The ball, launched by quarterback Justin Lamson from about the 22-yard line toward the far corner of the end zone, settled into Taco Dowler’s hands just before 10 p.m. on Jan. 6, 2026. That touchdown in overtime tied the score of the Football Championship Subdivision championship game, 34-34, and set off one of Montana State’s most muted touchdown celebrations of the season.

Moments later, MSU’s Myles Sansted trotted onto the field, lined up behind long snapper Brody Johnson and holder Colby Frokjer, and calmly split the uprights to score the extra point.


The tension, the pressure, the weight of the wait—it all disappeared. Forty-one seasons of frustration that had piled up since the Bobcats’ last national title in 1984 soared into the Nashville night along with the fireworks and the roar of the crowd. Jubilation filled the field and echoed throughout the city, back to Bozeman, and to every corner of the globe where people wearing Blue and Gold gathered. The Bobcats had defeated Illinois State by a score of 35 to 34 and were, once again, national champions.

To understand the intensity of the joy and the enormity of the moment, though, we must start earlier.

You can begin in December 1984, when the Bozeman community celebrated the school’s most recent championship with Bobcat players and coaches. Or you can start eight years earlier, when ’Cat fans capped the Bicentennial year with the craziest celebration of 1976. Or you can go back to 1956, when a scrappy blend of fresh-faced youngsters and hardscrabble military veterans delivered the Bobcats from football obscurity to the national stage for the first time.

But the best place to start is 30 hours before kickoff of the 2025 title tilt, on January 5, 2026, in Vanderbilt’s indoor practice facility. More than 250 former Bobcats poured into the structure for the team’s final practice, celebrating the success of the 2025 Bobcats and reveling in the tradition they helped build.

It was part of a tradition MSU head coach Brent Vigen began during the 2021 season, inviting all former Bobcat players, coaches and staff members to the team’s walk-through the day before championship game appearances. On that blustery January day on the plains of Texas, more than 100 Bobcats gathered to celebrate the program’s first championship game appearance in 37 years. It was an unforgettable scene.

The disappointment of the next day’s outcome barely dampened the passion ignited by that run through the playoffs. Post-season heartbreak in 2022 and 2023 set the stage for the most magical season in memory, when the 2024 ’Cats won 15 straight games and advanced to another championship.

“I guess we needed to learn another lesson,” a crestfallen Vigen said in the aftermath of a crushing championship game loss for the 2024 title. But that season, that disappointment, the work done by an all-time group of seniors, created fertile soil for what blossomed in 2025.

As former Bobcats milled around the Vanderbilt football indoor practice facility the day before Montana State’s third title game appearance in five years, the mood was a blend of gratitude, joy and resolve. Former Bobcats from as early as the 1950s to members of the 2024 squad told stories and enjoyed the moment.

Jody Owens, MSU’s current linebackers coach and assistant head coach, told those in the crowd that the team aimed to make them proud. He emphasized that, amid the changing landscape of college football, tradition doesn’t change, that the loyalty and gratitude that led him back to MSU has bound players from across the nation and the decades to this place.

Much was made of the 41-season wait since the previous title in 1984. Forty-one became the Bobcat program’s legacy jersey in 2018 in honor of the members of the 1941 Bobcats, and those from earlier teams, who died during World War II, along with Montana’s status as the nation’s 41st state. Grant Collins from Bozeman was the first Bobcat to wear No. 41 as a legacy number, and he was in Nashville for the game.

Bobcat football is often talked about as a family. That’s been the case from the beginning, when five Flaherty brothers—including Will, the father of former MSU dean of women Marje Paisley—played for several different Montana State teams in the program’s first decade. The player who wore No. 41 in 2025, Paul Brott, was the third Brott brother to play for the ’Cats. In fact, 21 members of the 2025 team followed in the footsteps of a parent or brother who wore the Blue and Gold.

So, when Taco Dowler caught the pass from Lamson, and when Sansted made the extra point to bring home the title, the weight was much more than the regulation 15 ounces of the typical football. It carried the weight of generations. It carried the weight of years.   

Bill Lamberty serves as the Assistant Athletic Director for Athletics Communications at Montana State University.