When he’s not moonlighting on his radio gig, eating Kitchen Specials or sending off obtuse, 1,000-word e-mails, Kraig Applecherry can often be found talking about Montana. This Friend of RandBall has grown increasingly verbose about his home state as the Gophers v. Montana State football tilt on Saturday approaches. He called us yesterday to inform us that he would be sending a Montana State primer to us. As is his wont, the thing is long, complicated and hilarious. Kraig, you have the floor:

This weekend will be a big one for the denizens of my hometown, as the Fighting Bobcats of Montana State will have their passports stamped as guests in Gopher Nation. I hope they turn off their cellphones, the international rates can really sneak up on you. While Tim Brewster’s cartographer would have you believe that there is nothing but amber waves of grain and purple mountains majesty between the westernmost outpost of Gopher Nation and Pasadena, the Bobcats have been toiling away in Bozeman for years now, and are, in fact, the lone college football program to ever win national titles at three different levels. I think we all remember where we were in 1956 when they captured the NAIA title, or in 1976 when the Cats claimed the Division II crown. And, of course, Zumbrota, Minn., was set on it’s ear back in 1984 when native son Kelly Bradley, with the big right arm and the even bigger ’80s mustache, led the boys from the Big Sky to a win over Louisiana Tech and the I-AA National Championship. I was 12, and I believe I wore a different Bobcat national championship t-shirt to school in a rotation for the next calendar year, often under my silky Starter-style blue and gold Bobcat jacket. In fact, the next year I even won $100 bucks in a Bobcat bumper sticker contest — the winning entry showing a Bobcat eating a box of Grizzly Cereal (the arch-nemesis Montana Grizzlies) with the pithy caption reading “Breakfast of Champions.” With that on the resume, it’s amazing I can’t win that New Yorker caption contest.

Also of note: Local Quipster, utilizing a special matrix known only to him, has computed that the ‘56 champs would have finished 5th in the MIAC, the ‘76 squad 4th, and the ‘84 team would have gone winless in MIAC conference action including a 59-rip loss in Collegeville. Thank god for the Cats that they have had all of those other divisions to play in.

While Bradley, and his ’stache, remain legend in both Bozeman and Zumbrota, he is merely one of many ties between the Cats and the Land of 10,000 Lakes. And yes, this is the portion of the program where I appeal to all of you Minnesotans who weren’t born into maroon and gold to cast your gaze to the west and align yourself in blue and gold for the weekend. After all, the Bobcats sent you former MSU skier/kicker Jan Stenerud, not to mention Vikings wideout Sleepy Sam McCullum. In return, Minnesota sent us the likes of All-American offensive lineman Brent Swaggert from Buffalo, now educating the youth of Anoka County after a cup of joe in the NFL. Current Viking Jared Allen is no fan of the Cats — while winning the Buck Buchanan Award as the dominant defensive player in all of I-AA football as a senior at Idaho State, he somehow lost out to Bobcat safety Kane Ioane for Big Sky Conference Defensive Player of the Year honors. Eastview High football coach Kelly Sherwin was a Bobcat signal-caller in his day, though not with the success of his mustachioed namesake. Hastings product Craig Kilborn came to Montana State as a shooting guard for the Bobcats of my youth. While he could shoot, not so much with the guarding, and he went on to become perhaps MSU’s most famous alumni smart-ass. He was recruited by former Minnesota-Morris three sport star, U assistant coach, and bench boss for the Richfield Spartans Stu Starner. And for all of you who played for Stu back in the day, including Scott who I golfed with on Monday, he still pronounces it O-fense, as opposed to AWE-fense. We Montanans assumed it was a Minnesota thing. Nate Holmstadt of Monticello had no problems on that side of the ball, no matter how you pronounce it, leaving Bozeman as the school’s second all time leading scorer. He’s now a California Highway Patrolman, hopefully teaming up with Officer Grossman and fighting coastal crime. And I haven’t even begun to discuss former Bobcat Quadre Lollis, who’s best friend growing up in Gary, Indiana was none other than former Twins reliever LaTroy Hawkins.

Purdue coach Joe Tiller was a Bobcat. As was Jerry Glanville, albeit briefly. Dennis Erickson was a gritty little option quarterback in blue and gold before going on to coaching glory at, well, there are too many schools and NFL teams to list here. Two years ago the Cats opened the season at Colorado, dumping the Buffs in a huge upset and reminding debutante Boulder bench boss Dan Hawkins that it’s not, in fact, intramurals. It’s division one football. The season ended with a playoff win over the Purple Paladins of Furman, before bowing out in the quarterfinals to eventual champ Appalachian State (LQ computes a 4th place tie in his MIAC conversion table for the ‘06 Bobcats). Since then it’s a whole new coaching regime and a lot of new faces in blue and gold. But hopefully the essence of things remains the same. An essence best captured in a brief exchange I had with Bobcat Ty McDonald on the sideline during a scrimmage a few years back. McDonald, from tiny Geyser, Montana was a walk-on tight and special teams guy. I asked him if he had played in high school against Bobcat teammate Dylan Kinkelar from slightly less-tiny Winifred, Montana. “Oh, no sir,” McDonald told me. “Dylan played big-school football”. Indeed he did. Winifred plays 8-man football, whereas Geyser plays the 6-man variety. I don’t know how many 8-man and 6-man kids this years Cats boast, but I hope it’s a bunch. When one of them was asked by a wide-eyed New York reporter about the workings of the game prior to the ‘84 title tilt he gave the outside world his best description, musing that “it’s simple, you just throw the ball up there and run your [redacted] off.” Ahhh, good times. So cheer for the Bobcats on Saturday — you’ll love the fight song, it features the phrase “we’ve got the vim, we’re here to win” — and maybe the squad will stop off at a Stephen-Argyle practice on the way home to do some recruiting. At the very worst, if you run low on vim on Saturday, flag down somebody in Bobcat blue and gold. We’ve got plenty.

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