Let the hate flow through you

It's the eve of the Gopher-Badger football game, so I thought I'd post some good reasons to hate the Badgers.

Proximity to obnoxious fans
Being that Minneapolis/St. Paul is so close to Madison, WI, many UW grads migrate to our fine city looking for employment and other opportunities to live a fruitful life. Unfortunately, they show up at our games, irrelevantly and constantly talking about Brett Favre while wearing those horrid red hoodies. That leads me to the next hate-point:

Ugly school colors
Red and white is a shitty sight. That's one of the reasons why I hate the Badgers and traditional peppermint candy canes. When watching their home games on TV, the site of all that red makes me want to vomit. The only other time I got ill from seeing to much of that despised color was when I looked at the electoral map from the 2004 election.

Jump Around
These morons have a "tradition" of playing House of Pain's "Jump Around" over the loudspeaker at the end of the 3rd quarter. They took an obnoxious, early 90's hip hop tune that is played in stadiums and arenas all across the country and made it their own. How did they do this? Much like a classroom full of pre-schoolers, their entire student section takes the lyrics from the chorus literally. Voila! Instant, manufactured "tradition." To me, the novelty has worn off, and this is about as cool as playing The Village People's "YMCA" and doing all the letters with your arms.

Lack of Discipline
During the 2007 off-season, former UW running back Lance Smith slaps around his girlfriend in the middle of the street, takes her shoes, and leaves her stranded. His punishment? He's not allowed to travel with the team and play in road games. However, he's still with the team for every practice function and suits up and plays in every home game (71 carries, 429 yards for the season).
If you thought that was rough, wait until you hear what happened to cornerback Jack Ikegwounu. He was arrested with his brother at the end of the 2006 regular season for breaking into somebody's apartment and stealing an XBox. I don't even know if he got a slap on the wrist, because he was still able to play in their New Years Day bowl game and played all of the 2007 season. Karma police caught up to him though, as he got a nice groin punch from our own Eric Decker in last year's game and he ended up blowing out his knee while preparing for NFL predraft camps last spring.

Idiot Coach
If there was a Coach of the Year subcategory award for "Coach That Looks Like His Team's Mascot," then Bret Bielema would be looking towards winning that award for the third straight year. The combination of his buzzcut, fat head, and squinty eyes is enough. But takes the cake is the fact that he has one of those receding hairlines that attacks the upper corners of his forehead, leaving him with an awkward penninsula of hair that protrudes down the center of his head. That is how a grown man looks like a badger.

I could go on and on, but I don't want to drift to far to the darkside.

Better Dead Than Red!

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.

Catching Up...

It's been awhile since I've checked in last. I've actually had to move out of my apartment at the end of July. It's been awhile to get back into a rhythm. So here's just some random musings about some of the nonsense I've been up to the last month...

...since moving into a basement, I'm starting to become paranoid about bugs. There's lots of spiders and other weird centipede-y things crawling around down here. Anytime a I feel an itch or something brush against me while sitting down here, I twitch and spasm. It makes for difficulties getting to sleep sometimes. I've been trying to crush those bastards every time I see one, but they just keep coming back. I feel they may be plotting against me.

...these national political conventions crack me up. I love watching the speeches, the random unexpected events, and the crowd shots of all the delegates dancing around like dorks. It's quality, prime-time entertainment that I enjoy even more than the Olympics every four years. Here's some of my favorites this year:

Favorite DNC speaker: Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer was absolutely hilarious. Not so much of his speech's content, but his mannerisms while speaking. He was so damn fidgety, it was as if he downed a case of Red Bull before he went on. I liked it. Bonus points for doing the Chris Farley-esque shoulder shrug/double chin thing a few times (2:02 mark on the YouTube video).

Favorite RNC speaker: Former Tennessee Senator Fred Thompson endeared to me. He just had that surly old grandpa demeanor that reminds me of my hometown. I can see this guy fitting in fine with the grumbling old farmers at the local cafe or barber shop. They're always amusing and always blunt. Bonus points to Senator Thompson for constantly clearing his throat every minute, too.

Favorite moment caught on camera: Sarah Palin's second youngest child styling the baby's hair with her own saliva. It either elicits an "Awwwww" or an "Eeewww." Either way, it's a good catch by the camera crews.

Finally, here's a pretty funny picture that was sent to me by way of Lisa:

If you're quite familiar with this show and these characters, it's even funnier. Now who has some cartoon equivalents for Obama/Biden?

...the good thing about having a national political convention in your town is that it brings out some pretty damn good concerts. On Monday, I attended the Take Back Labor Day event at Harriet Island in St. Paul. It featured a line-up of Billy Bragg, Steve Earle, Tom Morello (of Rage Against the Machine), Atmosphere, Mos Def, and a reunited Pharcyde.

I would describe Tom Morello's performance as spunky. His solo album has a mellow, folksy feel to it, but he treats his live performances as if he's up there with RATM. For example, he closed out his set asking the crowd jump up and down like mad while he played Woody Guthrie's "This Land is My Land."

The Pharcyde was the other highlight of the day. They closed out the show and bucked the trend of playing songs about the poor, the working class, and unions. They just busted out their hits and it was a damn fun set. I was surprised so many people stayed around for them. I honestly thought the entire crowd would dissipate after local legends Atmosphere performed. The only complaint I had about their set is that they would show some of their music videos on the big screen behind the stage while they performed. I preferred the screen to show shots of the group on stage and action out in the crowd.

There were some other notable shows through out the week, including a free show by Michael Franti and Anti-Flag at the Capitol Grounds on Tuesday afternoon. Apparently Tom Morello and the rest of Rage Against The Machine showed up at the end of the event and played Bulls On Parade before they got shut down. No bother, as they had their own gig at the Target Center the very next evening.

So if you want to see a week of great shows, then get ready to make a pilgrimage to the RNC city in four years.

...last and certainly not least is that football season is finally upon us. I went to the Gophers home opener against Northern Illinois last Saturday. The season got off to a good start when we won 31-27. While they look like an improved team from last year, they still made some costly mistakes to make the game a lot closer than it should have been. It's hard to gauge where your team is at when it took a last minute touchdown to beat a MAC school that finished with a 2-10 record last year.

This week's match-up at Bowling Green should be a lot more telling. BG beat us last year in overtime and they opened this season with a 10-point win over #25 ranked Pittsburgh. If we win this game, I have reason to be optimistic that we'll reach a bowl game. If we lose, then I don't think we'll finish above .500 this year.

Enter Blandman

Lately I've been reading some of the nonsense posted on the message board at GopherIllustrated.com and getting pretty fired up about it. It then leads me to write a long, drawn-out post in response. After I post, I punch myself in the groin for not have posting it on this blog instead. Then a week later I decide to re-post it here anyway.

This time it's not about sexual assault, but an equally polarizing subject: what song should be playing as the football team takes the field? As you can imagine with a message board full of presumably white guys who like football, Metallica was an overwhelming favorite, with a bunch of other songs by watered down rock bands. Below is what I had to say:

Instead of just listing off every crappy song I've ever heard on 93X, I thought I'd give a little insight towards this subject.

First, the Gophers always take the field first to the sound of a cannon popping (provided by our very own Cannon Man), which triggers an eight count drum cadence and finally leads to our school's fight song, The Minnesota Rouser. This is the song we should always enter with because it's entirely unique and no other Division 1 college or NFL team enters the field to that song. So we got that going for us, which is nice.

Now the subject of this thread should read "POLL: This is what the Gophers should wait in the tunnel too..." because that is when they usually crank something over the speakers. I noticed last year that they had a video playing during this time, too. I like where their head is at on this one, but it was very poorly executed. I don't even remember what song was playing, but the video with clips from the movie "300" and players/coaches awkwardly trying to fire up the crowd was just awful. To start, they should scratch that video and make a new one using that "We Will Make History Again" clip and maybe add some more game highlights from the past and present. It really can't be that difficult. That annoying hipster punk on those "Hi, I'm a Mac" commercials leads me to think anybody could put this together.

Onto the music, where things get a little more tricky.

As mentioned before, they will enter the field to the cannon, drums, and Rouser. During the time waiting in the tunnel, the idea is to build some excitement and tension in the crowd. A song that begins with a slow crescendo and adds layers of instrumentation accomplishes this task. A lot of those orchestra movie scores and rock songs mentioned in the previous thread fit this mold. It's not too difficult to find songs that fit this criteria.

Where it gets more complicated is finding a song that will seamlessly transition into the cannon/drum cadence/Rouser. A lot of the songs mentioned have great intros and great build-up, but there's really no place to stop the CD and strike up the band without it sounding like someone in the sound booth or leading the band missed a cue. I mean, AC/DC's "Hells Bells" is a great song that really gets the blood pumping, but there's no real peak to that intro. It just levels off.

There are three songs I saw discussed that would work:

1. Metallica's "Enter Sandman" - Kind of a no brainer. The part to transition from CD to band would be right before all the parts come in unison to play that main riff. The drum beat goes to cut time and crescendos just before it. It really is perfect.

I wouldn't choose this one, however, because it's too easy. Any former jock under the age of 35 has taken the field of play with this song blasting at some point. You hear it in arenas and stadiums everywhere. I generally scoff at college teams that play this as an intro and call it "tradition"(I also laugh and shake my head at Wisconsin when they play "Jump Around"; again, you hear this song in just about every arena and stadium, but for some reason, those morons at UW think they are special for being the only ones to take the lyrics literally).

2. Refused's "New Noise" - This isn't a really a well known, mainstream rock song, but it has been used every now and then on TV sports broadcasts. I also recalled it was on the soundtrack for the "Friday Night Lights" movie. It is a killer intro and it has a perfect transition spot right after the lead singer belts out "Can I scream?!" or something like that. I can't really tell what he's saying.

But as aerosk83 mentioned in that post, it has a long pause right before the lead singer comes in which might be too much. It's a cool effect when you're listening to it at home on your CD player, but that effect would be lost in a stadium full of 50,000 yelling fans.

3. Korn's "Blind" - This may be my favorite choice. I am surprised that you don't hear it more at sporting events. It has an eerie build-up with those cymbals and dueling guitars that peaks with the lead singer belting out "ARE YOU READY?!". The obvious transition spot would be right after that.

The "Are you ready" thing also fits because that is what the announcer shouts during the marching band's pregame show right before they play the Rouser while in the block M formation. Perhaps some folks would even be duped into thinking the Metrodome announcer is the one belting out the phrase both times. I know my mom would.

Very Bad Things

I'd like to be serious for a moment and discuss the sexual assault trial of former Gopher football player, Dominic Jones. Just before the beginning of the trial, there was a message board thread at GopherIllustrated.com discussing the subject. As these things go, the discussion was pretty heated as posters started bickering about legal procedures, morals, and the typical douche-bag male response to rape allegations: "The girl was probably just upset because he didn't call her back the next day or something."

If you want to get yourself good and pissed off, go to their message board and find the thread labeled "Dominic Jones". Actually, I sort of helped get this thread going early on by posting this article and drawing comparisons between the defense attorney in this trial to Gordon Bombay before he was sentenced to community service and had to coach a kids in hockey team in the movie The Mighty Ducks. After reading the ensuing flame-fest, I calmed myself and posted this response below:

Wow, if this doesn't get your blood boiling on a Tuesday morning. Forget all about the lawyers, judges, and football team for a second. Put yourself in this situation as one of these guys. You're hanging out in your apartment with 3 other guys and two girls. One of the guys starts a drinking contest and gets the two girls to play along. One of these girls ends up taking 8 shots of straight vodka filled to the rim of the shot glass. This guy then retreats to his bedroom with the other, not-so-full-of-vodka girl.

This leaves three guys sitting with one very, very drunk girl. Imagine you are one of these guys. At what point would think it would be a good idea to take turns having sex with this girl? Would you be the one to suggest it to everybody? Would you do it if somebody else came up with this idea? How about if this lady "consented" and asked you to do this? In your clear-minded, stone-sober state, would you want to go "run the train" on young lady who you just watched knock down 8 shots of vodka?

Hypothetically, let's say you would. Afterwards, you have to call in her friend to help her to the bathroom where she can't even keep balance while sitting on the toilet. Then after hauling her to the couch and letting her pass out, would you think it would be a brilliant idea to call up another one of your friends and tell him that you have a girl at your place who's "putting out"? Then to cap off your night of genius ideas, you decide to record your friend on camera when he comes over and performs these acts on a girl who couldn't even walk a couple hours ago.

That was just a quick recap of the case report. Again, I ask you to forget all about the legal processes, football suspensions, and all the previous bickering and flaming in this thread. Does this sound like something you would do and feel good about? Does it sound like something that you would be OK with your friends doing? Would you just shrug it off if this happened to your daughter, sister, or any other female you care about?

So that was my lecture I gave to a bunch of strangers online. I should have really been more self righteous and arrogant, because my post really didn't get any response. Apparently you have to be a complete ass if you want attention on an internet message board.

Anyhow, the trial is going on right now and there are some new tidbits of testimony that come out each day. Still, nothing new has been revealed to make me believe that Dominic Jones is innocent. He may be proven not guilty, but that still doesn't make you innocent. He made the biggest mistake of his life that night, and he will have to carry that with him every where he goes. And to Keith Massey, Alex Daniels, and EJ Jones (the other players mentioned in the case report): fuck you guys, too. The only reason why you all aren't on trial is that the aspiring porn director, Alex Daniels, didn't pull out his cell phone video camera earlier that night.

Booze and sex is a very dangerous combination. I've had my nights where I decided to combine the two, and I'm very fortunate that nothing bad happened. But it could have.

I found a good way to kill some time today

Through The Wizard of Odds, I was lead to this fun little site that wasted a good two hours of my day: What If Sports.

Basically, the site gives you a chance to simulate matchups between sports teams. I'm not sure how they determine these outcomes, but it gets pretty addicting. You can pick current or past rosters, home or neutral sites, and even adjust the depth chart. With the football sims, you can even pick weather conditions and choose a basic playbook.

My curiosities got the best of me, so I started going through simulations to see "what if" the Gophers football team scheduled some bigger cupcakes last season. The reason is that the nonconference schedule, while filled with four games against smaller schools, was still filled with quality teams. Here they are, in case you forgot the horror that was last season:

Bowling Green - We lost to BGU 32-31 in OT at the Metrodome. They went on to have a solid season, finishing 6-2 and on top of the MAC East Division. This earned them a trip to Mobile, AL, for the GMAC Bowl.

Miami (OH) - We won after two rounds of OT, 41-35. Miami struggled against a tough nonconference slate of Colorado, Vanderbilt, and Cincinnati, but still finished a respectable 5-2 in the MAC.

Florida Atlantic - Despite the close score, this 39-42 loss was the worst game I believe I've ever witnessed. Thank god it was on ESPN 360, so nobody really saw it. The Owls went on to win the Sun Belt conference and beat Memphis in the New Orleans Bowl.

NDSU - We lost this one 21-27 to a Division 1-AA team, although it was a Division 1-AA team that spent the majority of the season ranked #1 in the D1AA polls.

Sure, these teams shouldn't be beating us. But when you are bring in a new coaching staff, install new defensive and offensive systems, break in a freshman quarterback, and lose your best defensive player from a defense that was terrible to begin with, maybe you should look to soften up that schedule even more.

I went through every small conference team and a few other BCS bottom feeders and matched them up with the Gophers. Here are my controls for this highly sensitive scientific experiment:

• Gophers are always the home team. This is usually the case with most nonconference games anyhow.
• Playbooks are set to default. The playbooks give you four options: Balanced, Favor Run, Favor Pass, and West Coast. The Gophers' default playbook was West Coast.
• Rosters and depth charts are left at default settings. There may have been injuries or other roster changes during the season, but I left it the way it is to make it simpler.

Here are my findings:

• We won some games! The following opponents would have been defeated by the Gophers if we had invited them to the Metrodome last season: Army, Buffalo, Colorado State, Duke, Eastern Michigan, Florida International, Louisiana-Monroe, Marshall, Ole Miss, North Texas, Temple, Troy, Alabama-Birmingham, UNLV, Utah State, UTEP, and Wyoming.
• If A is greater than B, and B is greater than C, than A is greater than C...except in sports. We beat UL-Monroe, who beat the Crimson Tide of Alabama. Wanting to test the transitive property, I simulated a match-up between Minnesota and Alabama. Alabama won 51-3.
• Suck it SEC! Minnesota, the worst team in the Big Ten, beat Ole Miss, the worst team in the SEC. How's that for your SEC speed, ass-hats?
• Notable losses: Notre Dame, Iowa State, Idaho, Northern Illinois, Fresno State in 4 OTs, and a 90-24 thrashing by Ohio (not Ohio State, just Ohio).

Again, I'm not sure what they are really using to generate these simulated scores. After seeing a score where the Gophers edged Wyoming in a double OT battle, I hit the "Play Again" button and they beat us by about 30 points. I guess what I'm trying to say is that this entire experiment has been a waste of time, and you are all now dumber for having read this post. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.

Sid Strikes Again

I'm a little behind as there was another New Sid Column Day yesterday. In it he gives a list of walk-ons who "committed" to the Gophers football team:

Mike Rallis, the highly touted linebacker from Edina, is among a group of walk-ons who have committed to Minnesota. Six offensive linemen will walk on at Minnesota this fall -- Curtis James of Edina, Andrew Kersten of Minneapolis Washburn, Mike Harbin of Greenway of Coleraine, Alex Luhring of Metamora Township (Ill.), Connor Lee of Trabuco Hills, Calif., and Austin Hahn of Hartford, Wis. Other walk-ons include Jake Ferris, a running back from Arrowhead High in Hartland (Wis.), kicker David Schwerman from Kettle Moraine (Wis.) and linebacker Jarid Jackson from Champlin Park.

This sounds all fine and dandy, except that reports started surfacing on internet recruiting sites that at least three of these players have not committed to the Gophers.

According to GopherIllustrated.com, Minnesota's Rivals.com channel, Mike Rallis has yet to make his decision and is taking some more campus visits first.

On another message board at GopherHole.com, one poster claimed that Jarid Jackson has signed on to play at Concordia in St. Paul. Another poster shares a link saying that Connor Lee has signed scholarship papers to play at MSU-Mankato.

Wow. This is what makes his column fun.

New Sid-Column Day!

Ah, I love new Sid-Column Day. A bunch of tidbits that may or may not be entirely based on fact for us to wildly speculate.
He mentioned the University of Houston as a potential candidate to fill the September 5th, 2009, open date on our schedule for Gophers football. This seems to be a good opponent, as they have made it to 4 bowls in 5 years under Art Briles. The wildcard is they have a new coach, Kevin Sumlin, so who knows where this program will be in 09. Hopefully they are a solid, competitive team(that we beat easily, of course). Also, this allows us to go down and play in a fertile recruiting territory. Hopefully we'll have some Houston area recruits for 2010 that will come watch us play.

If Troy Calhoun and Jeff Tedford are still coaching their respective programs, then I'm thinking the 2009 non-conference schedule should be filled with some solid teams: @ Houston, Air Force, Cal, and, ugh, South Dakota State. Well, three out of four isn't bad.

In other "jottings":

• He erroneously lists March 25th as the date for the Gophers Football spring game. If you have access to an accurate calendar, you will see this falls on a Tuesday. The actual date is April 25th, a Friday night.



• In one simple sentence, he instructs us not to "be suprised if you see schools such as Alabama, Virginia Tech, LSU and Virginia on future Gophers men's basketball schedules." OK. I won't, but can I get a couple reasons why I shouldn't be suprised? Has there been talks with these schools' coaches or athletic directors? Have they mentioned possible home and away agreements or early season tournaments with these schools? No? OK. Is it OK if I just act suprised then?



• He also notes that the U has plans to install a new floor and baskets for Williams Arena in 2009. A poster on the GopherIllustrated.com message board suggested they sell pieces of the floor to obsessed fans and collectors of random sports-related crap. If this happens, I'm totally bidding on the piece of the floor that has the Cub Foods logo.

Q: Are they not men? A: They are Bevo.

I just recently stumbled upon an article saying that a 2009 game between the University of Texas and the University of Arkansas is being postponed for another year. What the hell does this have to do with me? Well, the date of this game was scheduled for September 12, 2009. This happens to be the exact same day of the home opener for the Gophers at TCF Bank Stadium. With this fateful alignment of dates, one has to ask: Why not schedule UT for the new stadium opening date?

How cool would this be? Very.

How likely would this be? A little more complicated. Let's take a look:

• Tim Brewster has stated in the past that he wants to schedule more high profile non-conference opponents and has mentioned the Longhorns specifically. The University of Texas definitely carries a higher profile than Air Force.

• The linked article above also includes this little quip:
  
  One source said Texas will consider playing a different opponent in an away game with the promise of two home games in Austin down the road.

So there are a couple glimmers of hope. Here are some potential roadblocks:

• We already have a game scheduled with Air Force. These things are never set in stone, however (which is why Texas has the open date in the first place). Rescheduling or backing out of agreements is becoming common in college football, but it also involves a little bad PR.


• UT wants an exchange of two games in Austin for one game on the road. This can be good and bad. The good is we'll get to play UT 3 times in the coming years. The bad thing is that we'll have a brand spanking new stadium in which we'll want to schedule as many home games as possible. Hopefully we get compensated fairly for the extra road game we have to take to Austin.

Ultimately, I think this would be a good opportunity for the U. Often, big non-conference opponents like this need to be scheduled years in advance. If they can get UT now, it would be a huge step for our program.

I've heard some grumbling that this may look bad if we get blown out by a big school in our new stadium opener. To those people, I say look at our team from last year and then look at Air Force's team from last year. There's a good chance that they'll come in here and beat us, too. A loss is a loss, but I'd rather have one against top competition than to a smaller and supposedly weaker program.

*****

In similarly exciting news if you are like me and read too much into little things, Notre Dame is hosting a Junior Day this upcoming Sunday. This is a football recruiting event where prospects visit the campus and learn a little bit about the program. Why do I care? The list of recruits visiting do not include any Minnesotans. This is a good initial sign since they have plundered and pillaged our area for top recruits over the years.

Ted Roof, Ted Roof, Ted Roof is on fire

After the relatively unexpected departure of Gopher's defensive coordinator Everett Withers, it appears a replacement may be close to joining Tim Brewster's staff. There was an article posted earlier on the Strib's website saying that former Duke head coach Ted Roof was interviewed and is said to be the frontrunner for the job. As of now, I can no longer find the story on their website. This may indicate something else is in the works. Other rumors floating around point to former Iowa State head coach Dan McCarney or former Nebraska defensive coordinator Kevin Cosgrove.

The response on internet message boards is quite lukewarm. Obviously, people are looking at Ted's failing as a head coach at Duke. This is somewhat of an unfair assessment as lots of coaches walk into situations where they fail. It doesn't mean they are bad coaches. It was his first head coaching job and Duke doesn't look like an easy place to win. Looking at his bio, his experience as a defensive coordinator looks very encouraging.

My take is people need to relax. Ultimately, no matter how big of football fans we all think we are, we don't know really anything about coaching and tend to make pretty narrow sighted judgements. I read a good post regarding the defensive coordinator situation in Wisconsin that illustrates this perfectly. I hope this guy works out and gives Minnesota a defense to be proud of. After all, it's not like it can get any worse.

Putting in the Steely McBeams

Construction on TCF Bank Stadium has been well under way for some time now. There have been many holes dug, holes refilled, and plenty of dirt piles pushed around. It was like a toddler with Tonka Trucks was the project manager. I had a friend openly pine about the immense amount of visible progress at the Twins ballpark site and little more than piles of dirt at the Gopher's stadium site.

Well, the end of January marked the beginning of a new phase on the project: the steel frame was about to be erected (heh). Fans like my friend now have visible evidence of the stadiums progress.

Being unemployed, I have plenty of time to obsessively check the webcams around these new ballparks. There's even a webcam near campus that gives close-up, streaming video of all the action. If you still have that Tonka Truck spirit within you from your distant childhood, than you'll get pretty excited watching all of this.

Also, a lengthy video animation was released yesterday giving fans a detailed view of TCF Bank Stadium. I recommend dimming the lights, cranking up the volume, and switching the video to full screen so it feels like you're really face-to-face with Bob, Joel, Tim, Adam, and the random band geek.