Briane Toone does not have a lot of regrets about playing football.

Well, at least he should not have many qualms after an outstanding career for the Butte High Bulldogs and Montana Grizzlies. He was a state champion and a national champion.

Toone was not a Bulldog for very long, but he is one who certainly cemented his place in history. He moved to the Mining City during the winter of his junior year, and he earned second-team All-State honors at linebacker as a senior. That year, he helped Butte High’s football team win the 1991 Class AA State championship.

I still say he should have been named first-team All-State. Standing out on one of the best high school defenses Montana has ever seen was not an easy thing to do, and Toone did that week after week.

The coaches at the University of Montana clearly agreed.

Toone, a Hamilton native who played at Mount Shasta High School in California before moving to Butte, left everything he had on the field every game for the Bulldogs.

Then he took his talents to Missoula, where he started on two Grizzly teams that advanced to the NCAA I-AA National Championship Game in Huntington, West Virginia. He and Randy Riley, a fellow member of that 1991 Bulldog championship team, combined to force Marshall quarterback Chad Pennington into an intentional grounding in the end zone in the second half of the 1995 game.

That safety proved to be the difference as the Grizzlies beat Marshall, 22-20.

A year later, Toone was a star on the Grizzly defensive line as Montana took a 14-0 record into the title game. This time, NFL Hall of Famer receiver Randy Moss and the Marshall Thunder Herd beat the Grizzlies, 49-29.

Toone parlayed his education at the University of Montana into a successful career after football. He is the owner and president of the Jewelry Design Center, which is based in Spokane but has a new location in Missoula.

He has been married to Butte High classmate Beth Murry for nearly 30 years.

So, you figure he must have been able to walk away from the game of football without looking back. Well, not exactly.

Judging by how Toone behaved as he watched the Butte High Bulldogs win the 2012 Class AA State title at Naranche Stadium would lead us to believe otherwise.

Everybody remembers the 46-yard field goal by Jake Dennehy as time expired as Butte High beat Bozeman, 38-36, on Friday, Nov. 16, 2012. My most vivid memory of that night, however, is Brian Toone.

A large group of players from the 1991 team — the last Bulldog squad to win a title before that night — were in town to cheer on the current Bulldogs. Many of those guys tried to watch the game from the sideline, but they were booted back to the stands by school officials.

Believe it or not, some of those guys were clearly celebrating during their program reunion party. Nobody, though, was keeping Toone off the field. He was not there to fraternize with his old teammates. Brian Toone was there to watch the Bulldogs win.

He just had that look in his eyes that he was not going to be denied. It was the look opposing offensive players probably knew all too well.

Toone, who was close to 100 pounds lighter than when he played his last game with the Grizzlies, fit into his letter jacket, and he walked up and down the sidelines following every play. He was yelling to encourage the Bulldog players to play their best. He yelled more than most of the Bulldog coaches.

He was clapping and cheering from the opening kickoff until Dennehy’s kick cleared the crossbar. Most of the 2012 Bulldogs noticed Toone, but they had no clue who that intense fan in the old letterman’s jacket was.

They just knew he really wanted them to win.

Toone was so intense that I thought there was at least a 25 percent chance that he was going to run out onto the field an make a tackle. It was clearly killing Toone, who was 38 at the time, to not be on the field. It was killing him to be so close to the action and not be able to do anything about it.

Remember, this is a guy who won the championship as a senior.

The 2025-26 school year is about to begin. For me, it will be my last as a parent of a Butte High Bulldog athlete. As fall sports practice begins, my advice to my son and everyone in his class — at Butte High, Butte Central or any school around the country — is to look at Brian Toone.

Do not just look at the titles and postseason honors. Do not just look at the highlights from that safety in the 1995 championship game.

Look at the passion he showed for his high school team 21 years after he last put on that purple-and-white uniform. Toone shows us that, even if you win it all, you just might want to go back and do it again. If you leave the field with regret, you might not ever get over it.

The sports seasons and the school year will go by quickly. Before we know it, you will be graduating. Most of you will not continue your athletic careers in college, either. Only about 7 percent of high school athletes are lucky enough to do that.

This will be the last school year when people you never met pay to watch you play. It will be the last year that you will get the chance to play for your school and your hometown.  This will be the last school year when you will have a chance do something about it when the game is on the line for your hometown team.

Believe it or not, there will be a time when you look back and wish you were still in high school. You will wish that you were back out there under those Friday night lights. You will miss game days. You will miss the practices and the halftime speeches.

You will miss having your coaches work so hard to push you to be your very best.

Before you know it, you will be getting notices about your 10-year high school reunion. It will be like a blink of an eye before the Bulldog football players of today become the Silver B’s of tomorrow.

It will go by so criminally fast.

Some memories will always make you happy. Others will haunt you for decades, and those will be the ones you will want to go back and change. But, if Uncle Rico taught us anything, it is that there is no going back in time.

The time to change that is now, and this is your last chance to have no regrets.

Now go enjoy the moment.

 — Bill Foley, who can throw a football over them mountains, can be reached at foles74@gmail.com. Follow him at twitter.com/Foles74 or Bluesky at @foles74.bsky.social. Listen to him on the ButteCast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you find your favorite podcasts.