Gold Rush
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- Nov 20, 2008
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Like many of you on here, I have been really enjoying this season and just drinking it all in. You can see how many people really want to be involved with and support this program. I have had numerous people who are extremely casual sports fans getting excited about this team come up to me and talk about the Gophers (I am the resident expert at my work as I imagine most of you are, too.) This has been fun to watch. I have been waiting for this season for about 45 years since I first started watching this team! It's like a fever that is spreading and I have never seen anything quite like it.
I absolutely was crushed when Lou Holtz left here as were many others after two years. I always wondered what another couple years would have meant if he had stayed and I am convinced we would be in the Rose Bowl within a few more years. I also always wondered what would have happened if we would not have had the collapse vs. Michigan with Mase - we probably would have gone to the Rose Bowl THAT season. In both cases it looked like we were off to bigger and better things only to get victory get snatched away in the most brutal way possible.
But this year has been like hitting a reset button. If PJ Fleck stays for year 3, we are finally at the point we were at when Holtz was here, at least excitement wise. After we beat Penn St. - THAT is where we would have been at had we beaten Michigan. We are now in uncharted territory where Gopher fans simply have not been at before. This does not mean we are going to the national championship or winning the rest of our games for the rest of our lives, but it's just a very exciting place to be at and we should savor this as long as we can.
The Gophers continue to do things not done around here in 50 or more years. Next up - they have never won 7 Big Ten games in one season - ever.
We do not know how next season or the one after that will play out. The chances of being 9-0 again in the near future may never happen again given our history but we will go in with much higher hopes and expectations than before. When the Twins won the World Series in 1987 and again in 1991 the future looked bright but we never got back there again. But they DID make the most of their chances and pulled it out. So the point is we must savor this as much as possible and make the most out of it this year. We are building the foundation for a hopefully great future, but we may never see this again. We have got to leave it all out on the field and give it all we have got. With each win the stakes get a little higher and we can not afford to let up this wave of momentum. And at the end of the year, we can look back and be very happy and proud of this football team. For now though -- the only thing that matters is Iowa. Let's just take care of business and beat those guys and then we will focus on the next step. It's been very fun so far, hasn't it???
I absolutely was crushed when Lou Holtz left here as were many others after two years. I always wondered what another couple years would have meant if he had stayed and I am convinced we would be in the Rose Bowl within a few more years. I also always wondered what would have happened if we would not have had the collapse vs. Michigan with Mase - we probably would have gone to the Rose Bowl THAT season. In both cases it looked like we were off to bigger and better things only to get victory get snatched away in the most brutal way possible.
But this year has been like hitting a reset button. If PJ Fleck stays for year 3, we are finally at the point we were at when Holtz was here, at least excitement wise. After we beat Penn St. - THAT is where we would have been at had we beaten Michigan. We are now in uncharted territory where Gopher fans simply have not been at before. This does not mean we are going to the national championship or winning the rest of our games for the rest of our lives, but it's just a very exciting place to be at and we should savor this as long as we can.
The Gophers continue to do things not done around here in 50 or more years. Next up - they have never won 7 Big Ten games in one season - ever.
We do not know how next season or the one after that will play out. The chances of being 9-0 again in the near future may never happen again given our history but we will go in with much higher hopes and expectations than before. When the Twins won the World Series in 1987 and again in 1991 the future looked bright but we never got back there again. But they DID make the most of their chances and pulled it out. So the point is we must savor this as much as possible and make the most out of it this year. We are building the foundation for a hopefully great future, but we may never see this again. We have got to leave it all out on the field and give it all we have got. With each win the stakes get a little higher and we can not afford to let up this wave of momentum. And at the end of the year, we can look back and be very happy and proud of this football team. For now though -- the only thing that matters is Iowa. Let's just take care of business and beat those guys and then we will focus on the next step. It's been very fun so far, hasn't it???
