8 win seasons could be tough

[Gophers4ever6842]

Gophers are a small town team!!! We can’t beat the big city teams and we aren’t suppose to!!! Every win is an upset!!! 7-5 and bowls are fine with me! Compared to 80s/90s in which they were sooo bad!!! I’ll take it!!!

 

[Panthadad2]

For sure


Regardless of your schedule though the goal is to have a system that can sustain and win 6+ against the hard schedule and take advantage of the easy one.



I know the games vs power 5s non conference are fun. But we would be better served as a program playing absolute doormats.

Raises the floor by a game

I agree on the non-con scheduling since the 9 conference games are getting tougher with both the addition of good west coast teams and overall elevation of the BG10 with new $$$$. Pull an Indiana or SEC and schedule all G5/FCS. Heck, Indiana also gets the advantage of having Purdue as its only locked in opponent.

 

[USAF]

Gophers are a small town team!!! We can’t beat the big city teams and we aren’t suppose to!!! Every win is an upset!!! 7-5 and bowls are fine with me! Compared to 80s/90s in which they were sooo bad!!! I’ll take it!!!

I see Peter has made his way over from Twins Daily.

Same bit.

 

[Some guy]

I agree on the non-con scheduling since the 9 conference games are getting tougher with both the addition of good west coast teams and overall elevation of the BG10 with new $$$$. Pull an Indiana or SEC and schedule all G5/FCS. Heck, Indiana also gets the advantage of having Purdue as its only locked in opponent.

Purdue had that advantage in big ten west too of having bad Indiana locked.

 

[FanSinceTheFifties]

Going forward, the Gophers will dominate. They will recruit all the best players. They will coach with flawlessness and precision. And they will never again win fewer than 10 games in a season.

It's easy to recruit the best players. It's harder to get them to Minneapolis.

 

[Gophers4ever6842]

I see Peter has made his way over from Twins Daily.

Same bit.

We are both twins/gophers fans!!!!

 

[Arminius]

Tulane was 23-4 in the 2 seasons prior to Sumrall's arrival, including a Cotton Bowl win over USC and a top 10 finish in the AP Poll.

The top-40 reference I thought was about landing spots for HC's. Admittedly, I may have misinterpreted it.

Yet, your correction reinforced my point. A doormat gets Cignetti and in year-0 is in the CFP. Tulane loses a winning coach and replaces him with a winning coach.

Why are we content as a fan base with a 5-7GPA-7-5 bowl games...after nine years?

 

[Tucker32]

Enjoy this win and season. With the new climate of college football It ain’t gonna be easy for our Gophers to have 8 win plus seasons going forward. For those wishing Fleck would move on be extremely careful what you wish for. Minnesota is really lucky to have him. A lot of us don’t realize where Gopher football ranks as a coaching destination. I’d say it’s not in the top 40.

So dumb. Just be average and you win 8. Win three non-conference games and then beat likely at least three not very good teams out of nine on your Big Ten schedule, and then go 2-4 against the other six. All we needed to do to get to 8 wins this year was beat poor to bad teams without winning records. We were a below average to poor team ourselves.

 

[Some guy]

So dumb. Just be average and you win 8. Win three non-conference games and then beat likely at least three not very good teams out of nine on your Big Ten schedule, and then go 2-4 against the other six. All we needed to do to get to 8 wins this year was beat poor to bad teams without winning records. We were a below average to poor team ourselves.

This is pretty true until you get into specifics

The gophers lost to zero teams with losing records
One team without a winning record (northwestern)

 

[denguegopher]

Also 3 plays away from being 4-8. Rutgers C snapping it through AKs legs for instance in the shotgun.

Won some. Lost some.

Yes, we have little margin for error, similar to Rutgers and Wisconsin. One mistake at a key point, you lose the game.

 

[GooningGopher]

Going forward, the Gophers will dominate. They will recruit all the best players. They will coach with flawlessness and precision. And they will never again win fewer than 10 games in a season.

Ik you said this in jest but I’m bricked up reading this

 

[maroonfive]

It's easy to recruit the best players. It's harder to get them to Minneapolis.

That makes zero sense. It is a lazy excuse.

 

[TwistingMyMelon]

The Gophers were 3-1 in one score games this year which means they were literally a couple plays from anything between 4-8 and 8-4.

They were 3-4 in one score games last season (WINS: USC, UCLA, Illinois; LOSSES: UNC, Michigan, Penn State, Rutgers).

 

[bleedsmaroonandgold]

We could have gone 9-3 without needing to win a single game against a major conference team with a winning conference record. Easier said than done, but we can get to 8 wins without needing to upset the Ohio States or Oregons or even Iowas of the world.

Not poo pooing our big Axe victory. I am still amped after last night's game. I am just not a fan of constantly pre-baking excuses in for disappointing future results.

 

[Some guy]

We could have gone 9-3 without needing to win a single game against a major conference team with a winning conference record.

Easier said than done, but we can get to 8 wins without needing to upset the Ohio States or Oregons or even Iowas of the world.

Not poo pooing our big Axe victory. I am still amped after last night's game. I am just not a fan of constantly pre-baking excuses in for disappointing future results.

Agree

Hell Tennessee didn’t beat a team going to a bowl all year and is in the top 25 most of the year

 

[Some Day...Maybe]

I would love to see the math behind your take

The variance in the new schedule is huge.

What if the gophers played UCLA and Penn State instead of Ohio state and Oregon this year?

The way the schedules work now, hard schedules will be harder, easy schedules will be easier.

Probably harder to draw a 12-0 schedule.
Probably easier to draw a 10-2 schedule.

I think it's going to be more competitive because I think Minnesota will rank near the bottom of NIL and over time that will hurt Minnesota more than most schools. I think it is tougher for Minnesota in the NIL world than it was before the NIL world. I can't think of many Big Ten schools that will invest less in football than Minnesota. Hopefully Fleck can keep things rolling.

 

[GooningGopher]

Enjoy this win and season. With the new climate of college football It ain’t gonna be easy for our Gophers to have 8 win plus seasons going forward. For those wishing Fleck would move on be extremely careful what you wish for. Minnesota is really lucky to have him. A lot of us don’t realize where Gopher football ranks as a coaching destination. I’d say it’s not in the top 40.

Brother, please save the emo posting for 72 hours after winning the ax wtf.

 

[Some Day...Maybe]

We could have gone 9-3 without needing to win a single game against a major conference team with a winning conference record. Easier said than done, but we can get to 8 wins without needing to upset the Ohio States or Oregons or even Iowas of the world.

Not poo pooing our big Axe victory. I am still amped after last night's game. I am just not a fan of constantly pre-baking excuses in for disappointing future results.

Could have easily gone 5-7 or 4-8 this season too. If fact, I think a lot easier than going 9-3. We need wealthy people to invest in this program to have a chance at 8 or 9 regular season wins in the NIL era.

 

[FanSinceTheFifties]

That makes zero sense. It is a lazy excuse.

It's easy to recruit a prospect -- i.e. contact him, interview him, offer him a position. It's harder to get that candidate to accept a position.

 

[Some guy]

I think it's going to be more competitive because I think Minnesota will rank near the bottom of NIL and over time that will hurt Minnesota more than most schools. I think it is tougher for Minnesota in the NIL world than it was before the NIL world. I can't think of many Big Ten schools that will invest less in football than Minnesota. Hopefully Fleck can keep things rolling.

Yeah maybe. I assumed you meant new big ten like post expansion

If you assume they’re going to have the cheapest roster in the conference winning will be harder yes

 

[TwistingMyMelon]

Cignetti and in year-0 is in the CFP. Tulane loses a winning coach and replaces him with a winning coach.

Why are we content as a fan base with a 5-7GPA-7-5 bowl games...after nine years?

You gave two examples where hiring a new coach paid off beyond expectations. Now, go spend hours finding all of the examples where the reverse happened.

I'll just give two examples off the top of my head.

1) Nebraska fired Bo Pelini after a 9 win season. He was succeeded by Mike Riley, Scott Frost, and Matt Rhule. None of them has done as well as Pelini and there has been only one 9 win season in the 11 years since he was fired.

2) Paul Chryst was fired by Wisconsin after compiling a 67-26 record (72%) in 8 years there. His successor has compiled a 17-21 record in three years there.

I was criticized for saying this around here but it's a valid conclusion. I'm fine with following a team that can be expected to win 7 or 8 regular season games and a bowl win most seasons and may have a season better or worse than that periodically. If that's not good enough for you, you should investigate better teams to follow and start watching them. Now, if you're willing and able to fork over millions to the U of M athletic department for funding the football program, that's a different story.