BILLINGS – Emotions were high as Montana State prepared to leave team headquarters for Toyota Stadium on the morning of the 2021 FCS national championship game in Frisco, Texas.

Waded Cruzado, the university’s highly respected president and a leading advocate for unprecedented growth and development at Montana’s land-grant agency, couldn’t help but get carried away.

Montana State University

“I was the last person to leave the hotel,” Cruzado recalled during a recent video call with MTN Sports from her Montana Hall office. “When I got to the lobby and the doors opened, there was head coach Brent Vigen. And tears came to my eyes.

“Everyone was so happy and so proud and everyone supported the Bobcats.”

It’s a subtle anecdote, but it serves as a symbol of everything Cruzado has tried to instill on the MSU campus since he became president in January 2010: pride, passion, identity and belonging.

And Montana State athletics was one of the biggest beneficiaries.

The Bobcats didn’t win that championship game in 2021, but the fact they were there underscored how far they had come. It had been 37 years since the football program had progressed this far, and there were moments in the late 1980s and certainly into the 1990s that suggested it might never happen again.

It takes talented players, dedicated coaches and forward-thinking administrators to achieve sustainable success. We also need a president who has bought in. Cruzado has been that in spades. But now she’s on her way out.

Cruzado announced her retirement in August, effective next summer. As she prepares to watch the annual Cat-Griz rivalry for the 15th and final time as MSU president, nostalgia can be added to an extensive list of emotions she’s feeling.

“After my appointment … it became clear to me that Cat-Griz was a very important event in the life of both universities,” Cruzado said. “I could feel the passion. I could feel the rivalry, which was much more intense than what I had (seen) at my previous institutions. Every year it is a great cause for celebration and anticipation.

“Even when I was in Missoula, the fans were so nice to me, so kind to me. And I really appreciated that.”

That doesn’t mean Cruzado didn’t want her Bobcats to kick the Grizzlies’ ass.

Montana State University

Cruzado has undoubtedly elevated Montana State’s academic profile, pointing out that the university has more annual dollars in research expenditures than all other public and private universities in the state combined.

But her impact on MSU athletics cannot be overstated.

Ninth-year athletics director Leon Costello said Cruzado’s support “completely exceeded my expectations. It was unlike anything I had ever been a part of.”

Cruzado is small in stature and bursting with immense love for the university. She has channeled that into doing whatever it takes to raise the bar for an athletics department that seemed to have remained neutral on fundraising and infrastructure for a number of years prior to her arrival in Bozeman.

Overall, football – the opium of the masses – is, as everyone knows, the main source of income in Division I sports. But how did a native of Puerto Rico, who had no relationship with American football in her youth, realize its importance?

“Baseball in Puerto Rico is sacred. I only have to say one name: Roberto Clemente,” Cruzado offered. “So I grew up watching a lot of baseball. When I got to 13, 14 years old, I became (a fan) of men’s basketball, and Puerto Rico had a pretty decent national team. So there is a lot of enthusiasm for sports in Puerto Rico.

“Growing up, of course, I was in the US, and you can’t escape football, its appeal and what it brings. And in the state of Montana, football speaks for our culture. It’s something very important to us. I was amazed to see how long people will drive across the state just to play with us.”

Early in her tenure, Cruzado saw the improvements that needed to be made at Bobcat Stadium. She saw fans leaving during games, especially students. A transformation had to take place.

It started with the South End Zone project in 2010, an endeavor Cruzado spearheaded with a fundraising challenge for the Bobcat Quarterback Club that ultimately raised $11 million.

Completed in time for the 2011 season, Sonny Holland’s end zone bowled on the south side of the facility and was the proverbial jolt the department needed to achieve future goals.

Montana State University

In the years since, the stadium has added lighting and now features an $18 million athletic complex and a state-of-the-art 30-by-100-foot Daktronics scoreboard on the north side.

MSU has also upgraded its athletics facility, made improvements to the Worthington Arena and Brick Breeden Fieldhouse, and is now in the process of constructing a $26.5 million indoor practice facility to serve all programs, not just football.

Despite all that has happened at MSU under Cruzado’s watch—the 33% growth in enrollment, the 133% increase in research dollars, the more than $600 million in campus construction projects, etc.—her support for the athletics enormously.

Montana State fell behind rival Montana in athletics in the 1980s and 1990s. But that gap no longer exists. And students no longer leave the stadium prematurely.

“She has done nothing but support our vision — my vision — even when we may have had different opinions,” said Costello, whose own exuberance has given the Bobcats a certain dynamism they seemed to lack in years before. “That partnership is the benefit you see in Bobcat athletics now.”

Bill Lamberty, MSU’s assistant AD for communications, has been with the department since 1990. He sat in the front row at the transfiguration.

“The easiest way to measure President Cruzado’s impact on Bobcat athletics is to look at an aerial photo comparing today’s athletic physical plant to that of 2009, and by looking at our overall success in the league during that time to compare,” Lamberty said. “These areas are much better today than when President Cruzado arrived.

“Positive energy, Bobcat spirit and dedication to supporting MSU students are the cost of entry to becoming part of the Montana State community, and it all starts with President Cruzado. She is a transformative person and her presidency has transformed Bobcat athletics.”

As far as the on-field rivalry with Montana goes, the Bobcats are in much better shape than they were not too long ago. In fact, the series is 10-10 since the Grizzlies’ 16-game winning streak was halted in 2002.

Cruzado even mentioned “The Streak” when talking about all this growth, saying that upon her arrival she noticed it still hurt fans and boosters – even though it ended eight years before her appointment.

Montana State University

When she met with the Quarterback Club in June 2010, Cruzado said she “let them vent. At the end I said, ‘I hear your passion. I know you care about this place. But as far as I’m concerned, that’s in the past and I would like to see us turn the page. I want to focus on the future.’”

Thus, athletic growth became one of her top priorities.

Saturday’s Cat-Griz match is the 123rd all-time and the 15th of Cruzado’s tenure. It will be her last as president. Her No. 2-seeded Bobcats, trying to complete the program’s first regular season 12-0, were 17-point favorites Tuesday.

They are one of the favorites to return to Texas for this year’s national title game, especially if they secure home field advantage with a top two seed.

Cruzado, for one, would love to go back for more tear-inducing moments, to perhaps see MSU’s first football title in 40 years.

But her legacy will be greater than that.

“When the university talks about excellence, it should be excellence in every area,” Cruzado said. “And (our) new facilities speak to that excellence. But those buildings can’t be the most important thing at Montana State. It has to be the people.”

“What I will be very, very proud of is that we were able to expand that tent. Athletics is a very big tent and everyone is welcome,” she added. “I hope I was able to add a little bit of my grain of salt to instill that sense of identity, of connection and passion about being a Bobcat.”