.m. at Bobcat Stadium in Bozeman.
Coming in, Montana State (11-0, 7-0 Big Sky) has already wrapped up the league's automatic bid to the playoffs and clinched at least a share of the conference title thanks to a 30-28 road win at UC Davis. A victory over the Griz this week and MSU will be outright Big Sky champs.
The Bobcats want to stay in position to have the best chance to go where the Grizzlies went last year — Frisco, Texas.
Meanwhile, Montana (8-3, 5-2) has surely played its way into an at-large playoff berth, but a victory in Bozeman would enhance its credentials for positioning within the 24-team bracket, which will be released by the FCS selection committee on Sunday.
When last year's game ended, Griz coach Bobby Hauck called it an "a** kicking" on live television. He wasn't wrong. But that's been the trend in this rivalry for the past five years on both sides.
Montana State dismantled the Griz at home in 2019 (48-14) and 2022 (55-21), an average margin of victory of 34 points in those wins. Montana, meanwhile, blew past the Cats 29-10 in 2021 in Missoula, a game that didn't seem as close as the score indicated, then dominated last year's game in Missoula, as Hauck not-so-subtly alluded to.
The Bobcats' Brent Vigen has put together a glowing resume in four years as MSU's coach. He's 43-9 overall (.827) and 28-3 in the Big Sky with two league titles. He has yet to lose a home game to a conference opponent, and has not lost a regular-season home game period.
Vigen is looking to even his record against the Grizzlies at 2-2 on Saturday.
Hauck obviously has a much longer history against the Bobcats — "the neighbors," as he calls them — in his two separate tenures at Montana.
Hauck is 7-5 all-time versus MSU. Overall, he is 137-39 (.778), 82-21 in Big Sky games and has taken the Grizzlies to four national championship game appearances, including last year's.
But he doesn't want to fall to 2-4 against the Bobcats since returning as coach prior to the 2018 season.
From a historical standpoint, Montana has the upper hand in the rivalry with a 74-42-5 series lead, a fact that's not lost on the Grizzlies or their fans. The primary reasons for that were UM's 36-3-4 record over the Bobcats from 1909-1955 and a 16-game Griz winning streak from 1986-2001.
But from a more modern perspective, the series sits at 34-32 in favor of UM since 1956. If you drill it down even further, it's all square at 10-10 since the Bobcats finally got back on the winning side after 16 long seasons in 2002.
That's what has made this conflict even better in recent years — the fact that both teams are keeping pace with each other head-to-head. That only enhances what is one of the best college football rivalries in the country.
Now it's a matter of whether the recent trend of home-field advantage rings true again this year. And we're about to find out.
