The Bobcat Nation

All five of Montana's high school football state championships could soon be heading to one stadium.

MTN News learned Tuesday that a group is working on a proposal to bring all of the games together in either Washington-Grizzly Stadium in Missoula or Bobcat Stadium in Bozeman.

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This would be awesome.

That would be one helluva an event!

It also seems the most fair -- state championship games probably shouldn't be home games for one of the teams.

That will pull revenue away from those other towns and drop it into Bozeman and Missoula, though, which I'm sure will meet with some resistance.

this needs to get done. Most of the states around us are already doing this.

A centrally located venue makes more sense.

So...This would happen the same week as Cat/griz, but in the opposite town as Cat/griz?

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I think this would be a great idea. The thought is to have the smaller schools play Thursday and the bigger schools on Friday which then you can still make the Cat/griz game in the opposite town

He was surprised when the kids wanted to play at home? Every kid presented with that option would pick home. If you asked me where I want Cat/gritz I would always pick Bozeman. The idea is very good. I have thought for some time that NAIA DIV3 Div 2 and FCS should all play at one site on the same weekend, my choice would be Vegas.

there are enough small schools still where i don't see this getting done. all of them (that are in contention) look forward to the opportunity to host a state championship game

catamaran wrote:there are enough small schools still where i don't see this getting done. all of them (that are in contention) look forward to the opportunity to host a state championship game

Right now, all of them are in contention, but only a handfull actually have a shot. I could see the majority thinking the same thing as the Superior coach.

The only way,IMO, to convince the communities that don't want it, is to actually do it.

When I was in high school, playing six man, I definitely would have loved to play the championship game in a place like Bozeman or Missoula in a college stadium. I think we all would have. Having a home game really wasn't that big of a deal to us -- we actually liked getting out of town, staying in hotels, and seeing new places (like we got to do for Divisional and State basketball tournaments). Switching a championship game from our hard-pan frozen field to a Division 1 football stadium would have been amazing.

I would think that the people who would be most opposed wouldn't generally be the players so much as all of the parents and fans who would have to shell out for that road trip instead of having a home game. To a lesser extent, the businesses in the host communities might not want to give that up, although the magnitude of that business probably isn't huge (especially given how rarely towns host championships on average).

Another issue would be field dimensions since you're dealing with 3 different playing surfaces (80 yd., hs 100 yd, and college)

catamaran wrote:Another issue would be field dimensions since you're dealing with 3 different playing surfaces (80 yd., hs 100 yd, and college)

When I was young, St. Leo's in Lewistown played 8 man, but used Fergus High School's football field. I think what they did is just move the ball forward 20 yards on each change of possession and then had chalked in sidelines that were narrower.

I guess the only time that approach wouldn't quite work is on a punt, interception of fumble recovery return, in which case the returning team would need to run an extra 20 yards to score. But even then I guess they could just deem that it was a touchdown if you crossed the 20 yard line.

What differences are there between HS 11 man and college? Hash marks? Or are the actual field dimensions different as well?

Inbounds marks are different to open up the college game more. Additionally, you have to deal with different goal posts, both for an 80 yd field and different widths for hs.

6 man and 8 man play on 40x80 yard fields. Class B, A and AA play on the same size field as college, 54x100 yds. The differences: the goal posts in college are a littler narrower than HS goal posts, also the hash marks in HS are closer to the sidelines in college, or the hash marks are wider in HS.