I would like to compare Montana fan to that girl you met when you visited your cousins (or something like that) in Panguitch, or Monticello, or even Malad, Idaho that thought she was the hottest thing on the earth because she was remotely good looking in a town of a couple thousand people. She had never taken a step outside the town of a couple thousand people to see that she really wasn't that hot, but that she just was a bigger fish in a tiny pond. Meanwhile your elementary school had more students than her high school.
Montana fan is like that. Weber fans reside in a state where there team could have the tradition of Montana and it wouldn't mean squat because they don't get to beat Alabama in the Sugar Bowl, or Kansas St. in the Cotton Bowl. SEC fan does the same thing to MWC fan. It's called big timing. Everybody wants to think they are big time because that's what they are told and what they want to believe, even if it isn't necessarily true. Just be happy for Montana fan that they are breaking down recruiting stats of Southwestern Northern Dakota College of Mines A&M and be happy for BYU fan breaking down the New Mexico coaching change. Just be happy for the kid who thinks it is a big deal to play in Montana's stadium because up to that point the biggest thing he has been to besides a UM or MSU game is probably that ongoing nightly rodeo that they have going outside of West Yellowstone. IT'S ALL RELATIVE. People in NY think that Utahns are backwoods hicks too.
When Montana fan was in Ogden last year and they figured out they were going to lose the game, they began the old, "Yeah, but you guys still haven't won anything and don't have any fans and have stinky socks (i.e. really mature)" talk. I wanted to look at them and say, "Do you think anybody here cares that you are big timing us?" Really, do you think Weber St. fans are fans because Weber is the greatest game in town? No. They root for them because they are most likely alumni or Weber County residents and really like it here. If we wanted big(er) time, we would go and sit in a stadium to the south with 66,000 cotton heads. BTW, on the topic of McBride, remember that he really did play in the BIG HOUSE when he was at Utah with over 100,000 people- so I highly doubt that 25,000 in Montana was a big deal to him.
In the end, Montana fan is going to think they are the greatest thing since A River Runs Through It or Legends of the Fall because within there sphere of life they are. Good for them. It still doesn't mean they are good looking... but in their minds it does and that's what really matters, isn't it?