George Ferguson Column: Going back in time with Super Dave

It’s always fun to take a trip down memory lane. No matter what you’re favorite memories are, when you get a chance to revisit them, it’s a blast.

Last Saturday was one of those days for me.

On a sun-splashed day inside Washington-Grizzly Stadium, I got a chance to remember a time in my life that was a whole lot of fun. In some ways, maybe it was too much fun. But nonetheless, the five years I spent going to college at the University of Montana were five years I will always cherish.

But being a student and a fan of football, nothing could compare to my first two years at UM, and a big reason why those years were so amazing was the brilliance of one Dave Dickenson.

Dickenson is the single greatest Montana Grizzly ever. If you know him, you already know that. And he’s simply one of the most successful athletes to come out of Montana in modern times — period.

Case in point, why he was back in Missoula Saturday — to be honored at his alama mata for being inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame. Given how long college football has been played and given that there’s only 1,200 members of the College Football Hall of Fame, for someone from Great Falls and the University of Montana to be inducted, that pretty much tells you all you need to know about Dickenson’s career.

And to me, his career is special because I was a student at Montana in 1994 and 1995, two of the most glorious years of Grizzly football to this day. I could spend hours telling you all what it was like to be a student in those days at Montana, long before what Wash-Griz has become now, and long before the program ascended to the type of popularity it has today.

No, a lot of younger Griz fans don’t know this, but in those days, 14,000 of us was a record crowd in Missoula, and I’ll tell you this, that stadium was just as loud then as it is now with 26,000 fans packed into it. Maybe louder.

Yes, being a Griz fan in those days was special because, we had more ownership of it than we do today. It was on a much smaller scale, it wasn’t quite the grand production it is now. In fact, the 1994 game between Montana and Idaho, both ranked in the Top 5 of Division 1-AA at the time, was the first game in which the Griz ran out of the tunnel through smoke. And the tunnel was just that, the entrance to the field. No inflatable helmet, no fireworks, not even a real smoke machine. No, back then, the Griz ran out of the open door with Monte and the cheerleaders leading the way, and that was it. I swear it’s true. And yet, we loved it.

And the show you see today in Missoula, the atmosphere, a big part of that is all because of Dickenson and what he did for the program and for the school.

In 1995 Dickenson and the Grizzlies went to heights perhaps no one ever thought they could. They won the national championship, and Dickenson won the Walter Payton Award, which is the Heisman Trophy for our level. Neither of those things had ever happened at Montana before, and as far as championships go, it’s only happened once since, and the Griz have never had another national player of the year.

No, Dickenson, and as he would tell you, his 1995 team changed everything. That season really catapulted UM football to what it is today.

So for me, Saturday was a cool day. The highlight package they showed on Griz Vision just before Dickenson was honored, I watched and found myself saying “I was there for that game, I was there for that moment. I remember that game.” Yes, I was one of the lucky ones, who was there for it all, and it was magical and something I’ll cherish for the rest of my life.

But another reason it was so special is because Dave Dickenson was one of us. It’s not often you look up to somebody who is your age, who is pretty much just like you. But that was Dave Dickenson in those years. I watched him play for CMR against Havre in basketball. He grew up in the same ways I did. We had mutual friends and acquaintances. We all, in those days, either knew each other, or at least knew someone who knew each other.

And even as his popularity and star rose in Missoula, Dave was the same Dave that we all knew and respected so much. The fact that he was throwing a football perhaps better than anyone in the country at the time, and certainly better than any Montanan had, maybe ever, didn’t change him. He still hung out in the places we did, he talked to everybody and was just as much a fixture on campus as any other student. It was all normal, and that’s just another reason why Dave and those years were so special.

I’ve tried hard to describe those years to younger Griz fans. I’ve tried hard to get people to understand just how great those years were, and how great Dave Dickenson was as a Grizzly quarterback.

But times have changed so much. Things are so different now, and literally, because you can’t see much of Dickenson’s highlights or accomplishments on Youtube or Facebook, to some it’s like it never happened.

And yet it indeed happened. That 1995 Montana team was as great as it has have ever been, and DD or Super Dave, or the Legend of the Fall, or anything else he was dubbed back in those days, he was as great as it gets, on and off the field. Yes, if you were a student at Montana in those days, or even just a Griz fan, then you know exactly what I’m talking about and you don’t need Youtube to verify it.

No, those days will always hold an extremely special place in my heart. The 1995 Homecoming Game against Boise State, or the freezing cold national semifinal against S.F. Austin, and everything in between, those memories are as vivid to me today as they were when my friends and I were in the front row of the student section in Washington-Grizzly Stadium more than two decades ago.

And Saturday in Missoula, I got to go back in time and relive those moments. I got to see DD honored in front of 25,000 appreciative Griz fans. Yes, Saturday was one of those great days.

So thanks, Dave. Thanks for giving me a chance to relive those days with you. I keep getting older, and Grizzly football might keep evolving, but those days, the DD days at Montana, those days are forever and nothing will ever change how magical and special they were.