One More Year...

Today is a significant date in Gopher Football history. No, it's not because we are on the eve of our first ever match-up with Division I-AA Montana State. It is because today is the 1 year pre-anniversary of the opening of TCF Bank Stadium. I read an article earlier this summer that asked readers to vote for their favorite memory from the last 25 years the Gophers football team spent in the Metrodome. It was somewhat laughable because there really weren't to many positive memories from those last two and half decades. They pretty much sucked for most of the 80's and 90's, and the big wins during the Glen Mason years usually came on the road. In fact, some his most agonizing losses occurred at home.

Now I never really followed Gopher football until I became a student at the U of M in 2001. Here are my memorable moments (both good and bad) from the Metrodome years:

September 8, 2001 - Minnesota 44, UL-Lafayette 14

This was my first ever college football game I attended. I was with my high school friend, Andy. He went to North Dakota State, but was in town visiting his HS girlfriend who went to the U. I think they might have broken up by the time the weekend was over.

September 29, 2001 - Minnesota 28, Purdue 35 OT

Another first: this was the first Big Ten match-up I witnessed in person, and it was wild. I can't find an exact recap of this game, but from what I remember, Dan Nystrom missed a field goal that could have sealed it.

Then there was a horrible call in overtime that may have cost us the game. A touchdown pass was ruled incomplete because the ref said the receiver was out of bounds. The ref appeared to be confused by the way the end zone was painted. The turf in the endzone was painted entirely gold except for the border was left in its natural green hue. The receiver landed with one foot on the green, which is not out of bounds. The out-of-bounds is marked by white. This was before the dawn of instant-replay in college games, so the call stood.

The game ended a play or two later, and the Purdue players were showered with beer cups and other debris as they celebrated in our end-zone. For the next home game, the end zone was painted with the school name over an all green background.

November 16, 2002 - Minnesota 21, Iowa 45

This was a pretty crappy game where we were thoroughly dominated by an Iowa team that ended up clinching a share of the Big Ten Championship with that win. After the game ended, the large amount of Iowa fans there stormed the field. It was mostly innocent celebration until they decided to partake in the tired tradition of downing the field goal posts. Unfortunately, no body's skull was crushed during this ritual.

Then some idiots were arrested and spent the night in jail for trying to leave the Metrodome with the goalposts. I remembered seeing them briefly interviewed on the local news the next day. They were mostly good humored about the situation, but still seemed befuddled as to why they would be arrested for destroying and stealing private property. Apparently that's not a big deal down in Iowa.

November 8, 2003 - Minnesota 37, Wisconsin 34

The game for Paul Bunyan's Ax was intense and ended with a last second field goal by Gophers kicker Rhys Lloyd, whom Glen Mason dubbed "Winston." You know, because he was British. Just like how we always call every Mexican "Pedro" or every native African "Mufasa"...or not.

Anyway, this game gave me hope as it was the first time I've seen a Gophers football team win a close one at the last second (mind you, I wasn't here for the big upset of #2 Penn State back in '99). It wouldn't be the last nail-biter of the season. We beat Oregon on another last second field goal at the Sun Bowl.

October 23, 2004 - Minnesota 45, Illinois 0

After a couple crushing road losses to Michigan and Michigan State, the Gophers returned home to shut out Illinois. This was the first time I saw Minnesota Gophers team shut out a Big Ten opponent (if Illinois could qualify as one that season...they were really, really bad). Regardless, it was uplifting until we closed out the season with losses to Indiana (WTF?), Wisconsin, and Iowa.

September 24, 2005 - Minnesota 42, Purdue 35 2OT

This was the first and only time that Glen Mason had beaten Purdue during his tenure. It was uplifting at the time because Purdue was ranked #11 and had one of the top rushing defenses in the nation. We ran for 301 yards on them. It was a thrilling win as some gutsy calls and clutch play by QB Brian Cupito sealed the deal. In retrospect, this win isn't as glamorous since Purdue ended up finishing 5-6on the season.

October 15, 2005 - Minnesota 34, Wisconsin 38

The most demoralizing loss I have ever witnessed (note: I was not here for the game against Michigan in 2003; I was on a flight to Jamaica for my sister's wedding. The Gophers lost and my sister was divorced within a year. Coincidence? You be the judge).

The Gophers ran for over 500 yards on the Badgers and were up by 10 points with three minutes to go. The Badgers received a kickoff and picked apart the Gophers secondary to score a touchdown within a minute. The drive ended with a long touchdown pass where the defender got called for a face mask penalty. This was assessed on the kick-off. Wisconsin tried an onside kick and failed. But instead of the ball being caught by Minnesota and downed around midfield, it squeaked by and rolled all the way back behind the Gopher's 20 yard line.

Now I mentioned before that we had run for over 500 yards, so you figured we could run for a first down and the clock would expire.

1st and 10, run for 3 yards.

2nd and 7, run for three yards.

3rd and 4, run for 3 yards.

Shit. Now it's 4th and 1.

Conventional wisdom says the conservative thing to do would be to punt and the ballsy thing to do would be to go for the first down. With us, I believe it was the exact opposite. Consider that we had already rung up 500 yards of rushing on this defense, and we just made 3 straight gains of 3 yards with their entire defense stacked against the line of scrimmage. There was nothing they could do to stop us. Now consider that our defense had just given up a 70 yard touchdown drive in about a minute. Wisconsin was only down by 3 and would just have needed to get into field goal range in 30 seconds. The ballsy thing to do here would be to punt it and leave this game in the hands of the defense, and the conservative thing to do would be to run the ball one more time for the first down and let the clock expire.

Glen Mason has balls. He decided to punt it. The freshman punter drops the snap, picks it up, tries to get the punt off and it's blocked. The Badgers recover in the end zone for a touchdown.

Worst. Loss. Ever.

October 21, 2006 - Minnesota 10, North Dakota State 9

This was the first time I saw my Alma mater play against my home-state school where most of my friends went. This was a fun game because it had the same type of rivalry atmosphere as a Wisconsin or Iowa game, as in the away fans nearly outnumber home fans.

The game was closer than expected and it was a pretty pitiful performance by the Gophers. I blame the coaching staff as I don't think they spent too much time with their game plan on this one. I think they thought they would just overpower NDSU like they did with Kent State and Temple. When the game started and they realized that wasn't the case, they didn't know what the hell to do.

Luckily, Minnesota won the turnover battle and got a few other breaks. NDSU had a touchdown called back for a rare tripping penalty and the kicker shanked a short field goal. Finally, the Gophers blocked another field goal as the clock ran out.

My friend Dylan sent me a link to a lame ESPN.com Top Ten list that counts down the top ten upsets of the BCS era and the Gophers loss to NDSU the following year was #10. I actually think the 2006 game was more of an upset, even though the Gophers won. The 2006 team was actually pretty good. They struggled early in the season, but started to roll towards the end and qualified for a bowl. They were completely destroying Texas Tech before the Glen Mason's traditional 4th quarter meltdown. NDSU completely dominated the Gophers in 2006, but we won because we didn't turn the ball over and got a few lucky breaks. We should have really beat the shit out of the Bison that year.

When we actually lost to NDSU in 2007, it wasn't much of an upset because of how terrible Minnesota was that year. Not only were we the worst defense in the nation, we were not even close to being the second worst defense in the nation. In statistics, we were known as what is called an outlier. Meanwhile, NDSU was the #1 ranked team in Division IAA (until the schmucks dropped a game to South Dakota State). Anybody who followed NDSU and Minnesota that year will tell you that game was no upset. The Bison were clearly a better team and it would have been an upset if they had lost.

November 18, 2006 - Minnesota 34, Iowa 24

This was a great game because it was the first time I had seen the Gophers beat Iowa and win the Floyd of Rosedale trophy. On top of that, it was our sixth win that season and made us bowl eligible. We were invited to the Insight.com Bowl in Tempe, Arizona, to face Texas Tech. This bowl game is what eventually led to the firing of Glen Mason. I was happy to be there in person to watch such a historic collapse. I was not happy about being snowed in for New Year's Eve outside of Albuquerque, New Mexico, on the way home.

September 1, 2007 - Minnesota 31, Bowling Green 32 OT

Drunkest. Game. Ever.

The season opener and the start of the Tim Brewster era didn't go so well for the team or me. I was pretty damn giddy about the start of the new season. Since kickoff wasn't until 7 PM, we had ample time to get nice and sauced before the game. My friend Matt and I had a couple beers at my apartment that afternoon while watching VA Tech and East Carolina duke it out on TV. Then we went to the liquor store, picked up another friend, and headed out to tailgate. The three of us finished a case of Grain Belt Premium. When that was gone, we started mooching off a keg of Busch Light from some damn freshmen (they probably weren't freshmen since they had the means to obtain a keg, but I have a habit of referring to any college kid as a freshmen). On top of that we took a couple ceremonial tequila shots before we headed in for the game.

Needless to say, I don't remember a lot of the game, but I do remember walking home. It was from the Metrodome to my new apartment in St. Louis Park. I mapped it out online and it was a good 8 mile hike and took me almost three hours. Good times.


So there you have it. Those were my most notable memories from the Gopher era in the Metrodome. Hopefully after this season, I can add beating Michigan and Iowa to become bowl eligible.