On Saturday, Yale will face the Montana State Bobcats in the second round of the Football Championship Subdivision playoffs in what’s forecasted to be a snowy Bozeman, Montana, where the altitude is thousands of feet higher than what the Bulldogs are used to in New Haven.

Audrey Kim

5:35 am, Dec 05, 2025

Contributing Reporter

Martina Nolte via Wikimedia Commons

When the Yale Bulldogs (9–2, 6–1 Ivy) face the Montana State Bobcats (10–2, 8–0 Big Sky) on Saturday in the second round of the Football Championship Subdivision playoffs, they will have to brave frigid temperatures in a hostile road environment just like they did last week in Youngstown, Ohio.

The Weather Channel predicts the temperature in Bozeman on Saturday to be between 27 and 37 degrees fahrenheit. Snow is also forecasted to fall in Bozeman Thursday through Saturday — a weather challenge the Elis have not yet encountered this season.

“The snow makes the ball slippery so passing is more difficult. You want to ‘take the air out of the ball’ and run it more often,” offensive lineman Charlie Humphreys ’28 said. “Skill positions, receivers and defensive backs, both have a more difficult time cutting back and forth on the snowy ground. I will also say hitting in the cold hurts more, but that doesn’t affect strategy or decision making in any way, it just kind of sucks.”

Playing in the snow will require the Bulldogs to make notable adjustments, particularly for making or defending pass plays. Receivers and defensive backs are required to constantly run across the field and keep their eyes on their opponent and the ball. However, snow in the air can decrease visibility for players, and snow on the ground can make it slippery and harder for players to maneuver. 

This means that Yale will likely be relying on the run game even more than usual this weekend, and that fans can expect a large load for team captain and star running back Josh Pitsenberger ’26. Pitsenberger was named the 2025 Ivy offensive player of the year and played a key role in the Bulldogs’ victory over Youngstown State, scoring three touchdowns and rushing for 209 yards.

The weather can also change the pressure of the ball — a change that could potentially affect the effectiveness of quarterback Dante Reno ’28.

The Bulldogs will also be playing at a higher elevation than they have all season. Bozeman has an elevation of roughly 4,800 feet, while New Haven’s recorded elevation is 59 feet. 

At higher elevations, there is less oxygen in the air, which can cause altitude sickness and reduced stamina. Typically, 4,800 feet is not a high enough elevation to induce altitude sickness, but the Elis will have to adjust to the thin air in addition to the snow. 

Though players have acknowledged the unfamiliar weather and altitude, they say they aren’t dwelling on those circumstances as they embark for Bozeman.

“All we can do is focus on the things we can control,” kicker Nick Conforti ’26 told the News.

The Saturday forecast for Bozeman is cloudy with morning snow showers.

Get an insider’s look into what’s happening in and around the halls of power with expert reporting, analysis and insight from the editors and reporters of Montana Free Press. Sign up to get the free Capitolized newsletter delivered to your inbox every Thursday.

December 04, 2025

For several election cycles, students of Alexander Street have waited outside Montana polling places attempting to spot an increasingly rare political bird: the ticket splitter.

Voters selecting a presidential candidate from one party while choosing candidates from a different party further down their ballots have proven a powerful handicap for Democrats in tight political races, but that share of the electorate is thinning. The split-ticket voters who backed Democrats like Steve Bullock in his successful bid for re-election to governor in 2016 and former U.S. Sen. Jon Tester, who won in 2018 but lost last year, have declined dramatically. 

“We had a rate around 20% for a candidate like Bullock in 2016,” said Street, who teaches political science at Carroll College in Helena. “Tester was getting like 20% of Trump voters and then he got 8% in 2024.” 

Precinct-level analysis of split-ticket voting by Montana Free Press aligns with the observations of Street’s classes and election analysts who visited with Capitolized this week.

The calculation isn’t difficult, said Joe Lamson, the most experienced of political mappers within Montana Democratic circles. The overlap in votes between the down-ballot winning Democrat and the Republican presidential candidate tells the story, as does the difference between the winning Democrat and the performance of the party’s other statewide candidates. 

Voters who selected a Republican for president in 2012 and 2016 were difference-makers for top-ticket Democrats down ballot who won by the slimmest of margins. Tester, for example, won reelection in 2012 with 48.6% of the vote. Republican challenger Denny Rehberg won 44.8%, with the difference going to Libertarian Dan Cox.

The voters shared between Tester and Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney that year numbered 32,284, based on a precinct-level analysis by MTFP of votes for Romney and Tester. This is the net number of Republican presidential voters also supporting Tester down ballot.

Tester also had 33,957 more votes than the incumbent Democratic President Barack Obama, and Romney had 49,877 more votes than Rehberg. 

Similarly, in 2016, now-President Donald Trump and then-Gov. Bullock shared 78,224 voters, based on the overlap in those races, in which Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton received 177,709 compared to Bullock’s 255,648.

The split-ticket voters were decisive for Bullock, who won just 50.3% of the vote, enough to defeat Republican challenger Greg Gianforte by 16,000 votes. Gianforte won the governorship four years later in a race against Bullock’s lieutenant governor. 

In 2020 and 2024, the splits weren’t enough for Democrats to prevail, as incumbent U.S. Sen. Steve Daines was reelected. Bullock, in his Senate race against Daines, and Trump shared 27,677 ballots, about one-third as many as they shared in 2016. This is also the lowest point for split-ticket voting in the four presidential cycles analyzed by MTFP. Again in 2024, there aren’t enough voters selecting both Trump and Tester to elect the Democrat to a fourth term in the U.S. Senate. The split tickets number 44,339, or 7.3% of the total votes cast for the Senate, a race won by Republican Tim Sheehy 

What’s happened with Montana split-ticket voting is a few steps behind the national trend, but both are on a path of decline, said Evan Wilson, a Republican campaign veteran who conducts polling for Peak Insights. 

Split-ticket voting nationally peaked in the 1970s with about 30% of the electorate choosing candidates of different parties for president and Congress, Wilson said. But the number of split-ticket voters drops to 7.1% for Senate races by 2020 and 4% for U.S. House, according to Wilson.

He said that the trend reflects votes aligning more with a political party than with a particular candidate. Montanans split their Senate and presidential outcomes in five of six elections between 1992 and 2012.

Street said Montana’s western U.S. House District, held by Republican Rep. Ryan Zinke, has the potential to be the state’s most competitive race in 2026, with Daines up for reelection in the Senate. 

— Tom Lutey and Jacob Olness. 

The replacements 

For the second time this month, a member of the 2025 Legislature will be replaced.

Gallatin County commissioners are expected to name a replacement for Rep. Ed Stafman, D-Bozeman. Stafman resigned in November, telling Capitolized that he has a new granddaughter in western Washington and plans to spend as much time with her as possible.

Gallatin County Democrats have submitted three potential Stafman replacements to the county commission, which makes the final decision. They include:

• JP Pomnichowski, who served eight years in the state Senate from 2015  through 2022. She also served three terms in the state House.
• Katie Fire Thunder, an organizer of Bozeman Tenants United. 
• Tanya Reinhardt, a former Bozeman Public Schools board member whose term ended earlier this yearr.

On Dec. 2, Yellowstone County commissioners selected Republican Stacy Zinn to replace former Rep. Bill Mercer, R-Billings, who was confirmed by the U.S. Senate to a federal judgeship in October.  

— Tom Lutey

MISSOULA, Mont. — The Bureau of Land Management’s Butte Field Office is asking the public to weigh in on a proposed fuels reduction project in the Shingle Butte area.

The plan would thin dense vegetation across roughly 400 acres of public land to help lower wildfire risk. Officials say the comment period runs from Dec. 3 through Dec. 17, 2025. Community members can review project details and submit feedback through the BLM’s online planning portal.