Part 2 of a 2-part article series from HERO Sports’ 1-on-1 interview with Montana State athletic director Leon Costello. Part 1 can be read here.
Somewhere in Bozeman, Montana, there is a Sunday night ritual in the Costello household.
Life revolves around Montana State Athletics, their daughter Cailin, and their sons Michael and Griffin, all of whom are busy with their own sports. So Leon and Heather Costello sit down together, huddled around a calendar that, by Leon’s admission, can get “a little tricky at times.” Naturally, it is organized in different shades of blue and gold, a subtle but very fitting nod to the Bobcats.
That image says a lot about Costello and the growth of Montana State under his watch. As he nears the end of his first decade as AD, the department’s rise is clear in its success, facilities, donor support, and the culture surrounding one of college sports’ most passionate rivalries. In many ways, the two have grown together.
Costello’s story did not begin anywhere near Bozeman.
He grew up in Fairbank, Iowa, a town so small, he joked, it did not even have a stoplight. He played everything growing up, basketball, football, and baseball. Basketball carried him to Loras College, where he started to realize he wanted to build a career in athletics, even if his eventual path would be on the business side rather than on the court.
“I had great coaches in high school. I had a great experience at Loras,” Costello said. “I loved playing basketball. But it’s really kind of where I knew I wanted to go on and work in the sports industry.”
His path was not immediate or glamorous. He studied sports and exercise science, considered athletic training or physical therapy at one point, then found himself drawn to the administrative side of college sports. After graduate school at Western Illinois, he got his start at Northern Iowa, doing marketing and operations before moving up.
“I started at the bottom,” he said.
That climb continued at South Dakota State, where he became a deputy athletic director and gained experience in sport oversight, fundraising, and facilities that helped prepare him to lead a department. When the Montana State job opened in 2016, the fit made sense. There was alignment, shared ambition, and a sense that the Bobcats had room to grow.
Few could have predicted how much.
In Costello’s time leading Montana State Athletics, Bobcat teams have won 16 Big Sky Conference championships, three Big Sky All-Sports Trophies and the Big Sky Presidents’ Cup. The department has produced national champions, All-Americans, and major academic honorees. Bobcat Club giving has nearly tripled, and more than $50 million has been raised for new or renovated athletic facilities. In 2025, Costello was named an FCS Athletic Director of the Year by NACDA.
But to understand the emotional center of his tenure, it helps to start with a football game in Missoula.
From the moment he arrived in Montana, Costello understood the Cat-Griz rivalry mattered. It did not take long to realize that word was not strong enough.
“I will never forget the first time that I experienced it,” Costello said. “It was in Missoula at a Cat-Griz football game. And it was just amazing to me as I was walking into the stadium and even on the sidelines, they knew who I was, and I was in year one, but the things that were being said and all of that. So, it hits you right away.”
He had seen major rivalries before. Growing up in Iowa, there was Iowa-Iowa State. At Northern Iowa, there were heated football matchups. At South Dakota State, the North Dakota State rivalry carried national weight. But Cat-Griz was different.
“Nothing compares to this,” Costello said. “Nothing prepares you for this, the passion, the loyalty, everything, the energy that goes into this rivalry.”
Then came the drive home.
Montana State won that game, and as Costello headed back from Missoula, he started getting calls from donors almost immediately.
“I’m driving down the interstate, and I get a phone call, and I got some donors calling me saying, ‘Okay, what are we going to build? Like, what are we going to do? What are we going to build?’” Costello said. “I was like, hold on a second. At that time, I think we were 4-7, maybe that year. I was like, well, I mean, what do you mean? We’re 4-7. We’re not going to the playoffs.”
That, he said, was his first real realization that Montana was different.
“There was just sheer excitement just because of that game,” he said. “That was kind of my first recollection. I was like, okay, this is different.”
Different, in this case, meant understanding that one rivalry game in this state carries implications far beyond the final score.
That game also crystallized something else for Costello. Winning mattered, but so did building. Over the last decade, the Bobcats have done both.
“We have always had great support and alignment from our campus administration,” Costello said. “That has been crucial to anything we do.”
That buy-in has helped Montana State move with purpose rather than simply react to the moment.
“I think it’s just been having presidents that really understand what being competitive is all about and supporting you in a way,” Costello said. “They have always asked what we needed to be competitive and what we needed to feel like we were supported and to achieve our goals.”
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That support has helped make Montana State’s facilities some of the best in the country.
The Bobcat Athletics Complex opened in 2021, giving MSU major upgrades in strength training, nutrition, sports medicine, and football operations. Since then, the department has continued investing in academic and wellness spaces, basketball facilities, and Bobcat Stadium, with the Kennedy-Stark Athletic Center (KSAC) adding another major piece in 2025.
Costello sees it all as part of a philosophy, not just a spending spree.
“As we’ve had success over the years, my goal has been to grow with the programs,” he said. “Not dump a bunch of things into each of the programs, but as each of them has success, we’re going to grow together.”
That may best explain why MSU’s growth has felt sustainable instead of reactive. Rather than chase splashy wins in isolation, Costello emphasizes infrastructure growth that aligns with achievement. Revenue has grown, flowed back into student-athletes, coaches, and programs.
“We’ve been able to grow our revenues, which goes right back into our programs and our student-athletes and our coaches,” Costello said. “I think sustained success has allowed all of our programs to sustain their success.”
The rivalry, though, remains a huge part of that engine.
“In order to be good, you have to win the state, right?” Costello said. “Especially in football, where half of your student-athletes are from this state, you have to get the right ones, and you have to get the best ones.”
Winning Cat-Griz matters because it means everything emotionally. It also helps shape the future of the roster, the department, and the donor base.
“When you win that game, it goes a long way in order to be able to get the best student-athletes on your roster,” he said. “And then obviously the excitement just around our donors and our fans. When you win that game, they want to give more, right?”
That feeling carries through the entire department. Costello said the competitiveness at Montana State is not limited to the coaches or players on the field.
“Our coaches and our staff and everybody here, we take pride in winning that game,” he said. “I love the fact that the competitiveness comes out in our staff when we play those games. Our staff is just as competitive as our coaches and our student-athletes when it comes to that game. Everybody wants to win it.”
And through it all, Costello has remained disarming enough to laugh at himself.
Asked what his NIL number would have been as a college basketball player, he had a quick answer.
“What they wanted me to do is run to the corner and not move,” he said. “And if I got the ball, shoot it. And if I didn’t, that’s fine. But don’t do anything else but shoot.”
As for compensation?
“I would have taken anything,” Costello said. “I would have taken sandwiches from the local sandwich shop once a week.”
It is a funny line, but also a revealing one. For all the growth, money, and pressure now surrounding college athletics, Costello still comes across as a small-town product who understands what matters and does not take himself too seriously.
That may be part of why Montana State’s rise has felt so steady under him. The department has gotten bigger, but it has not lost its footing. It has added resources without losing competitiveness and built facilities without losing sight of people.
And every Sunday night, in a house where the calendar is shaded in blue and gold, the next week begins the same way: family, sports, planning, chaos and all.