Gopher’s big win

Published 12:00 am Thursday, October 13, 2005

It was a big, big win for our Minnesota Gophers. They defeated the Michigan Wolverines, champions of the west.

Hail to the Victors Valiant, Hail to the conquering Heros, Hail Hail to Michigan, The Champions of the West.

They certainly had me convinced. The Wolverines have won 41 Big Ten titles and have been national champs 10 times. The only team close to Michigan is Ohio State, a distant second with 29 conference titles. The Gophers are actually third with 18 titles. Yes, boys and girls, Minnesota was, once upon a time, feared as the &8221;Giants of the North.&8220; The Gophers were good enough to still rank third after 40 years of indifferent play.

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To further illustrate Michigan’s dominance is the following revealing statistic. They have an all-time winning percentage of .745. That means they won three out of four games. Not bad. That averages out to three losses in a bad year. The same number Glen Mason wins early in the season

because of his cupcake schedule.

Michigan football is so famed that even their helmets have become part of football lore. There are Michigan helmets and then there is everyone elses. Fritz Crisler, a legendary Michigan coach, came to Ann Arbor after the team had suffered four losing seasons after winning two national titles. A wily coach, he came up with a psychological ploy of initiating a new winged helmet for his team. That is what the stripes on the top of the helmet are called, which distinguish Michigan’s from other team’s helmets.

Michigan has tradition and championships. Minnesota does have some tradition and some championships, but one has to go back 40 years to get to Murray Warmath’s winning teams and then back to the days prior to the fifties. To the decades of Bruce Smith, Pug Lund and Bronko Nagurski.

One tradition Minnesota has retained through all the lackluster years is the &8221;Little Brown Jug.&8220;

It is strange that we may owe rival Michigan, &8221;The Champions of the West&8220; for helping Minnesota with the idea of championship football. Will Glen Mason be able to leap the 40 year span to again make us proud of Minnesota football? If he can, more power to him. Since the Gophers may well get their new stadium, they will need a winning coach. Mason may be it, and if he is, will be entitled to the large new contract he is seeking.

Some of the newer fans of Minnesota football may find it hard to understand what a champion college team means to the state. But the fans of Notre Dame, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Alabama and yes, Michigan know what it means. You remember the 1987 World Series Championship by the Minnesota Twins. The delirium that swept the state. We might possibly be in the same situation with our college football team, but even more so. The Twins were millionaires or soon to be millionaires. The football team are kids and they won’t make any money for their blood, sweat, and tears. Nothing but scholarships and for some, recognition.

Many of them are our own Minnesota kids. 40 of them in fact. Kids from Northfield, Rochester and St. Paul. We can rejoice in their success and maybe one day call them neighbor.

Perhaps one day the Gophers will be challenging the Wolverines for the most football victories. Given the head start Michigan has, it might take 50 years for Minnesota to catch up. That’s all right, it would be a good 50 years and it might be that one of my grandsons will beam his column across the nation announcing the good news.