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The late Rocky Williams was a pressman at The Montana Standard and a legendary character among handball players at the Butte Elks.

One day, Rocky entered the stag bar at the Elks after playing handball downstairs. He was eager to tell everyone about the young player he just battled in the court.

Rocky, who passed away at the age of 78 in 2012, assured everyone that this player was incredible. He could kill the ball with both hands, and he could get to everything. This player, Rocky said, was going to be a state champion someday. He was that incredibly good.

Those guys in the bar should have seen this young man play, Rocky said. They should have seen him.

Eventually, one of the other guys at the bar interrupted Rocky’s praise of this unknown player, saying, “Well, Rocky, how did you do against this kid?”

Rocky smiled and said, “I beat him.”

It is hard to say how much Rocky was joking and how much he was being serious. I assume it was a little bit of both. No matter the rational, Rocky was on to something. You should always heap praise upon your opponent.

If your opponent is no good, then who cares if you beat him?

That is something that we do not see enough. Often when a team is beating — or even competing with — a highly-ranked team, its fans will chant “overrated” at the team. When they do that, they are also raining on the parade of the inspired performance by the team they are rooting for.

If they are truly overrated, then the upset really is not that big of a deal.

More importantly, respecting your opponent is the right thing to do.

For the most part, athletes respect their opponents, even if they might be a league below them. They know the commitment and sacrifice the players on the other side give. They know their opponents are also in the weightroom early in the morning, and they know they are studying film late at night.

They know that they are giving everything they have to win that game.

Fans, though, too often seem to forget that when it comes to high school and, more often, college sports. We particularly see that every time the Montana State Bobcats play the Montana Grizzlies.

Fans seem to lose all their sense of respect and decency when it comes to the Cat-Griz game.

In November of 2022, Butte High graduate Tommy Mellott led the Bobcats to a win over Montana in Bozeman. Seeing that some Bobcat fans were really razzing the Grizzlies, Tommy tried to stop it during a live on-field television interview right after the game.

“Quit trying to dehumanize those guys over there, trying to get in their bus,” he said. “Don’t be messing with them.”

Tommy, who remembered what it felt like to come out on the wrong side of that rivalry just 52 weeks earlier, had too much respect for his Grizzly opponents to let that go on unchecked.

“I know what it feels like. We felt it last year,” Tommy said. “Those guys work harder than 90 percent of the people just to put themselves in position to play this game. Please just respect them and take care of those guys.”

Tommy drew statewide praise for those comments. Bobcats’ fans loved it. Grizzlies’ fans loved it. People who don’t know who the Bobcats and Grizzlies are loved it.

And, just like that, they forgot his words. They put on their FTC or FTG gear, and verbally tore apart student-athletes who work harder than most can possibly comprehend.

This Nov. 22, the Bobcats beat the Grizzlies 31-28 in an emotionally-charged battle in Missoula. It was one of the best Cat-Griz games of this century, and it was so much fun to watch.

Unlike most Montanans, I am mostly neutral when it comes to the Cats and the Griz, even though I graduated from the University of Montana. My years as a sportswriter mean that I know players and coaches on both sides, and I have tremendous respect for them.

Sure, I leaned toward the Grizzlies this year because the Griz roster includes former Butte High Bulldogs Jake Olson, Tanner Huff and Cameron Gurnsey. Not only am I a big fan of those young men, I am also big fans of their parents and grandparents.

Still, I was happy to see Bobcat Zac Crews block the field goal that proved to be the difference in the game. A few years ago, I sat at Zac’s dining room table for a long talk with the former Missoula Sentinel star.

I left his house that day feeling that Zach is a genuinely good person who is headed toward great things in life. I feel that way even more today.

So, even though I was sad for Jake and Tanner, I was happy for Zac as I watched the end of that great game in Missoula. Even if you come up short in a game like that, what a tremendous honor it is to have been a part of it.

Some Grizzly fans, though, did not see it that way. Instead, they decided to continue to trash the players on the other side, yelling and cussing at them as they celebrated their giant win on the Washington-Grizzly Stadium turf.

One fan even posted a video as Twitter of proof, as he saw it, that the Bobcats were “trash.” The video showed a couple of Bobcat players clapping back at the fans who were yelling and throwing things at them on the field shortly after the game.

The since-deleted video captures the monumental hypocrisy of the guy filming the incident. At one point, he tells the players to shut up because they are “not even from here,” as if a player must be a native of a state care about the football team he plays for.

Of course, it was easy to see through the not-so-thinly veiled reason the man with the camera phone said that. Was he staring at a roster as he filmed? Or was he maybe judging them by the color of their skin?

The clincher of his video that proved the Bobcats were “classless” was when the guy panned the camera over to his wife, who screamed profanities at the players.

The morning before the game, this righteous man who identifies himself as a teacher, coach, dad and grandpa, posted “(bleep) the Cats” on Twitter.

I am not saying this guy is a bad guy. I just think he got caught up in all this FTC and FTG nonsense. You know what that means. “TC” stands for “The Cats,” and “TG” stands for “The Griz.”

You do not have to have much of an imagination to guess what the “F” stands for, and it is not “class.”

We see these hats, shirts and hoodies way too often, and it is time to knock it off for good. The schools should lead the way in this by refusing to license merchants who sell the junk.

It is time for people to tell their fellow fans who rock the FTC and FTG to knock it off, too. Ask them how they would feel if someone was wearing a hat that said that about the team their son works so hard to play football for.

Ask them how they would like people filming while swearing at their son. Ask them how they would like it if someone told their son, “You’re not even from here.”

Tell people who are attacking a college athlete for a mistake he made when he was 16 or 17 is only proving that their actions are a thousand times worse than any mistake the athlete ever made. I’m looking at you, Brian Laegreid.

Tell them to ask the players on the team they are rooting for what they think of their rivals from the other side of the Great Divide. I think they would be shocked when they heard the response.

The players are clearly emotional during the rivalry game, and they might not like their opponents very much. But you better believe that they respect them.

They might not praise their opponents to the degree Rocky did in the Elks stag bar, but they know that this FTC and FTG nonsense is just that. It is nonsense.

It is time for the fans to realize it, too.

 — Bill Foley, who wears hoodies for the Bobcats and Grizzlies, 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.