Jeff Choate remembers walking past a specific plaque that hangs outside the old football offices in Brick Breeden Fieldhouse. The plaque pays homage to the greatest generation, and a Montana State football team that suffered significant losses during World War II.
“There’s that plaque on the south wall near the facilities offices,” Choate, the former MSU coach, said of the marker memorializing Montana State’s football players lost during World War II in an article that appeared in Mountains & Minds. “I’m kind of a manager-by-walking-around, and also a history guy, so I probably read that plaque 20 times.”
That plaque proved to serve as motivation to create a new tradition for the Bobcat football team.
The regular-season came to a heart-stopping, thrilling ending in 2018. And right in the middle of it was Grant Collins, now a partner with the Montana Build Group. Montana State’s No. 41 was playing in his final rivalry game against arch nemesis Montana.
Helena native Chase Benson and Colstrip native Tucker Yates collapsed the middle of the Griz offensive line. Collins met the Griz running back in the hole and blasted him, forcing a fumble. As Belgrade’s Derek Marks corralled the cough up, Brayden Konkol (also of the Montana Build Group) and the rest of the Bobcat defense burst into bedlam as one of the great comebacks and the single greatest ending in the history of the now 123-year rivalry had a Montana-made stamp on it.
As the moment washed over Collins, a Bozeman native who dreamt his whole life of playing for the Bobcats, he crouched down as the emotions overtook him. When someone draped the Montana state flag over him, the symbolism of the “Miracle in Missoula” hit a fever pitch.
Everyone involved in the goal line stand and most of the men on the field celebrating after Montana State’s 29-25 win hail from the Treasure State. Including a pair of local boys turned Bobcat stars in Collins and Konkol, a duo that certainly relished in Montana State’s third straight victory over the Grizzlies, including the second straight shocker in Missoula.
Collins wore No. 41 for the duration of his stellar if not injury-marred career with the Bobcats. Before him, Helena’s Brad Daly sported the number and won the Buck Buchanan Award in 2013 as the top defensive player in the Football Championship Subdivision. So there was already a nearly 10-year history of blue-collar Montana boys wearing the number.
Choate wanted to find a way to honor the deep football lineage of the state of Montana while also honoring some of his best contemporary Montana-made players. He also wanted to find a way to honor those who lost their lives in World War II many years before.
Montana was the 41st state in the union when it joined the United States in 1889. The university also suffered devastating losses during World War II. Among those who died in the war were 14 men who played on the Bobcat football teams between 1935 and 1941. That number did not include the entire starting lineup from the 1941 team, as was misreported in later years, but three of them played in 1941, and each of the “Golden Ghosts,” as national sportscaster Bill Stern called them, hailed from the Treasure State. One of those men, Al Zupan from Sand Coulee, played for the ’Cats from 1934-36 and died in the war in 1943. His brother Bill played on the 1941 team and was the only pre-war Bobcat to return to the field afterward.
So Choate decided to create a legacy number at Montana State. And he deemed that to be No. 41.
“There isn’t just an emotional tie to 41,” said Choate, who served as Montana State’s head football coach from 2016 until 2020. “There’s real substance.”
Collins and Choate bestowed the number upon Konkol ahead of the 2019 season before the captain helped lead MSU to its first FCS Final Four appearance since 1984 during his first-team All-Big Sky Conference senior year.Konkol and Choate passed on the number to Troy Andersen, one of the greatest Bobcats of them all. “But Andersen, a Dillon native who is now a starting inside linebacker for the Atlanta Falcons, never wore the number as the 2020 season was called off due to the global pandemic.”
Helena’s Chase Benson, who also had a huge push on the defensive line during the “Miracle” stand, wore the number in 2021. R.J. Fitzgerald, a tough, hard-nosed fullback from Dillon, wore the number in 2022. Nolan Askelson, a resilient linebacker from Billings, wore the jersey last year. And Brody Grebe, a native of tiny Melstone, Montana, is working on a third straight All-American season as a defensive end and captain for the 2024 Bobcats.
“I thought about ways to connect us to the state,” Choate said of the legacy number. “RJ Fitzgerald and Troy Andersen took a lot of pride in the state of Montana. Grant Collins was going to bleed for his hometown school, but getting out of state players to understand that this place is special and unique was so important to me, this place, this university.”
Because some of the history of No. 41 was installed retrospectively, it’s hard to say who the “first” No. 41 is. But the fact is that a number of significance for many reasons has been worn by some of the toughest and most memorable Montanans to ever play at Montana State.
That includes two of the first in Collins and Konkol.
“When I first got to MSU, I didn’t really have a preference on number and the next thing you know, I’m 41, coming right after Brad Daly who had just won the Buck and I was like, ‘big shoes to fill’,” Collins said with a laugh. “It’s cool that Montana State has its own tradition. It means a lot to the Montana kids. A lot of times, the Montana kids get overlooked and it means a lot more to us when we get the opportunity to prove ourselves for the Bobcats.”
“To be one of the first ones, it’s a true honor,” added Konkol. “You have a guy like Grant who wore it the 4 years before me and represented the number exactly how Choate envisioned, both on and off the field. For me, it was a no-brainer, and it’s been cool to see the number passed down to guys like Troy, Chase, RJ, Nolan and now Brody.
“I was lucky enough to play with all the representatives, except Brody, and they all have similar characteristics. They’re all war daddies. They’re the toughest kid on the team, mentally and physically. They’re the leader of the locker room.
“They’re playmakers on the field. And they truly ride for the Bobcat Brand. And Brody is no different. I think each rep has left the tradition better than they found it, and the bar continues to raise each year for whoever wears 41. And it’s a great thing to see for Bobcat Football.”
The tradition of legacy jerseys in college football dates back decades. Texas A&M’s No. 12 representing a culture of selflessness is worn each season by a walk-on whose only role on the team is kickoff coverage. At Syracuse, No. 44 was handed from one star running back to another, including Jim Brown, for decades until the school retired it permanently in 2015. No. 44 became so significant at Syracuse that it was incorporated into the campus address and telephone number. At Michigan, jersey No. 98 was retired for decades before coming back by being bestowed on quarterback Devin Gardner as a legacy jersey in 2013.
“College football means so much in this state, and from the beginning, the heart of this program has been players from Montana,” Brent Vigen, Montana State’s current head coach, said. “When you add the deep feelings this school will always (have) for the 1941 team and all the former players and students who served their country, it’s one of the great traditions anywhere.”