And now for tonight's Pride of the Program, a halftime featurette of ESPN's college basketball broadcasts, in which we highlight each of the 342 division 1 basketball programs in the country. Tonight: The University of Montana...
On January 17, 2003 over 7,000 fans came to Missoula's Dahlberg Arena to get a glimpse of Monte, the school's mascot who had recently been crowned the National Mascot of the Year. unbenkownst to the fans, there happened to be a grizzly basketball game scheduled concurrently with the veneration ceremonies. It is the only known occurence of a Division I sellout crowd being tricked into watching a basketball game by a man in a bear suit. And it is most certainly, the Pride of the Program.