Dave Guffey retired in June after serving as the University of Montana's SID for 37 years. In June, he received a CoSIDA Lifetime Achievement Award (see his feature story and photos HERE).
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Photo and feature courtesy of missoulian.com
For 452 games, the Ironman of Griz football bit his tongue.
There's no cheering in the press box.
That all changed in the last two weeks when Dave Guffey was able to stand and hoot and holler like the other 26,000 people in Washington-Grizzly Stadium.
Guff, as he's known around the Big Sky Conference and beyond, retired in June after 37 years as Montana's sports information director. His streak of attending 377 straight Griz games will come to an end after Montana's 20-19 loss to Cal Poly on Saturday night. In two weeks time, when the team travels to Lynchburg, Virginia, to face Liberty, Guff will stay behind.
To say the landscape of Griz athletics has changed over those 37 years is like saying Bill Gates has a lot of money.
When Guff began his job in October of 1978, Mike Montgomery had recently been hired as the men's basketball coach and Gene Carlson was coaching the football team, which drew less than 6,000 fans for a typical home game at aging Dornblaser Field. You couldn't plug in a portable heater in the press box without blowing all the fuses.
"My first game was Idaho here in October, we lost 34-30," Guff recalled. "They had just come off their first -- and I think only -- road win at Boise State. They beat them like 15-7. The game after that was the Bobcat game in October. They came back and won it. The Rocky Klever shotgun flex. They put him at quarterback and we pretty much dominated them.
"I went downtown after the game and said, ‘Wow, this is kind of a big deal.’ People were going crazy. Now every game’s like that."
The football program was nearly an afterthought in those days, mired in mediocrity.
"When I got here it was a basketball school," Guff said. "Micheal Ray (Richardson) had just graduated. The famous UCLA game was only four years in the back window; it was a basketball school. Mike Montgomery’s first year was my first year. He hired Robin Selvig. Robin started like three months before I did.
"But they kept saying we’re going to build a stadium. I started to think, right. Then it finally happened. That changed everything."
For the better?
"Much better," Guff said. "It’s a monster though. It’s a financial monster because it’s so profitable and there’s more pressure to win, but we’ve only had one losing season since we’ve been in that stadium. So far it’s worked pretty well."
Asking Guff for some of his favorite moments and people from the last 37 years is almost an unfair question. But Guff rattles them off anyhow.
There was the 1995 Division I-AA national championship win at Marshall.
"I got to tell Dave (Dickenson) after the game, ‘By the way, you won the Payton Award,’" Guff said. "I had known for two weeks. Very Dave Dickenson-like, he said something like, ‘It’s about time,’ or something like that. That was cool to be able to tell him that. That was pretty emotional. That’s still the largest crowd to ever see an FCS championship game."
The Griz basketball win over Nevada in the NCAA tournament -- "I didn't realize how big a deal it was until we started getting calls from all these national media" -- and Anthony Johnson's miraculous 42-point game to rally the Griz past Weber State for a berth in the NCAAs.
The list goes on. A win by the UM women's track team at the Big Sky Conference track meet in Boise and Shannon Cate’s record-setting Lady Griz career.
Guff, worried that he'll leave someone out, ticks off some of his favorite people throughout the years. Don Read -- "I love Don Read" -- Blaine Taylor, Stew Morrill, Robin Selvig, Gary Hughes.
"As far as athletes, the Dickensons and Krystkowiaks, they’re all Montana kids," he said. "Marc Mariani. All great students too. Over the years that’s one of my favorite things, to see athletes who will come in and say hi."
Guff is a virtual encyclopedia of Big Sky athletics. He was on the job for 37 of the league's 52 years of existence. He was recently honored with a lifetime achievement award by the College Sports Information Directors of America.
Guff says he misses the security of the press box; it's his comfort zone. Plus he loves the stat crew he's worked with for years. But being a part of the crowd is growing on him.
"When you’re in the crowd like that, you feel like you’re almost a part of the game," Guff said. "Where as when you’re in the press box you can’t cheer.
"We got into it, standing up on third downs and yelling and stuff. It was cool. It was emotional."
What Guff won't miss are the long nights and weekends the job demands during football and basketball seasons.
"That’s the coolest thing about it," Guff said of retirement, "time to enjoy the fall."
Guff wants to improve his fly fishing skills in retirement, and perhaps do some traveling.
"For some reason I want to go to Ireland. I think Mea and I are going to try to go to Europe in a couple of years," Guff said of his wife, with whom he will celebrate 40 years of marriage in November.
"I just feel like I’ve been incredibly lucky to live where I live and work where I work. I love Missoula and I always well, except maybe in February. It’s been a great run."