Kvelve's Comments: Montana fans

In case you live in a cave and missed it, the Brawl of the Wild football extravaganza was this past Saturday, and the Bobcats won 34-11 in sunlit Bobcats Stadium in Bozeman.

And here I sit, nursing wounds all over my bruised body. 

Did I get in a fight? No. Did I imbibe too much? Yes!  Did I play in the game?  No, these were self-inflicted wounds of celebration. 

Yup, I’m a Bobcat, I went there in the 1970s. The other day I cut my finger slicing some chicken and bled blue and gold blood. 

It seems some invisible force outside a local watering hole where I was once again the only Bobcat fan in this Griz-infected part of the state, rose up and spoiled my celebration with an invisible trip that sent my big frame sprawling to the rain-soaked asphalt parking lot. 

I would like to blame it on the fans, many of whom actually bought me beers when the Cats won and during the game. 

Was I going to be rude and turn them down? No. Many of those same Griz fans rushed to my pathetic prone sprawl and helped me to a chair one of them brought out of the bar. 

Several others bandaged my hand, a large gash on my elbow and various other cuts and scratches. They drove me home in one of their cars while another patron drove my truck and got it safely in my garage. 

This was the greatest display of sportsmanship I’ve ever seen. I was Chuck, the Montanan, who even though I dared to root for the Cats, showed great care and compassion for this wounded warrior. 

The game itself was a delight for me to watch.  After getting swacked last year in Missoula, the Bobcats came out and controlled the game against a very good Grizzly team. 

The win lifted the Cats to 12-0 on the year in the regular season finale for both teams, as it traditionally is. 

Both teams will head to the FCS championship tourney in quest of a national title. 

The goofy Continental Divide trophy, which I’ve said before resembles a bronzed cow pie, was hauled around Bobcat Stadium by the victors.  The gold and blue clad crowd cheered wildly for their team. 

I crashed back in my recliner at home after the kindness of Griz fans and smiled through the physical hurt from my fall. 

But I could not help but smile, not so much about the final score in favor of MSU, but about the heart-warming kindness of fans who bad-mouthed my team throughout the telecast. 

That’s what fans do. 

But these are Montana fans, the best in the land in my opinion. They could have left me trying to swim out of a parking lot pothole, but they didn’t. 

These are good people, the kind who dominate Montana’s still sparse population.  I like to think I would do the same if the role was reversed.  In fact, I have helped some bargoers off the floor of local bars, in one case immobilizing the head and neck of a guy who fell off a tall bar stool and landed head-first on the floor, knocking himself unconscious for a few seconds. 

I don’t know who the guy rooted for in a football game. 

I knew he was a guy who needed help, and I was able to provide it. 

That, my friends, is why I moved back home to Montana 10 years ago.  In places I lived before, I would need to learn the backstroke to swim out of the parking lot pothole. 

Of all the states from coast to coast you’re easily the best!