The teams the Gophers beat...

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MNVCGUY said:
No * needed. 9 wins is great, but those 9 wins also got us 4th place out of 7 in our division and was tied for 7th best conference record. If your goal is to be middle of the pack then last year was perfect for you.
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Were you impressed with WMU last year?


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MNVCGUY said:
No * needed. 9 wins is great, but those 9 wins also got us 4th place out of 7 in our division and was tied for 7th best conference record. If your goal is to be middle of the pack then last year was perfect for you.
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I don't think anyone is saying last year was the pinnacle of what the Gophers can achieve.
It was a good year. Missed out on it being a great year with the close losses to Iowa, PSU and the meltdown vs. Wisc.

To this point in the year, the Gophers have not been successful. There are many reasons for that: Poor play, limited personnel at certain positions, and bad coaching decisions have all played a role in the losses. Will that improve? We all are certainly hopeful it will.
 

Spoofin said:
Were you impressed with WMU last year?


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Will freely admit to not watching them play last year prior to their bowl game. Assume you are going to go down the route of the winning percentage of the teams they beat though.

Bottom line on them last year is that they went undefeated in their conference, won the conference championship, beat two big ten teams along the way and were competitive with a very good Wisconsin team in their bowl game. 11 of their 13 wins were also by 10 or more points (many of them by significantly more) so yeah I would say they had an impressive year last year.
 

MNVCGUY said:
Will freely admit to not watching them play last year prior to their bowl game. Assume you are going to go down the route of the winning percentage of the teams they beat though.

Bottom line on them last year is that they went undefeated in their conference, won the conference championship, beat two big ten teams along the way and were competitive with a very good Wisconsin team in their bowl game. 11 of their 13 wins were also by 10 or more points (many of them by significantly more) so yeah I would say they had an impressive year last year.
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I would say they did too. What I find most impressive is never slipping a week - regardless of opponent. Going undefeated is impressive.

My main gripe is all the downplaying of our 9-win season because of schedule. We most likely would have gone 12-0 playing in the MAC too. We beat the best teams on WMU's schedule too. We didn't have the luxury of playing bad teams every other week either. At the same time we didn't win games we could of and they did.

I vote for not downplaying either. Can't have it both ways tho. All wins count the same in my book. Wins against the same team don't seem to for some.


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He also recruited a receiver with high level NFL talent to a MAC school .... not that the MAC has never had high level NFL talent before ... but it's worth noting.
 


MnplsGopher said:
He also recruited a receiver with high level NFL talent to a MAC school .... not that the MAC has never had high level NFL talent before ... but it's worth noting.
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He deserves credit for recognizing the potential and developing him. However CD was a 2-Star who's only other offer (according to Rivals) was Illinois-State so it wasn't exactly a recruiting coup.


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Spoofin said:
I would say they did too. What I find most impressive is never slipping a week - regardless of opponent. Going undefeated is impressive.

My main gripe is all the downplaying of our 9-win season because of schedule. We most likely would have gone 12-0 playing in the MAC too. We beat the best teams on WMU's schedule too. We didn't have the luxury of playing bad teams every other week either. At the same time we didn't win games we could of and they did.

I vote for not downplaying either. Can't have it both ways tho. All wins count the same in my book. Wins against the same team don't seem to for some.


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Teams should be judged on how they do against the teams in their conference because that is who they are supposed to be able to compete against. I don't doubt we could have done very well in the MAC last year and I would say odds are good that WMU would not have gone unbeaten in the BIG but saying that doesn't make us look better or them look worse because neither team is being judged on how it would fare in another conference.

For me it isn't about downplaying last year's record it is about not trying to make it out to be something amazing. 8 regular season wins and 9 wins overall is good but when those 8 wins leave you 4th in your division I just don't see how that can be considered great.
 

Spoofin said:
He deserves credit for recognizing the potential and developing him. However CD was a 2-Star who's only other offer (according to Rivals) was Illinois-State so it wasn't exactly a recruiting coup.
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That's the oldest catch-22 in the book, when it comes to college (football) recruiting.

- if he were good, big schools would have recruited him
- if big schools recruited him, he must have been good

etc. etc. etc.
 

MnplsGopher said:
He also recruited a receiver with high level NFL talent to a MAC school .... not that the MAC has never had high level NFL talent before ... but it's worth noting.
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OK, but that's no more notable than the coach (now at Iowa State) who recruited Kansas City's outstanding rookie Kareem Hunt to Toledo. There are always gems in college football who are overlooked by the majors. Obviously, Kareem Hunt had the ability to play anywhere in college.
 



Somebody credited the team for "playing hard."

Geez, this is one of my pet peeves. Crediting athletes for trying.

You can coach technique. you can coach schemes. You can work on weight and strength training.

but effort is the starting point. If there are players on the team who aren't working hard or aren't trying, boot their asses off the team now.

It takes no talent to work hard. it takes no talent to give effort.

This really drives me insane with the Wild. The Wild goes out, wins a game, and some player says "We had good energy tonight," like it was some variable.

Yeah, we decided we wanted to try to win tonight. Please congratulate us.

"the Team is playing hard." You might as well give them credit for putting their uniforms on correctly.

"Every player on the team is wearing his shoulder pads the right way. Congratulations."

But they're playing hard. Damn, if we could only figure out a way to schedule all those teams that don't play hard, we'd have it made.

Arrgh.
 

cjbfbp said:
OK, but that's no more notable than the coach (now at Iowa State) who recruited Kansas City's outstanding rookie Kareem Hunt to Toledo. There are always gems in college football who are overlooked by the majors. Obviously, Kareem Hunt had the ability to play anywhere in college.
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We recruited Kareem Hunt. IIRC he has a visit scheduled close to signing day but decided to stay closer to home. What could have been...
 

Pompous Elitist said:
We recruited Kareem Hunt. IIRC he has a visit scheduled close to signing day but decided to stay closer to home. What could have been...
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Wow! I didn't know that...yes...what could have been.
 

short ornery norwegian said:
Somebody credited the team for "playing hard."

Geez, this is one of my pet peeves. Crediting athletes for trying.
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I'm the one who said that. Multiple people have posted that the team has "quit" on Fleck. I pointed out that I don't see it -- the team seems to be playing with the same energy and passion as they were from game 1. That's the only reason I pointed it out...not to give them kudos for doing so (because of course you're right -- every kid should always play hard).

Oh, and did you watch the NY Giants play last week? No playing hard.
 



Need to add Nebraska's 4-6 to the list.


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short ornery norwegian said:
Somebody credited the team for "playing hard."

Geez, this is one of my pet peeves. Crediting athletes for trying.

You can coach technique. you can coach schemes. You can work on weight and strength training.

but effort is the starting point. If there are players on the team who aren't working hard or aren't trying, boot their asses off the team now.

It takes no talent to work hard. it takes no talent to give effort.

This really drives me insane with the Wild. The Wild goes out, wins a game, and some player says "We had good energy tonight," like it was some variable.

Yeah, we decided we wanted to try to win tonight. Please congratulate us.

"the Team is playing hard." You might as well give them credit for putting their uniforms on correctly.

"Every player on the team is wearing his shoulder pads the right way. Congratulations."

But they're playing hard. Damn, if we could only figure out a way to schedule all those teams that don't play hard, we'd have it made.

Arrgh.
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Did Nebraska "play hard?"
 

The Final Drive just said Maryland is heading towards an 8 loss season, how is that possible with their superior recruiting?
 


cjbfbp said:

"Fleck did have to rebuild. 9 wins and not sniffing the conference title should not be viewed as the pinnacle for this program."

Well, no one suggested that 9 wins should be viewed as the pinnacle of the program so you're making a false argument.

"Everyone is so worried that we aren't mediocre again this year."

You went with your emotions in this post and as you proceeded through it your wording became successively dumber. First of all, if you mean "average" is mediocre, then I guess we were mediocre. The truth is that over the previous four years, this team was the best team of the bottom 7 of the Big Ten. That makes the team "average" over that time period in one of the better FBS conferences rather than mediocre.

Am I satisfied that the Gophers didn't go beyond "average" over the time period? Well, no, but I sure as hell prefer average over doormat which is what we have been this year.

"The goal is to get past that"

Yeah, well don't all coaches say that?

There are people like you in every fan base. The new boss will alway be the savior who is better than the old boss. Maybe Fleck will be but we'll see.

Does taking a step back to achieve that really matter?


If you have empirical evidence that having a terrible year in college sports makes a team better in the long run and improves chances for success in the future, please give us the citation. This isn't pro sports where terrible years get you higher draft picks.
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-The way people revere the 9 wins of last year you could have fooled me.
-Mediocre and Average are synonyms. So nice paragraph on how dumb my wording was. Also I don't really care that average in a good conference means better than average on the college football landscape as a whole.
-I don't think the new boss will always be the savior, but I give them a chance. I don't sit and pine for the average past. In my 33 years of life I'd take the success of any other team in the conference other than Indiana and Rutgers, that's just me personally.
-I didn't say having a bad year makes a team better. Does having an average year make it any more likely that a team will be great two-three years later? I'm saying having a bad year doesn't prevent a team from having a great year just down the road. And if we do happen to have a great season in the near future, I am not going to look back and think yeah this year was great, but I'm still bummed about that 5-7 year.
 

btowngopher said:
-Mediocre and Average are synonyms.
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Not quite. In usage, mediocre implies a lower or lackluster quality. Average may or may not have a qualitative meaning. Average simply describes a placement result (mean, median, or occasionally mode). An average result can be pretty good or pretty bad depending upon the reference group. Minnesota, as an average Big Ten team, won 60.4% of its regular season games over the last four years. That's actually pretty good.

I supported the coaching change but I didn't see anything with this program that needed to be torn down and rebuilt. I just thought Fleck might have higher recruiting upside.

I'm not sure why you brought up your "33 years of life." Not particularly noteworthy to someone who is 60 years old.
 

Gopher028 said:
HUGE difference from what Kill took over to what Fleck took over.

PJ didnt have to start all over and rebuild a program, he simply chose to...and this is the result.
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For the love people. Coyle hired Fleck to do it his way. He’s going to do it his way. Enjoy the ride!
 

cjbfbp said:
Not quite. In usage, mediocre implies a lower or lackluster quality. Average may or may not have a qualitative meaning. Average simply describes a placement result (mean, median, or occasionally mode). An average result can be pretty good or pretty bad depending upon the reference group. Minnesota, as an average Big Ten team, won 60.4% of its regular season games over the last four years. That's actually pretty good.

I supported the coaching change but I didn't see anything with this program that needed to be torn down and rebuilt. I just thought Fleck might have higher recruiting upside.

I'm not sure why you brought up your "33 years of life." Not particularly noteworthy to someone who is 60 years old.
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I guess I could have just said since Northwestern's last rose bowl in 1996 instead of my lifetime.
 

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