Updated throughout the day with quick takes from staff.
On Friday night, Montana and Villanova square off in Chattanooga, Tennessee with the FCS national football championship at stake. Sure, this isn't generating the same level of buzz as, say, Saturday's St. Petersburg Bowl Presented By Beef O'Brady's, but to its credit, it's...well, it is a football game. And to a few hundred people, at least, it's worth traveling across the country for.
Nearly 300 Griz fans throughout the state hopped on a AAA charter plane out of Billings, headed to Chattanooga to watch the Montana Grizzlies play in the FCS championship game against the Villanova Wildcats Friday night at 6.
Not that Villanova, which is outside of Philadelphia, is close to Chattanooga either, but can you imagine the scene if Montana loses? Every year, thousands upon thousands of fans travel extraordinarily long distances to watch their teams lose BCS bowls, but I'd think that a Montana loss would take things from disappointment to defeatism and despair.
Say you're a Montana fan. Days ago you were exuberant. Hours ago you were cheering your throat out. Now you stand, palms pressed against the laminated, faux-marble sink fixture of Room 212 of the Motel 6, staring at your weathered visage in the mirror. You are in Chattanooga. You must travel back a distance roughly on par with that of the Lewis and Clark expedition in time to report to your job in Montana on Monday. You are well over a thousand dollars poorer than you once were. How did you get here? How do these things happen? You fall asleep to the azure glow of the motel television's pay-per-view screen. Somewhere this weekend, a fan will drive ten minutes and watch his or her team win a football game. That place is not here.
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