George Ferguson Column: Finally, a night of sports reruns that I wanted to see

Sports nuts are in a tough spot right now. We’re living in a world where sports are shut down, and where live sports literally don’t exist.

So companies like ESPN and other sports driven entities have been forced to get creative, as well as, airing a lot of prior sporting events.

Now, I gotta admit, as much as I am a total sports junky, I haven’t really gotten into watching the reruns much. In fact, with the exception of Tiger Woods’ final round of the 2019 Masters, before this past weekend, I really hadn’t sat down and watched any old sporting events that are being shown. For the most part, I can’t get into them because there is no drama, I know the outcomes. Plus, I can get on YouTube and watch the highlights of things I’ve already seen, and skip a lot of the things I wasn’t interested in the first time I saw those games or sports moments.

But, Sunday night, that all changed. Sunday night, I was glued to my television to watch sports that not only had I seen before, but also had happened a long, long time ago.

First up was Root Sports airing the 1995 NCAA 1-AA national championship game — a game my beloved Montana Grizzlies won, for their first national title. When I saw that Root was going to rebroadcast that game, I couldn’t have been more excited because I hadn’t seen it since I watched it live, alone in my basement in the South Avenue house in which I was living in Missoula while attending the UM during that glorious time.

So, that was a real treat, not only because I got to see the game again and watch that amazing win over Marshall, led by Super Dave Dickenson, and the magical Grizzlies, but I got to reminisce about that time in my life, too.

I’ve often told people that, if you loved the Griz and you loved college football, there was no better time than those years. I was in Missoula and at UM from 1994 to 1997 and, from a Grizzly football standpoint, it couldn’t have been any better because, that’s when the program really exploded. The massive and popular phenomenon the Griz became, it all started with those years, and the crescendo culminated with that win over Marshall — on the Thundering Herd’s home field no less.

And I remember every part of that day, starting with the game itself. I couldn’t go to the party I was supposed to at my friend’s house because I was just too nervous. I had to watch that game alone — something I still do to this day for really big games that are close to my heart. Eventually though, I did link up with all my friends after the Griz had won and, let’s just say, that was a long night in Missoula. I’ll just leave it at that.

No doubt that was a great time in my life, and I really loved watching that game all over again.

But the stroll down memory lane Sunday night didn’t end with the Griz. No, it continued on with ESPN airing the first two episodes of “The Last Dance” the 10-part documentary on the Chicago Bulls’ final championship season.

Now I, like millions of others, have been waiting for the series to debut since it was announced two years ago. I, like so many millions, grew up a diehard Michael Jordan fan, a diehard Bulls fan and, because of that, a diehard fan of the NBA during that era. So, for ESPN to finally be taking us back to that time, it’s special, and it was worth sitting down in front of the TV for two more hours, after I had just watched a three-hour football game.

However, unlike the Griz’ national championship game, much of what I saw from the first two episodes of “The Last Dance” was stuff I hadn’t seen before. That’s what makes this documentary so compelling. It was unprecedented video access to Jordan and the Bulls, and it had never been released to the public until ESPN got their hands on it and made it into a documentary. So, all of us, whether we were Bulls’ fans or not, had been waiting a long time for this, and the first two episodes didn’t disappoint.

They didn’t disappoint because they took me back to a really fun part of my life, a time that, for me, ended when the Bulls beat the Utah Jazz for their sixth championship, because after that, as promised, the Bulls broke up, and I never felt the same about the NBA again.

Yeah, Sunday night was certainly different for me, because I finally had a reason to watch some TV again. And, for any of you out there who were interested in the Griz game, or the Bulls’ documentary, or both, Sunday night did something else for us that sports hadn’t really been able to do in a while, and that’s offer us a distraction from what we’re going through.

And that’s been one of the hardest things about this pandemic, about this crisis. In almost every other crisis America and the world have got through, sports have helped, sports have healed us, inspired us and helped us move on. But not this time, not with this virus. No, sports haven’t been able to do much for us this time around.

But, finally, they did for me Sunday night. And for the first time since all this started, I didn’t mind watching something I’d already seen before. In fact, I loved every minute, and while I want to desperately get back to live sports while we really do need to be uplifted by sports again, for now, things like the Grizzlies and the Bulls will do. For at least one night, sports, even though they were reruns, made me happy again.