Ah the sounds of spring. The ball hitting the bat, a pitch popping a mitt, Bobby Hauck saying, “Number 28, you are (blank)ing up my drill!”

Not that any spring, save for 2020’s, didn’t have football on the University of Montana campus. This coming spring will have the added bonus of actual games.

That includes the annual Cat-Griz game, which will be March 27 in Missoula. It is the fourth game on the schedule that was released Wednesday by the Big Sky Conference. It comes after a bye-week – built-in obviously to allow for cancellations and postponements because of the ongoing pandemic.

So “The Brawl of the Wild” is not at the end of the regular season, which if we’d had one this fall would have put the game 16 days from now. It stays in Missoula. The 2021 fall campaign will put it back to Bozeman.

I like it. There was a time when the game rotated through the schedule like any other conference battle, lacking the Civil War/Big Game/Iron Bowl panache. It explains how I watched the Bobcats beat the Griz 28-8 in Bozeman, and later that day watched my Royals rally to win Game 6 of the 1985 World Series (Where were you when Jack Clark missed that foul pop by a mile?).

The Griz begin on Feb. 27 with a trip to Northern Arizona, then head to Eastern Washington the next week and have their home opener March 13 against Cal Poly. The first two weeks are heavy in southern or domed teams hosting games.

A trip to play the Idaho Vandals is set for April 3, and then the Griz have a home game against Portland State on April 10.

Another bye is scheduled for April 17; selection Sunday for the Football Championship Subdivision playoffs would be the next day. Sixteen teams, down from the usual 24, will be awarded postseason berths and the FCS title game is May 15 in Frisco, Texas.

It’s weird and exciting and doable. We have no idea how fan attendance will work, or how many press credentials will be allowed or if we’re all made to parade around maskless by then.

We have no idea if Hauck’s Griz can stop the streak of Montana State wins in the series at four; it’s interesting to note that once the Cats stopped that 17-game skid, in 2002, MSU has won 10 of 18 “Brawls.”

Meanwhile someone asked what would happen if, God forbid, the spring schedule didn’t go off as scheduled or at all. The fall schedule would almost have to stay in place, Big Sky assistant commissioner Jon Kasper said, with the possible flipping of home and away sites.

Teams are filling their non-conference schedules; and anyway, the bigger worry is how to get through tiebreakers and seeding in a short, unbalanced schedule in the spring.

A spring unlike any other. It’ll be messy, maybe snowy, possibly rainy. Part of me says: Bring it on.

Fritz Neighbor can be reached at 546-1122 or at [email protected].