Thanks for your thoughtful response. There is truth to your point that for most 18-23-year-old men the quality of life factors that make the Twin Cities so special to me aren’t things they care much about at this stage of their life, but I still think the area does have somethings that do. One that comes immediately to mind is the Mall of America. I also recall reading repeated summaries of recruiting visits in which the recruits raved above being taken to a place where the food was “crazy good”. It turned out to be the Brazilian steakhouse, Fogo de Chão, in downtown Minneapolis. It inspired me to dine there the next time I was in Minneapolis and it proved to be an 18-year-old macho male athlete’s dream. All the red meat you can eat. I told the maître d’ that I credited his restaurant with turning the Gopher football program around.
I’m well aware of the period in which our early willingness to accept African-American players reinvigorated Gopher football. I was a student at the U from 1958-1962, and my last two years at Minnesota were our only trips to the Rose Bowl, both of which I attended. But that’s not the period I have in mind. What I meant was the 1940s and earlier when Minnesota won 6 of its 7 National Titles.
That period ended in 1950 when legendary coach Bernie Bierman retired after winning 5 national championships. See
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernie_Bierman. He was replaced by Wes Felser, who previously had been head coach at Ohio State.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wes_Fesler. Felser did not do well and was replaced by Murray Warmath three years later.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murray_Warmath. Warmath had some initial success, but then began to flounder until he was able to recruit some key African-American athletes, with the help of a young, African-American, Star-Tribune journalist, by the name of Carl Rowan. See
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Rowan. Those recruits included future NFL stars, Bobby Bell, Carl Eller and Aaron Brown, plus the first black All-American quarterback, Sandy Stephens. Rowan’s son, Carl Jr., was briefly with my law firm.
There was a strong movement among the faculty at the time to follow the lead of the University of Chicago and drop out of the Big Ten to emphasize academics over athletics. In fact, as I recall, and I am old, that nearly happened. What prevented it, as I understand it, was the Gopher’s invitation to the Rose Bowl at the end of the 1961 season. The season before, under a contract between the Big Ten and what today we know as the Pac 12, Minnesota, as the Big Ten Conference Champion for the 1960 season, was automatically the Big Ten’s representative in the Rose Bowl game, which at that time was by far and away the most prestigious college football post-season event in the country. But that Rose Bowl pact with the Big Ten expired that year and after the 1961 season, the Rose Bowl was free to invited whomever they wanted to. They, nevertheless, wanted Minnesota, something that would not have happen under the pact as it had a bar against repeat appearances. There was pressure from other Big Ten schools to accept the invitation, as they would have lost a share of Rose Bowl revenues had the bid gone to a school from another conference. That pressure averted our leaving the conference but was followed by a de-emphasis of the revenue sports, which I believe has hurt us over the years.
Its against this background that I believe Minnesota can become competitive in the revenue sports if it is willing to make the investment needed to make that happen.