Montana Descends on Nashville, Testament to MonDak Football

7,000 Montana State Bobcat fans turned out for a weekend rally ahead of Monday night's FCS national championship football game.

As a guy who went to the University of Montana, I mentioned how amazing it is that two Montana teams made it to basically the final four, and now a Montana team is (I think anyway) poised to take home a win in the national championship. I truly think MSU will win their first national championship since 1984.

I had several great guests who joined us on the radio Monday morning- Senator and Bobcat booster Steve Daines, MSU Athletic Director Leon Costello, and William Lamberty- the head of Bobcat Sports information.

One of those conversations led to a great phone call from Mike Paffhausen in Butte. He played for the national champion Carroll College football team back in the early 2000's. 

Mike Paffhausen: "First off, go Cats, right. Big game tonight. What an incredible season, what an incredible couple years watching the Bobcats and the Grizzlies do their thing. And even broader, Montana Tech had a great football season. Montana Western has had a good season. Carroll College had good seasons. Our state just represents in the highest of ways. And I got to give a shout out to the teams of  2002, 2003, 2004, and 5 from Carroll College- the actual 20 year anniversary of their four peat of national championships was on December 17. I was blessed to be on two of those teams. And one of the things that I just wanted to point out to you and to the audience is- I'm really proud not of just Montana football, but the region of Montana, North and South Dakota. This region has produced more national championships than any other three state region in the country since the year 2000. We've actually hung up 23, and we've out bested the states surrounding Alabama and the states surrounding Ohio and the states surrounding Texas, which was 130 year tradition until the year 2000. So just football is just a such a big thing In this state, and to see it on the big scale again- like I said, I was blessed to win three of the six national titles with my teammates at Carroll College under the great Mike van Diest. But yeah, man, just, just a remarkable thing. It's every single year we've talked about FCS football- it's either North Dakota State, North Dakota, South Dakota State, South Dakota, Montana, Montana State- back in the day, Carroll College, Sioux Falls, just an incredible region of football."

Click here for our full coverage from Monday: 

In fact, Mike told us that this is partly why he wanted to put together a documentary that follows the incredible journey of the 2002-2005 National Championship four-peat teams.

Episode 1 has already been released and can be seen below: