It didn’t take long for the fledging Big Sky Conference to spread its wings and fly on the national stage.
In 1965 – just two falls after the founding of the league – Montana’s Doug Brown became the conference’s first NCAA national champion.
Brown captured not one, but two NCAA Championships, winning the three and six-mile races. Brown, who was also a three-time cross country champion, ranks 15th on the list of the Big Sky Conference’s “50 Greatest Men’s Athletes.’’
Brown, from Red Lodge, Mont., competed for the Grizzlies from 1963-1965.
Brown earned the very first Big Sky Cross Country Championship in the fall of 1963 in Moscow, Idaho, finishing the four-mile race in 20 minutes, 24.5 seconds.
Brown also won the Big Sky title in 1965 in Spokane, Wash., and again in 1966 in Bozeman. He is one of three athletes in league history to win the championship three times. Northern Arizona’s Rich Sliney and David McNeill are the others to accomplish the feat.
In 1966, Brown competed at the NCAA Cross Country Championship, finishing fifth.
During the outdoor season in 1964 and 1965, Brown won the mile and three-mile at the Big Sky Championship. In 1966 he won the three-mile but finished second in the mile to Doyle Shaw of Weber State. Shaw had a time of 4:19.6 to Brown’s 4:19.9.
At his historic 1965 NCAA Championship, he won both the three-mile and six-mile. He won the three-mile with a time of 13:40.2 and won the six-mile with a time of 27:59.2.
In an article written by Bill Schwanke of the Missoulian in 2009, Brown said his biggest thrill was winning the 1965 NCAA three-mile in a photo finish over John Lawson of Kansas.
“He had shadowed me the whole race,” Brown told the Missoulian. “And then with about 330 yards to go, he grabbed the lead…and opened up a gap (on the backstretch).”
Brown caught Lawson on the corner coming into the home stretch, and the two ran stride for stride to the finish line.
Brown said that he used a tip he’d received years earlier from former Montana coach Harry Adams. Adams told runners to turn one shoulder into the tape rather than leaning forward and lunging like so many runners do. It was enough to give him the win.
He’s considered one of the greatest distance runners in the history of the state of Montana. Brown finished his career as a five-time All-American. In 1993, he was one of the first inductees into the Grizzly Sports Hall of Fame.