Private Funding Fuels UM's Athletic Engine

The magic that is a Grizzly home football game is all the evidence anyone needs to understand how important private giving is to UM's Intercollegiate Athletics.

When "the seventh largest city in the state" forms on Saturday afternoons in the fall to root for the two-time national champion Grizzlies, it's easy to forget that just 20 years ago, it wasn't like this. At drafty old Dornblaser Field, Montana had seen just one winning season in the previous 10.

Then a $1 million gift from Missoula businessman Dennis Washington got the ball rolling on a new stadium. The Grizzlies haven't had a losing season since it opened in 1986.

"Washington-Grizzly Stadium is a great example of what private help means to us," says Athletic Director Jim O'Day.

He can tick off any number of ways the Grizzlies benefit from private donations: scholarships, a new basketball floor, a new football field, the Hall of Champions, the Hoyt Complex of Griz offices, even wireless video-editing equipment that allows coaches to break down film on the trip home from road games.

But O'Day likes to put it in another context: "Private funds and giving account for 70 percent of our budget."

The next best figure in the Big Sky Conference? Forty percent. With only a dozen schools in the nation that break even or make money on intercollegiate athletics, "70 percent is pretty incredible," O'Day says.

That puts institutional money into academics that other schools must use to fund athletics.

And that, O'Day says, is something that should make Grizzlies everywhere proud.

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