Just one more

Posted on December 19, 2008 by Colin O'Keefe

That's it. The team that was expected to lose somewhere around three games is 60 minutes from the U's third National Championship. The CAA and whoever can talk themselves up all they want. The truth is, Appalachian State is the only team that can come close to making the argument that they're more of an FCS powerhouse. After tonight, Montana Grizzlies will have appeared in six of the past fourteen FCS National Championship games.

Now there's just one more. That's it. I'm not sure what I can say. At this point, it's on the players. We'll be bringing thousands of Griz fans, because let's face it, we're as good as they come. We're 2,100 miles away and sold out all our tickets. Richmond had to send some back. We can yell but it's on the guys now.

To conclude, this is ridiculous. I am in Chattanooga, Tennessee, it was close to a 40 hour drive from the zoo. Now let's do this. Just a single game. Let's go Cole. Chase, carry em. Mr Touchdown has this. And Colt 'The Hair' Anderson will be knocking down anyone that makes it to the secondary. I honestly don't know how to wrap this up. It's completely unbelievable. The last Griz game I attend as a student will be a National Championship game.

Ironically, the first Griz game I ever watched was a title game. As a senior in high school, shortly after deciding I'd be going to the University of Montana for school, I watched our Griz get beat on that torn up field. Today will be different. We'll be driving out of this town with championship #4.

28-17 Griz.

Follow twitter.com/colinokeefe for comments and pictures from the game and tailgates.

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It will be Richmond

Posted on December 13, 2008 by Colin O'Keefe

Last night, we found out we had one more game. Now we know the Montana Grizzlies will have to beat the Richmond Spiders to earn their third FCS National Championship.

Today's semifinal started out as boring as any football game I've watched in recent memory. You could call it a defensive battle or just slow, boring football. That's up to you. During the second half, things went from a little more interesting to downright ridiculous.

Sidenote: if you want your school, and entire division for that matter, to look completely laughable then play a nationally televised Saturday game on astroturf. Jesus. Get it together UNI.

Back to the game. UNI capitalized on a Richmond fumble and eventually ran the score to 20-7. They couldn't put it away though and proceeded to give up 14 unanswered points. They choked. After giving up the ball on 4th and 1, the Spiders forced a three and out that took only 28 seconds off the clock. With no timeouts and 1:46 left the Spiders drove 62 yards for the score. Richmond kicked it short, which made zero sense with the amount of time left (about 20 seconds). Then UNI attempted to one-up Richmond's odd play choice by running a desperation lateral play when, with one timeout, a bomb down the middle to their stud 6'7" tight end could've set-up a game-winning field goal. That was only a little worse than Richmond's clock management at the end of the second half.

Nevertheless, it was a good, nay, a great game. No one can deny how incredible the drive at the end was, but at the risk of sounding like an arrogant JMU fan, I wasn't that impressed with most of the game. I get the feeling both teams did not bring their best game today, at least for the first 58 minutes and 15 seconds. If Richmond does that again, they'll lose.

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