Being the Bear

It’s ten minutes before four and we’re strolling out of Dahlberg Arena with the head of UM’s most beloved creature stowed in a black duffle bag. We dodge grade-schoolers racing bikes down the sidewalk, make our way past football players engaged in winter conditioning exercises, then slip over to a Ford Explorer waiting in the parking lot.

Doesn’t anybody know? We’re packing the furry skull of the one UM personality who could keep beer taps flowing from Plentywood to Wisdom and never pick up the check, the only character I know who can be described using “hairy back” and “sex appeal” in the same sentence. He’s the only Montanan to ever garner 9 percent of the vote in a national election, let alone win. “Hey, Monte,” I say, with the same indiscretion that prematurely ended my younger brother’s relationship with the Tooth Fairy. “How many people know you’re you?”

And there it is, that snort that tells me he hasn’t found a person yet who could keep his secret. He throws the head in the back of the SUV then rattles off all the times he’s gone to pay restaurant checks only to find the words “Thanks Monte” written where the amount should be. Monte’s the big mammal on campus. He’s the Capital One mascot of the year. He’s taken a volunteer job as a guy in a bear suit to the national stage. He does TV commercials for ESPN. He’s on the sports apparel trade show circuit. That’s a hard act to keep a lid on.

“Way too many people know this secret,” he says. “And it’s a secret you can’t keep. People are always like, ‘Monte, are you Monte?’ or, ‘Hey, do you want to go to the football game with us Saturday?’ How many times have I turned that down?

“Well, most people over the age of twenty-five don’t know,” says the actor who auditioned to be the bear in 2001 after friends told him to stop talking about how cool the job would be and just apply. The under-twenty-five crowd, starting with the maroon clad athletes who compete for UM, figure it out the first time he climbs aboard their team bus. Clearly he is not a player.

Turns out, the Capital One National Mascot of the Year, a motorcycle-riding, back-flipping, break-dancing Ursus horribilis is an Eastern Montana ranch kid. He’s a twenty-three-year-old theater graduate—single, with a human cub of his own—who doesn’t mind shedding 5 to 7 pounds of water weight per performance. But he keeps his identity under wraps, because after all, there’s a fine line between being Big Man on Campus or just another guy in brown shag pajamas.

There’s no evidence of the bear, or Grizzly athletics for that matter, in the mascot’s house, with the exception of his Capital One trophy, a giant pewter bowl, which is quickly pulled from the television stand and put away whenever anyone knocks on the door. He has a football autographed by former NFL quarterback Joe Montana during a Super Bowl commercial shoot Monte did after his big win.

There’s also an impressive collection of regional trophies atop a bookcase in his bedroom, though no one gets to see these treasures of mascotdom. The entire town might come to the conclusion that this small-town boy is its beloved mascot, but the Monte will deny it until his term is done.

“Being the bear is not the hard part. It’s the planning,” Monte says. “I have a certain amount of pride. I want to give people more than they expect. The first mascot who started it all, the (San Diego) Chicken, said ‘If you do more than they expect, they’ll call you again.’”

Doing more than expected has resulted in Monte videos played out on the gigantic Griz-vision screen in Washington-Grizzly Stadium and equipment upgrades–from sidewalk scooters, to four-wheel, all-terrain vehicles, to a V-twin motorcycle complete with maroon trim and Griz logos. Concerned that his costume head was too heavy and not sturdy enough to accommodate headstands, Monte had the head modified by a champion bird taxidermist. A gunsmith was then contacted to fasten a skateboarder’s helmet to the inside of the head with lightweight, super-strength metal—anything to take Monte’s stunts to the next level.

“And when everything starts going to hell,” the mascot says, “start taking off your clothes. You can fix everything with a strip tease. Monte taught me that.”

His hope is that when he’s done, a better Monte comes along with new tricks and jokes. This Monte sees himself as an ambassador for the entire school, not just the athletic department. Half his weekly ration of appearances involves children at schools or hospitals. It’s his attempt to push the hairy one beyond the bounds of sports.

What’s it like being Monte? Remember Being John Malkovich, that bizarre 1999 movie in which a man stumbles upon a membranous room that leads inside the head of stage and screen actor John Malkovich? It’s kind of like that. Monte and the man who plays him are two different people.

The bear is stunningly athletic, capable of standing tiptoe on his cloddish-looking feet and break dancing like Michael Jackson. The actor has a distinct idea of his alter ego. Monte oozes machismo. He’s a lady’s bear, a fashion plate, and a trendsetter. He has a swagger in his stride so big his head sways about eight inches left and right of center with every step. This is the bear at his best, more human, overcorrecting his movements like a driver’s education student. “But he’s a clumsy, overachieving bear who can’t be what he really wants to be, which is human,” says the bear performer.

Inside the suit, the man who is Monte stares through a pop-can sized hole at a world that is uniquely the mascot’s. Covered with a black mesh, the hole is truly the bear’s nose and it’s a good seven inches away from the wearer’s eyes. Want the full Monte experience? Trade your glasses in for a long toilet-paper tube then fire up your motorcycle and try riding across the footbridge through a throng of drunken Griz fans. “I have no peripheral vision. None,” says Monte. “And I can’t see what’s going on below me.”

More than one child rushing to embrace the bear has accidentally been kneed in the head, Monte says. It’s a dreadful crunch for the costume wearer, who then has to calm a child convinced she’s been mauled by an oversized teddy bear.

Many of Monte’s stunts are endlessly worked on. Standing at half court in Dahlberg Arena, a good two hours before the Idaho State game, Monte draws his eyes half closed and hucks three dozen basketball shots at the hoop behind him. It’s an unorthodox shot, to say the least. With his arms outstretched at shoulder level, he grasps the ball like a pair of human salad tongs. He lines up his feet with a crack in the floor and then catapults the ball backward. Every shot hits iron and the twentieth attempt slips through the net. There are a few cheerleaders milling around, along with a couple kids who seem oblivious to the brown shag, four-fingered gloves worn by the man shooting backwards at the hoop. The mascot is known for making this shot during the game with a much higher completion rate than the one he displays practicing.

“It’s funny, I actually make more with my head on than with the head off,” Monte says. “I’ve been working on a new one where I throw it between my legs, but that one’s not going well so far.”

The hoops session is cut short by a mandatory pre-game appearance at the Press Box bar, located due north of the school and across the Clark Fork River. The purpose of this show is to work the Press Box crowd into a Grizzly lather before the game. Monte climbs walls, stands on tables, and charms at least one girl at every table in the smoke-filled room. After about forty-five minutes of costumed rowdiness, the mascot typically fires up his motorcycle inside the bar and drives out the door southward into the darkness toward Dahlberg Arena and the game of the night.

The grand exit is supposed to be Monte’s March, an event that ideally involves leading the bar crowd over the footbridge and to the game. But it’s February in Missoula and typically the patrons watch, shivering in the doorway, as Monte speeds into the darkness making his own wind chill as he goes.

We’re arriving at the arena alone and incognito. The mascot removes his costume between gigs because it’s hot as hell. Already, his short-cropped hair is soaked, just from forty-five minutes of bear hugs and heinie rubs at the Press Box. The basketball players have finished their warm-ups and the pre-game clock shows less than five minutes to game time. “I love your scent,” says an intern who helps Monte back into his now damp bear suit. “We ought to put it in a bottle and sell it.”

The bear suit soaks up so much sweat, it can only be used twice before it’s too ripe for public appearances, Monte says. This limits the number of performances he can make to about four a week. Between performances, the mascot’s hide is machine washed at a coin-operated laundromat where the staff has been sworn to secrecy.

One minute to game time. Already there’s a gaggle of little girls peeking through the papered windows of Monte’s dressing room. They give messages to every adult walking in and out of the bear’s lair.

“Tell Monte to come out. Tell him to get out here and bring some little teddy bears.” “Tell Monte he’s taking too long.”

When the bear emerges from his dressing room, little girls mob him. They bring him to the floor, then pile on. This is what it is all about, Monte later says, the children. They let him go after a couple seconds and he pounces onto the middle of the basketball court like Tigger lost in a Ritalin moment.

He is pulling out all the stops—romancing cheerleaders, cozying up to the referees, high-fiving players as they race through a gauntlet of pompoms. He’s in and out of the dressing room in six-minute spurts, turning his performance up a notch every time he returns to the court. At most schools, the mascots and dance teams perform during timeouts reserved for media breaks, but at UM Monte gets his own performance times, as many as three a night. The bear is up for it, although it means mapping out three different skits, as many as six in a week when the basketball team is home for two games. Tonight Monte has a gunnysack full of brick-sized Idaho spuds to hand out to the crowd. And he’s planning on telling the crowd how the bear’s heart was broken on Valentine’s Day.

But his first skit brings the night to a crashing halt. During a slam-dunk maneuver, which involves four burly men catapulting the bear to the hoop from the top of the key, Monte is tossed a little too high. He hits the rim with his mid section, clutches it for a half second before falling ten feet to the hard wood. There’s a safety mat to catch him, but Monte misses it by a good four feet. There are a few cheers before the crowd of 4,000 realizes this isn’t part of the act. Monte is lying on the floor in heap. The man inside the suit is staring out the pop-can-sized hole in the stuffed animal’s snout, trying to regain his wits.

“Great pass,” Monte says to a couple of cheerleaders rushing in to see if he’s okay. “Whew, I’ve never missed the mat by that much before.” Monte gets up, hopping frantically around the court in pain, then does an elaborate collapse, and allows the cheerleaders to drag him from the court.

He peels off the right sleeve of his suit to reveal a bloody, swollen elbow. Later doctors will diagnose the injury as a deep bone bruise, which isn’t too serious. But they will also determine that a fractured left wrist and tendons damaged during a Griz football game last fall will require surgery.

“I’m sorry,” Monte tells his boss, Dan Hawley, Grizzly Athletics marketing director. The mascot already has talked to paramedics about acquiring a sling so he can return to the court and finish his act, even while a doctor and trainer whirl about the room trying to figure out if Monte needs X-rays.

Go show the fans you’re okay, concedes Hawley after failing to discourage the mascot. Then, put the bear in the bag and walk away with the crowd.

When Tom Lutey ‘95 isn’t playing paparazzi to UM’s carpeted celeb, he writes for the Spokesman-Review in Spokane, Washington.

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