Row the Boat 2023

Tanner Morgan had some pretty good receivers to throw to which made him look better. Let’s get a QB and WR’s. We can be 7-4 again.

Dutchboy wrote:

I’ll leave this one alone until next year

I think we all knew that wasn’t gonna last.

Dutchboy wrote:

Does that add up to 29 & 32 conference record? My eyes are bad.

yes it does… do you long for the old days conference records ?

Kill/Claeys = 20-29
Brewster = 8-24
Mason = 32-48
Wacker = 8-32

Heck even Lou Holtz was 7-10

Those are good stats, however, they may not tell the whole story. I’m guessing most of those games were against cream puffs. Rarely do the Gophers schedule a high qualify non-conference opponent. They did play North Carolina this past season, and lost by a fair amount.

Certainly the competition goes up once they get into conference play. And the Big Ten West isn’t exactly a juggernaut either.

Those are conference records not non conference.

gimruis wrote:

They did play North Carolina this past season, and lost by a fair amount.

They were supposed to play them under Kill but he was too chicken and the U paid UNC several million dollars to not play that game.

Maybe PJ will move onto another school and win a national championship then…just like Lou Holtz.

Agreed, I would say Fleck had a lower percentage of the cream puff games, than did the others… I mean prior to Kill, they were teams some of us never heard of… then they started scheduling teams like TCU, Oregon State, in conf Nebraska and as you mentioned North Carolina.

CaptainMusky wrote:

Those are conference records not non conference.

LOL whoops. Big mistake

…

…does PJ get rings made if they pull of the bowl win to get to 6-7 on the year?

so many better coaches here on IDO, who knew.

For those of you consider a season a bust, if you don’t win a national championship, you best move to Bama or Georgia or your gonna always be a negative sap sucker.

By your measure what would make the season less than a bust? It’s MN, we have to temper our hopes and dreams but

A winning season? No
Win the west? Lofty goal, but should’ve been attainable last year. No.
Beat a ranked opponent? This I’ll give you. Not sure Iowa was ranked at the time but they are now so we’ll call that a yes.
Go to a bowl game? I’ll say yes but with a fat asterisk by it.

I don’t think anyone on here is hoping for a National Championship. But saying MN had a “good” year because they beat an Iowa team who’s best offensive weapon is their punter isn’t high achievement. And then to qualify for a bowl game with a losing record because there are too many bowls and not enough teams, also, isn’t a very high achievement.

That’s exactly how I feel too. Good post Alex.

Alex I don’t think anyone in this post is saying it was a good season by any stretch. It was disappointing outside finally beating Iowa. The crap that gets thrown at Fleck is what people react to. He’s the most successful coach they have had on decades as I’ve pointed out before. That doesn’t mean he shouldn’t be criticized but come on the way some of you talk we’re all here just happy they fielded a team. You guys are ridiculous learn to read.

I’m a huge Gopher football fan and I think this season was a huge bust for a ton of reasons. Beat Iowa for the first time in years…. cool, now beat Northwestern, Purdue, and Illinois (or at LEAST go 2-3) and you run away with the west.

A bust because we thought we had a QB, one that would be an upgrade over Morgan and Leidner, and now we’re starting over.

A bust because what I thought was a good receiving corps did not deliver. Daniel Jackson sort of broke out, but I was excited Autman-Bell came back and he was very quiet. As a team they had something like 25 dropped passes when they had just a handful last year.

A bust because PJ has been at his ceiling for about 4 years now and hasn’t advanced, and his play calling and conservative style were very exposed this year. I don’t know if hot seat is the right word, but I’d be telling him that they need to move forward and much of what happened this year can’t happen again.

I don’t think a lot of comments by big-g are wrong either though, as they add valid counterpoints to some of the criticism. PJ does have a better record than most Gppher coaches in my life. All the complaints about “cream puff” schedule…. do you watch other college football? Nothing about the Gopher non- conference schedule is unique. Backed into a bowl game because of academics? Yep, but what a waste of brain power to even debate if they should accept or decline.

I often wonder what it would be like if Fleck was a stoic guy like Kirk Ferentz and gave boring interviews like Bill Belicheck. Because fact is that from the start people decided they didn’t like PJ’S personality and didn’t want him to succeed at all, to the extent that they watch Gopher football just to find reasons to b!tch about it.

Why would MN ever be better than middle of the pack ?

It is not just the coach it is the entire package (tradition, location, facilities) and Minnesota is not quite there …

While the Gophers have seven national championships … the last one was now 70+ years ago. Any tradition is so long gone.

If the Gophers can make one good run every 3 to 4 years … MN fans should be satisfied.

The season was a bust.. they underperformed their ability… they should have won the West by 1 or 2 games for sure. PJ definitely needs to get his killer instinct in line, when they have lead with minutes to go.. don’t try to beat the clock.. beat the other team. He can recruit, he can motivate, but he still needs to learn to finish off teams… even the players have to be rolling their eyes when they go in the beat the clock game.

BTW.. everything thing above pertains to the Vikings too.. no killer instincts.

Most of the Big 10 Universities are in college towns and are not competing directly/in close proximity with NFL teams (Northwestern, Maryland, Rutgers, Minnesota exceptions). Tough to be the Big Dog in town when the Vikings play 3 miles away from the U.

Last Gopher National Championship 1960

1st Year MN Vikings NFL Team …… 1961

So why do Ohio State, Michigan and Penn State consistently have the top teams in the conference/nation?

trophy19 wrote:

Most of the Big 10 Universities are in college towns and are not competing directly/in close proximity with NFL teams (Northwestern, Maryland, Rutgers, Minnesota exceptions). Tough to be the Big Dog in town when the Vikings play 3 miles away from the U.

Last Gopher National Championship 1960

1st Year MN Vikings NFL Team …… 1961

So why do Ohio State, Michigan and Penn State consistently have the top teams in the conference/nation?

COrrelation does not mean causation. I dont think the fact that a Pro Team is close to those schools has any impact on whether or not the college is any good at football.

I would think it plays into attendance for sure… not many fans go on saturday and sunday… that could be a small factor.

I believe that for sure just look at NDSU for sure. They are packed every game.

Not having to compete with pro sports teams made me stop and think for a minute. That’s a very interesting point. Ann Arbor, Columbus, Happy Valley, even Athens or Tuscaloosa don’t have pro sports teams. The counter would be USC has won championships in the past while having multiple pro teams in town, but I see where you’re coming from. I don’t think that’s the total answer, but it could be a part of it. I went to the U of Iowa and tailgating for games started on fricken Wednesday morning. I always chalked that up to we had nothing better going on in the state of Iowa. I wonder if a pro team remotely close would change that??? Of course facilities to do it helps…parking around the U of M is terrible, as is all our stadiums in town. I admit I don’t think PJ is the answer, but I also admit that facilities need to improve, money going to the teams/players has to improve, recruiting has to improve. Target and Best Buy are in town, can’t we get them on board to help with some facilites or NIL money?

I just want something in town to be excited for besides the Timberwolves lol, who are having a hell of a year so far. But it’s frustrating watching the Twins go full yard sale after finally winning a playoff game. The Gophers floundering in football, basketball, even wrestling they aren’t really relevant anymore.

Alex what facilities besides Williams Arena do you think need to be improved? Mariucci has been renovated, the football field is relatively new and they have completely new practice facility. They also recently completed the athletes village.

The NIL and transfer portal rules have pretty much eliminated any hope of teams like Minnesota ever gaining national prominence. Top recruits don’t have Minnesota on their lists, and nobody good is going to transfer here. It is what it is. If there was an answer to this, you’d think somebody would have thought of it in the last 60 years.

The Gophers are going to vacillate between losing to South Dakota and beating Penn State. They might be fun to watch and support, but forget about rankings and records.

SR

Glen Mason was on Barreiro on Wed afternoon and said that Ohio State has approximately $13 mil tied up in NIL every season. He said the equivalent for a school like Minnesota to be on par with that, it would require about $20 million. Every season.

If you were a heavily recruited player getting offers from Ohio State or Minnesota, where would you go?

If you were being recruited by Wisconsin and Minnesota, where would you go?

Don’t think the facilities are the issue, other than Williams Arena which is old and dated. But gopher hoops is a joke, so who cares anyways.

trophy19 wrote:

Most of the Big 10 Universities are in college towns and are not competing directly/in close proximity with NFL teams (Northwestern, Maryland, Rutgers, Minnesota exceptions). Tough to be the Big Dog in town when the Vikings play 3 miles away from the U.

Last Gopher National Championship 1960

1st Year MN Vikings NFL Team …… 1961

So why do Ohio State, Michigan and Penn State consistently have the top teams in the conference/nation?

They talked about this yesterday on Berreiro, and honestly with NIL and the transfer portal, I could see this as being absolutely a plausible difference maker. If I’m a big time law firm, dealership, etc. in the Twin Cities, would I want JJ, Ant, Kiril, etc. to be the star of my commercial or Athan Kaliakmanis? Conversely, as Alex stated above, most of the prominent big time college programs are THE program in town, full stop. Ann Arbor? Big blue. Columbus? Go buckeyes (no, the blue jackets don’t count lol). Tuscaloosa? College Station? The list is pretty long of big time NCAA football schools that are the biggest program in town, and I wouldn’t be surprised if 10-20 years down the road there is some solid data correlating school proximity to professional sports teams with NIL/recruiting numbers.

“Fargo Flash” Justin Conzemius the other day mentioned the large amount of QB’s entering the portal this offseason. I don’t remember the exact number but he was saying something around like the top 10 of those are hands-down seeking $1 million in NIL money for whatever school they go to. I’m glad college kids can make money off what they’re doing…but boy that escalated quickly. It’s literal free agency now.

CaptainMusky wrote:

I believe that for sure just look at NDSU for sure. They are packed every game.

That’s not quite true. NDSU had a home playoff game last Saturday and while the seating capacity of the Fargodome is 19,000, the paid attendance was only 7,798.
NDSU is trying to figure out how to get more fans to attend games.

Outside of Williams arena everything is new at the U as far as facilities.
Silly to think that is an issue in any way. College sports is going a totally different direction. Not a great direction IMO. The NCAA is already throwing their hands in the air and want legislators to step in.