There are sports bars, and then there are places that become part of the history of the team itself.

For generations of Griz fans, Red’s Bar in downtown Missoula has become the latter.

Owner Mike Helean grew up in Missoula, attended Sentinel High School and arrived at the University of Montana in 1981, where he studied business management and spent four years as a walk-on football player for the Grizzlies.

He started bartending at Red’s in 1987, later bought into the business and by 2000 had become its sole owner.

Along the way, Red’s grew into something resembling a downtown Griz museum. The walls and ceiling hold decades of memorabilia, including pieces of goalposts carried downtown following Grizzly playoff victories in 2001 and 2004.

The connection goes deeper than memorabilia.

Before artificial turf, Helean and others helped paint the field at Washington-Grizzly Stadium before home games. Red’s and other downtown partners later helped fund collapsible goalposts for the stadium. The bar has sponsored local athletics and still runs buses carrying fans to Griz home games.

On a typical football Saturday, two or three busloads of fans can make the trip from Red’s to Washington-Grizzly Stadium.

It’s one of those distinctly Missoula stories: a local business, a former Griz player, decades of football and a downtown gathering place all becoming tangled together until it’s hard to tell where one ends and the other begins.

The Lowdown: Red’s isn’t simply decorated with Griz history. In a few memorable ways, it helped make some of that history.