By Joel Carlson
How powerful and how positive for the University's image is the Montana football program? Another example surfaced last week at a popular Mexican restaurant in Tucson, Ariz.
A member of Montana's sports information department was on a cycling vacation in southern Arizona, and after a long, hard day riding up and down Mt. Lemmon, he and five friends from Polson paid a post-ride visit to La Parrilla, rumored to be the best spot for Mexican food in all of Tucson.
To enjoy that evening's NCAA tournament games on the television, the cycling sextet ate dinner (rated four stars out of four by all six, by the way) at the restaurant's bar.
The bartender was an Asian-American in his 50s and had -- at best -- a limited grasp of the English language, at least a form of English that the Montanans could understand. Despite this barrier, he knew one thing for certain when he learned of the group's home state.
"Griz football, yes?" he said with two thumbs up. Neat story to balance the new tradition of dog-pile journalism.
Remember: The sky is not falling. It's only reported like that so you'll buy the next day's paper to find out if it really did. It hasn't, and it won't be.
