Let's get ready to rumble!

If it’s like most of the preceding gridiron matchups between the University of Montana and Montana State University, the 111th “Brawl of the Wild” should be an unpredictable barn-burner.

Sure, the game will be in Bozeman, the Bobcats are ranked No. 1 in polls for the first time since 1978, and they are properly considered favorites over the No. 7 Grizzlies, a team with uncertain injury status for several key players. However, if there’s a common element for the rivalry it is that both teams show up to play hard. The outcome is often determined by surprises and strange swings in fortune.

It is always the biggest game of the year, saved for the end of the regular season, and as with most years there is more at stake than bragging rights. If the Griz win, they will share the Big Sky Conference title with the Bobcats and if MSU wins they will be in a better playoff position, surely with strong prospects for home games.

Both teams have plenty to play for, and no one — certainly not the coaches and players involved — should expect either team to lay down for a loss.

IT’S APPROPRIATE that on Nov. 14 — sandwiched right in between our Nov. 24 Thanksgiving and Canada’s Oct. 10 Thanksgiving — the British Columbia provincial government served up something to be thankful for on both sides of the border.

The Flathead Watershed Area Conservation Act formally became law, prohibiting mining and energy extraction activities on nearly 400,000 acres in B.C.’s Flathead drainage.

Montana residents, businesses and political leaders have fiercely resisted a series of proposed mining and drilling projects in the Canadian Flathead, for obvious reasons. The Canadian Flathead serves up the northernmost headwaters that feed into Montana’s North Fork Flathead drainage, it is in close proximity to Glacier-Waterton International Peace Park, and there were serious concerns about impacts to transboundary fish and wildlife populations.

There certainly would be widespread impacts if mountaintop removal coal mines, gold mines and coalbed methane projects were allowed to proceed, and those impacts would surely cross the border. The B.C. government recognized the impacts and elected to forego considerable royalties that would come from resource development in the drainage. Montana has an obligation to provide similar resource protection in the North Fork, and the benefits from doing so will outweigh the costs.