By CHRIS WALTERSKIRCHEN
The Northern Iowa Panthers and Montana Grizzlies have met 5 times previously in football but only one of those games was in Cedar Falls at the UNI-Dome. In 1987 the Griz were coming off an upset of No. 1 Neveda when they went to face the Panthers. Griz star running back and punter Jody Farmer had missed the team flight to Iowa so when he got to Cedar Falls he knew he needed to do something special and he did… running for 3 touchdowns including one on a fake punt and for the first time in history the Griz beat Top Ten teams in consecutive weeks.
No FCS program has more play-off experience than Northern Iowa without a national title to show for it. The Panthers did reach the title game in 2005 but lost to Appalachian State.
The last time a UM team played at the UNI-Dome was when the Griz basketball team played there in November of 2001–and things went really bad for the Griz in the first half of that game. At half-time the score was 54-15 in favor of the Panthers. That remains the largest halftime deficit in Griz basketball history. Four month after the lopsided loss at Northern Iowa that Griz team would win the Big Sky title and advance to the NCAA tournament.
There will be a rematch of sorts this Saturday as Idaho State goes to Boulder to play PAC-12 member Colorado. It was ten years ago this week that Mike Kramer guided the MSU Bobcats to a win over the Colorado Buffs in Boulder. Now Kramer brings his current team, the Idaho State Bengals, in to face a new and improved Buffs team.
Entering the week Icharo Suzuki is just 5 hits behind Rafael Pallmeiro and 8 hits behind Lou Brock. Passing Brock would put Suzuki 25th on the Major League career hits list.
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Chris Walterskirchen has been an observer of Montana sports for nearly half a century. A Kalispell native, Chris has worked in various capacities for professional and college sports organization of at various times: ranging from announcing and statistical work to the concessions and even a stint as a costumed mascot.
Chris has academic degrees in communications and elementary education. His style of sports trivia involves more than just who won and who lost, but also focuses on the obscure or human side of sports. In this blog you will learn things like the Grizzly football team has won 210 games over the 19 seasons since they have had Monte as their mascot or that UNLV is the only school that both the Griz and Lady Griz have both faced in the NCAA basketball tournament
When not following sports Chris enjoys taking care of animals of all kinds (a peacock rescue?) and reading to pre-schoolers.