George Ferguson: Bigger, better and with more hatred than ever before, 2022 was a Cat-Griz football season we won't forget

For all intents and purposes, the season is now over for the Montana State Bobcats and the Montana Grizzlies.

So folks, you can lay down the arms for a while. No seriously, you can all take a step back. I promise, it will be OK if you get off of Twitter for a while, get off the message boards and forget about the Cat-Griz rivalry for a bit. The rivalry will endure even if fans take a collective breath and go do other things for a while. It will all be OK and, trust me, the hate, anger and vitriol, much of which I really don't get anymore, will all still be there come next August.

Anyway, aside from the a season filled with the most bitterness I've ever seen in this rivalry, 2022 was as entertaining as ever when it came to the two premier football teams in the state of Montana.

Of course, looking at Montana State's season, it was magical. The Bobcats were picked to finish fourth in the Big Sky this season, and entered a fall without Troy Andersen for the first time in five years. And all they did was go 10-1, clinch a share of the Big Sky championship and make their third straight FCS semifinal.

In the process, they also introduced a new hero to the state. Tommy Mellott is now that guy. He's easily the most famous athlete in Montana right now, and from what we saw of him this season, it's well deserved. He's a tough, hard-nosed, superiorly talented athlete who is highly intelligent, humble and really likable. And, man, do I wish he played for the Griz.

Regardless of where he plays though, Mellott is now the face of football in Montana. He hasn't achieved Legend of the Fall status yet, but he's on the climb, and I won't be shocked if he leads MSU to a national title before he departs Bozeman.

Yes, the Bobcats were great this season. Their offense was unlike anything I've seen in my 20-plus years covering FCS football, and a defense that was supposed to be being rebuilt did just enough to get them to another final four.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the divide, things were different, but no less fun.

Picked to win the Big Sky this season, the Grizzlies didn't reach those expectations. And they didn't for a combination of reasons.

To start, the quarterback position was the biggest reason. No matter how much you want to hate on what I'm about to say - and I'll admit, it's an excuse, - the bottom line is, if Lucas Johnson doesn't get injured the Griz beat Sac. State and Weber State. Period, the end. And anyone who knows anything about football and watched those games could see that. To deny it means you either didn't watch, didn't care, or you're lying.

Having said that, injuries weren't all Montana's problems,. The Griz were a Jekyl/Hyde team from the get-go. Sometimes, their offense looked explosive and dynamic, and other times, it looked like they had gone back to three yards and a cloud of dust. It was maddening to watch. On occasions, Montana's defense looked like it was the best in the FCS, and statistically, for a time, it was. But for inexplicable reasons, the Griz D also looked like a leaking dam about to burst. At times, they looked like they couldn't stop a Pop Warner team. (Insert Cat-Griz game jokes about the Griz D here).

And in the end, with all of that, Montana ended up with a very average 7-4 regular season record and an unacceptable sixth-place finish in the Big Sky. In the Grizzlyville I've been a part of for three decades, that isn't good enough.

It wasn't all bad, though.

The Griz had some exciting days and nights, blowing out Cal Poly in the snow, and Eastern Washington in the cold, and then orchestrating the second-largest comeback in school history against SEMO in the playoffs. Montana was also on national TV a bunch and once again was near the top of the FCS in attendance.

There were plenty of bright spots.

But, there were low lights for both squads, too.

For the Grizzlies, the season ended with a resounding thud. Sandwiched around the incredible win over SEMO was a humiliating, 55-21 defeat in Bozeman, on a day when College Gameday finally came to the Treasure State. And on the other end was a monumental collapse at North Dakota State in the second round of the FCS playoffs.

There's no sugar coating it - both of those games were U.G.L.Y.

It wasn't all sunshine and roses for MSU, either.

The Cats looked vulnerable against bad teams like Eastern Washington and Northern Arizona, but they did win. However, their ending to the season went no better than their rivals.

In the semifinals at South Dakota State, the Cats were essentially non-competitive after the first quarter. And it wasn't because of the field conditions, or the cold or the little, tiny crowd that offered no home field advantage for the Jackrabbits. The Cats lost because SDSU was simply better and because the Cats didn't play well at all. Brent Vigen graciously acknowledged that, and that's the truth.

So at the end of what was a long season, a season filled with heightened hostility between the two fan bases (and sometimes that hostility is directed at their own teams) a couple things have become very clear. Both the Griz and Cats are elite programs and elite teams, that, in the end, are both not good enough yet. If either wants to get that FCS national title out of the Dakotas, they're gonna have to get way better, as evidenced by how the season ended.

On the flip side, though, inside our borders, Bobcat and Grizzly football is as big as it's ever been. Between record-breaking attendance, media coverage, social media traffic, nationally televised games, money, two fan bases that really do seem to hate each other's guts at this point, and two teams loaded with talent, Montana and Montana State football is at an all-time high, and I don't see that going anywhere anytime soon. It won't roll back, it won't decline, it will only get bigger and bigger from here.

And with that, next season can't get here soon enough. Oh yeah, and the 122nd Brawl of the Wild is set for Nov. 18 in Missoula, just in case you were wondering.