The beautiful Great Divide Trophy is not at stake Saturday when the Grizzlies and Bobcats battle in what we’re now calling “The Super Brawl” in Bozeman.

The win, whoever gets it, and the ensuing trip to Nashville should be reward enough. 

Not that the season hasn’t been rewarding already for Montana State and Montana, who have a rematch in the FCS semifinals looming. The teams are a combined 25-3. 

The 2011 season had been a high-water mark for the rivalry: That season the teams were a combined 17-3 going into the Brawl. 

Then came 2023, when we might have had a semifinal rematch (at a combined 22-4), and now this weekend.  

Since UM’s 36-10 win in 2011, which I will not vacate given this NIL age we’re in, MSU has won eight of 13 matchups and seven of the last nine. If you start with the first year of the Big Sky Conference, 1963, UM leads the rivalry 37-33.  

Montana State has narrowed the gap due to an unprecedented, sustained run of great football. Jeff Choate went 4-0 against the Griz as MSU’s coach, and when he suddenly left in the spring of 2020, the Cats made another excellent hire in Bren Vigen. 

Vigen had to replace a Walter Payton Award winner this season; UM’s Bobby Hauck had to replace his starting defense.  

Given the Griz had to score twice in the last 4 minutes, 23 seconds to beat North Dakota 24-23 in their second game, a 13-1 mark is remarkable. 

“As we get into the latter part of this season, if we continue to find ways to win, we’re going to have a terrific football team,” Hauck said at the time. 

Obviously they found a way — and if there’s no getting around their 10 home games you’d also then have to note MSU will host its 10th home game Saturday. 

Try this for a Butterfly Effect: On Oct. 4, with just shy of 11 minutes left and holding a 38-35 lead over the Griz, the Idaho State Bengals went for it on fourth-and-1 rather than try a field goal from the Montana 33-yard line.  

Bengals running back Dason Brooks lost a yard, and while the Griz didn’t score on that possession, after an exchange of punts they put together a 52-yard drive that ended with a Michael Wortham TD run. 

Now the Griz led 42-38, but it could have been 42-41 — and because it wasn’t, when the Bengals got to Montana’s 20 with 1:08 left they had to leave kicker Trajan Sinatra on the sideline again.  

All Sinatra did is make 18 of 22 field goals this season, though three of his misses came from 52, 47 and 49 yards. But he also hit from 50 and 56. He was first-team All-Big Sky. 

The team that beat UC Davis on the way to a 5-3 league record had UM on the ropes.  

Weird things happen in Pocatello, and that’s why we love college football. 

Reach Fritz at 758-4463 or at [email protected].