BleedGopher
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per Chip:
HECTOR, MINN. – Deron Johnson was a teenager when Gophers great Darrell Thompson broke off a 98-yard touchdown run against Michigan in 1987. Johnson spent the rest of the afternoon mimicking that run.
He graduated from the Carlson School of Management in 1995 and has held Gophers football season tickets for 21 years. He can recall exactly where he was, the precise location, for memorable plays throughout his life.
Ask him about a game-winning play, a fourth-quarter comeback or a dropped snap on a punt against Wisconsin, and Johnson remembers where he was so precisely it's as if he's looking at GPS coordinates.
He wasn't inside the stadium or on his couch at home.
He was working on the farm, usually driving a combine during fall harvest.
"Some of my best Gophers moments have been out here listening," he said Saturday, as he maneuvered his John Deere combine through corn fields at Johnson Farms.
Listening to games on the radio because the harvest months of September and October make it nearly impossible for farmers to attend home games. Their days are long, the work too important, but their fandom for the Gophers and Vikings doesn't take a hiatus.
Farming and listening to football on fall weekends is a tale as old as time in outstate Minnesota.
"I grew up in the Murray Warmath era and listening to Ray Christensen," said Johnson's dad, Larry, who is 78 and retired but stays involved with the family business. A farmer's work ethic never retires.
Deron is a fifth-generation Johnson farmer in Renville County, dating to 1898 when his grandpa's grandpa purchased a 160-acre plot.
www.startribune.com
Go Gophers!!
HECTOR, MINN. – Deron Johnson was a teenager when Gophers great Darrell Thompson broke off a 98-yard touchdown run against Michigan in 1987. Johnson spent the rest of the afternoon mimicking that run.
He graduated from the Carlson School of Management in 1995 and has held Gophers football season tickets for 21 years. He can recall exactly where he was, the precise location, for memorable plays throughout his life.
Ask him about a game-winning play, a fourth-quarter comeback or a dropped snap on a punt against Wisconsin, and Johnson remembers where he was so precisely it's as if he's looking at GPS coordinates.
He wasn't inside the stadium or on his couch at home.
He was working on the farm, usually driving a combine during fall harvest.
"Some of my best Gophers moments have been out here listening," he said Saturday, as he maneuvered his John Deere combine through corn fields at Johnson Farms.
Listening to games on the radio because the harvest months of September and October make it nearly impossible for farmers to attend home games. Their days are long, the work too important, but their fandom for the Gophers and Vikings doesn't take a hiatus.
Farming and listening to football on fall weekends is a tale as old as time in outstate Minnesota.
"I grew up in the Murray Warmath era and listening to Ray Christensen," said Johnson's dad, Larry, who is 78 and retired but stays involved with the family business. A farmer's work ethic never retires.
Deron is a fifth-generation Johnson farmer in Renville County, dating to 1898 when his grandpa's grandpa purchased a 160-acre plot.
Minnesota farmers in the field aren't missing Gophers, Vikings
Football Across Minnesota: Harvest is a day-and-night, time-consuming operation throughout Minnesota. But farming and following football from the tractor is a longstanding tradition that has been aided by technology.
www.startribune.com
Go Gophers!!
