A recruit walks onto campus. Before anyone says a word, before the coach shakes their hand, before the pitch about playing time or academics — they’re already forming an opinion.
They’re reading the facility walls. The locker room. The weight room. The tunnel leading out onto the field.
They’re deciding whether this place feels like a program that believes in itself — and, by extension, whether it’s a place that would believe in them.
That moment — the silent, unspoken first impression — is exactly what Greg Sundberg has spent 25 years building for at the University of Montana.
As Deputy Athletic Director, Greg oversees fundraising, marketing, communications, and the overall direction of one of the most storied programs in college athletics. He doesn’t talk about facilities the way most athletic directors do. Not as construction projects with graphics bolted on at the end. Not as line items to defend to a board. Not as finishing touches, not as brand compliance, not as the last 10% of a project budget.
He talks about it as infrastructure. As part of the program. As one of the ways Montana Athletics becomes what it says it is.
A 25-Year View of What Actually Builds an Impactful Program
Greg’s tenure at Montana is, as he puts it himself, abnormal for his industry.
He arrived on campus in 1997 as a student, got recruited to play football, transitioned into administration as an intern, and has been climbing through the athletic department ever since. Twenty-five years in one institution, in a field where most professionals move every few years for growth.
Ask him why he’s stayed, and the answer is immediate.
“People make the place.”
It’s a worldview that bleeds into every decision he makes about the environments Montana builds. The people inside the building make the program. And the building itself has to honor that.
“This place, to me, is so special,” Greg says. “The state, the city, the campus, the community — is what makes this place go.”
Values Aren't a Brand Guideline. They're the Brief.
When Greg describes what Montana Athletics stands for, he doesn’t reach for a marketing deck. He names three things: Success, loyalty, commitment. And underneath all of it, community.
Success on and off the field. Loyalty to the program, teammates, coaches, staff. Commitment as a defining word — one he uses repeatedly, deliberately.
For Greg, those aren’t internal talking points that live on a staff handbook page. They’re meant to show up everywhere — including on the walls.
“We really, over the course of time, wanted to intertwine those values, those principles, those dynamic settings that we have here in gorgeous Missoula, Montana, into those facilities.”
Not decorated with values. Designed to reinforce them.
That distinction is what separates a facility program that looks good from one that actually carries a program’s identity. The walls, the graphics, the spaces themselves are a daily reminder of what Montana Athletics is trying to be.
Environments Don't Just Reflect a Program. They Reinforce It.
Ask Greg what role the built environment plays in what Montana is trying to build, and his answer is one word.
“Reinforce.”
He unpacks it from there:
“It reinforces what we want to be. What we aspire to be on a daily basis. It reinforces the commitment to the student athlete. It reinforces that we are a top-notch Division One level institution. It reinforces our values of being champions.”
And then the line that anchors everything else:
“If you’re going to train as a champion, you’re going to be in championship environment facilities.”
The environment isn’t separate from the program. The environment is part of how the program delivers on what it promises.
How One Family's Belief Ignited a Program
The clearest proof of what environmental investment can do is sitting in Missoula.
In a community of about 75,000 people, a Montana football Saturday turns Washington-Grizzly Stadium into one of the largest gatherings in the state. The stadium itself is one of the best in the country. So are the basketball venue, the softball venue, the Champion Center (Montana’s weight room), and the academic center.
That didn’t happen by accident. Over the last 10 to 15 years, Montana has followed a master plan — one they’re now nearing the end of — that prioritized investment in the environments where student athletes train, learn, work, and compete.
And the spark for all of it? A single family.
“The Washington Foundation … made an investment to build our football stadium in the mid-1980s. From there, their investment went into the Washington-Grizzly Champion Center.”
“Those two significant investments have spiked excitement, spiked other people’s involvement and investment. I look at those two investments made by one family that really ignited what we know now as Grizzly Athletics.”
One family’s belief in the environment created the gravitational pull that brought more donors in, elevated recruiting, and shaped what the program believed was possible. In athletics, that’s the ignition most programs are looking for. Most of them don’t realize how much of it starts with the environment.
Buildings alone don’t do that. What goes inside them — the identity, the storytelling, the sense that you’re standing somewhere serious — is what turns a facility into a statement.
What a Recruit Needs to Feel Before a Coach Ever Speaks
Come back to that moment at the beginning — the recruit walking in.
Ask Greg what he wants them to feel, and the answer comes in one sentence:
“An environment that they know they can succeed in, that they know they’re going to be supported in, and one that will get them to their end goals.”
Those are the bars every Montana facility has to clear before a coach says a word. And Greg is candid that building toward that feeling is intentional work — not something you luck into with good architecture.
That’s why he credits the partnership with SuperGraphics as being central to how those environments actually land.
“SuperGraphics absolutely has a huge part of that.”
He points to the recently completed women’s locker room as the most recent example. Before the graphics package went in, he describes walking into the space and thinking: it’s pretty, but it’s not there yet.
“We can all put up walls and drywall and bathrooms and lockers. But it gives it that — it gives it that touch we needed.”
That’s the difference the environment has to make. And it’s the difference a recruit reads instantly.
In an era when most programs are fighting over the same talent with similar offers, the unspoken message a facility sends is one of the few remaining places a program can actually differentiate.
The Lesson Greg Wants Other Leaders to Hear: Call the Experts Sooner.
This is the moment in the conversation where Greg gets quietly honest — and it’s the part that might matter most.
“In our industry, we want to say — in air quotes — we’re experts in running a college athletic program.”
“We are not, nor should we pretend to be, experts in building an athletic space.“
“You lean on the experts … to make your building come alive the way you want it to come alive. We did that. But we did it a little later than maybe we should have.”
That last line is the one worth sitting with.
The programs that get the most out of their environments are the ones that bring the experts in earlier.
Not after the walls are up, after the finishes are specified, after the budget has been allocated elsewhere — but at the beginning, when there’s still room to design the environment as part of the program, not on top of it.
A 25-year program leader saying it out loud is as clear a signal as anyone could ask for.
Consistency Is a Championship Mindset
The other thing Greg keeps coming back to: Repetition and consistency, across every facility, across every space, are what tie Montana’s brand together.
“Repetitiveness and consistency throughout the facilities has been a huge thing to tie everything together.”
Every environment reinforces the same story. The same values. The same visual language. And the same central message — captured in a vision statement Greg’s team developed with SuperGraphics and posted in the hallway and the weight room:
“We are more than mere players in the game of life. We are champions, working harder, digging deeper. With fierce determination and sheer force of will, we turn challenges into successes, obstacles into triumphs, student athletes into leaders.”
“In each of us beats the heart of a grizzly. Proud, powerful, fearless. Our spirit is stronger. Our hopes are higher. Our sky is bigger. As a school, a community, a family and team — we fight, we unite, we win.”
Not a hallway decoration. A program statement — shared across facilities so that every student athlete, every recruit, every donor, every fan absorbs the same message no matter where they are on campus.
What Montana Gets Right That Most Programs Miss
Greg’s 25 years offer a perspective worth borrowing.
Environments reinforce what an organization stands for — when they’re built around values, not aesthetics.
Great facilities ignite investment — they create the momentum that brings donors, recruits, and fans along with them.
Bring the experts in earlier — the environment comes together better when it’s designed as part of the program, not on top of it.
Consistency builds identity — repetition across every space, year after year, is what turns a collection of buildings into a unified program.
Your Environments Should Do as Much for Your Program as Your People Do.
At SuperGraphics, we’re honored to partner with leaders like Greg — people who understand that a championship program isn’t built in the weight room alone. It’s built in every space a student athlete walks into, every wall a recruit reads, every hallway a donor is inspired by.
From vision-statement installations to full-facility graphics packages to the recently completed women’s locker room at Montana, we help athletic programs bring their values to life across every surface — because when your environment carries your program’s name, it should carry your program’s meaning too.
Ready to build environments that work as hard as your program does?
