Montana Grizzlies Sports, Football and Basketball : Grizzoulian

On the Saturday of Cat-Griz, The Missoulian dared to run an article on basketball. While the article, titled "Football rules in town once known for hoops," is only half about basketball while the other half describes football's ascension, it's good to see this town's history of hoops get some press.

Whenever someone asks me about Griz basketball in comparison to football or tells me this is a football town and basketball will never make it, I always counter with something very similar to the lead of the article.

This was a basketball town 25 years ago. No ifs, no ands, no buts about it.

Missoula may not have been the most feared place on the planet for an opposing college basketball team to visit, but it ranked up there. The courtside student section filled to the gills an hour before tip-off, and thousands of town folk filed in behind them.

The atmosphere was electric. The crowds were both feared and revered by opposing coaches, who often talked about how basketball-savvy the fans here were.

For several years in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the Grizzly men averaged - averaged, mind you - more people at home basketball games than the current Dahlberg Arena (capacity: 7,500) can even hold. If today's basketball team sold out every single home game, it would still never touch a University of Montana attendance record.

Football, on the other hand?

There was a November day in the late 1970s that stands out, but only as a monument to Missoula's apathy toward Grizzly football back then.

It was the final home game of the regular season. It was cold, snowy, and the wind was howling through the unprotected bleachers at Dornblaser Stadium.

Less than 1,000 people showed up to watch Montana. Imagine that: A Grizzly home football game with more than 90 percent of the seats empty.

I encourage everyone to read the full article, which gives a great depiction of football's ascension in comparison to the fall in basketball. After the jump is one more excerpt, with O'Day describing his hopes for the future of basketball.

O'Day on the future of hoops:

But O'Day has made it clear he's prepared to seriously consider returning students to their old courtside section if they prove their interest this season.

In a “turn-back-the-clock” promotion for the season-opener against Colorado State, the students were given back their old seats for one night, and it seemed like old times. A crowd of 6,000 showed up, and spurred the Grizzlies to a 75-39 rollicking runaway.

“I did not believe the Zoo could make that big of a difference, but I believe it today,” says O'Day, who sat in the Zoo when he was a student at UM. “I still have to see it (larger student attendance at games the rest of the season), but I believe if they create an environment, others will follow.”

There is no rule, O'Day says, that a community has to prefer one sport over the other, that Missoula must choose between being a basketball town or a football town.

He believes it can be both.

“I really do,” O'Day says. “I know there are a lot of skeptics, and fans that support one or the other. But with a viable product, I think we can.”