Best gophers football player ever

Donate To GopherHole

fan of Ray Williams said:
Upchurch has been mentioned a few times and of course only played a couple of years. Another guy with only a couple of years that carved out a very good pro career was Karl Mecklenburg.
Click to expand...

I'm glad you pointed out that Upchurch only played a couple of seasons with the Gophers. I did not mean to imply that Upchurch should be considered the best Gopher ever and probably wouldn't even make my top 10 list. I was thinking about skiumah77 and putting myself in his shoes. Except for what I have read over the years about different players, Upchurch is the first player I idolized and the only player I can recall from that pre-1975 era. It is a bit ironic that both skiumah77's favorite player and mine from when I was about his age both only played a couple of years for the U. Great minds do think alike ;-)
 


Nagurski. How good was he? one year, the College FB all-american team only listed 10 players (this was in the 1-platoon era). Nagurski was listed at two positions: Fullback and tackle.

After that, Giel, Smith, Brown and Bell probably make up the next group. Oh - almost forgot Leo Nomellini. College FB hall of fame, and as a pro, named all-pro at both OT and DT.
 

Nagurski made most of the all century teams. Before Bobby Bowden retired I heard him talking about Tebow after a loss to the Gators and he said it was like playing a team with Bronko Nagurski at quarterback. It's a hell of a thing when a guy is having comparisons drawn to him seventy years after he plays his last snap for his college team.

And then there's the plow thing...:)
 


Bobby Bell Could have started at any position on the team other than CB or safety and I mean any position.
 

A bull moose once wandered onto the field during a game. Nagurski wrestled it to the ground and ate it ... and the game resumed.

/Nagurski
 





mkAz said:
Good question. Of the players I have seen, 5 really stand out: Tyrone Carter, Greg Eslinger, Eric Decker, Karon Riley & Laurence Maroney. Historically, you'd have to consider Bronco Nagurski, Bobby Bell, Bruce Smith and Paul Giel. If I had to pick just one, I'd go with Bronco Nagurski, he was so good they named a Trophy after him.
Click to expand...
That and his hometown named their mascot after him.
 

No doubt it was Bronko Nagurski. He might have been the best college player ever.

Others have pointed out a lot of great names, I don't have a lot to add. Just that there were two halfbacks in my lifetime where you never knew what might happen, any time they touched the ball, and those guys were Darrell Thompson and Marion Barber III. My two favorites players ever.
 






Top Players In My Opinion (starting mid early to mid 90s)
Tyrone Carter, Eric Decker, Laurence Maroney, Greg Eslinger, Marion Barber III

Others worth mentioning
Mark Setterstrom, Ben Hamilton, Lamanzar Williams, Ron Johnson, David Cobb, Maxx Williams, Chris Darkins
 

Skiumah77 said:
Guys I'm 14 and I have only been watching the gophs for 4 years, in your opinion who is the best gophers player of all time mine is Maxx Williams (only watched 4 years)
Click to expand...

(Top 10) Aaron Brown E All American/1st round pick in draft Broke his Jaw during a game while playing with Gophers and just tightened his chin strap and kept playing.
 

All time greatest has to be Bronko, he's the only player in history, to be named All American on both offense and defense. The all time most underrated player was probably Gino Cappelletti, he was stuck behing Paul Geil until his senior year, then led the Gopher to a 7-2 record in 1954. His records in the AFL speak for themself.
 


Maxx was amazing - an All-American as a sophomore, very rare in Minnesota football history, and would have been a three-time All-American and Heisman candidate had he played four years. Never saw some of the old-timers like Nagurski who made All-American teams at two different positions, lineman and fullback - doubt if many players anywhere did that. The two best I've seen in person were Paul Giel who played 60 minute games on offense and defense, was the QB (wingback they called it then, but main cog in the offense), did all the punting, passing, and most of the running and played special teams; Leo Nomellini, who was a two-time consensus All-American at guard/tackle on Bierman's last great teams in the late '40s, then was all-pro for a lengthy career.
 

Skiumah77 said:
Guys I'm 14 and I have only been watching the gophs for 4 years, in your opinion who is the best gophers player of all time mine is Maxx Williams (only watched 4 years)
Click to expand...
I hope you see the Gophers in the Rose Bowl someday, kid.
 


fan of Ray Williams said:
Upchurch has been mentioned a few times and of course only played a couple of years. Another guy with only a couple of years that carved out a very good pro career was Karl Mecklenburg.
Click to expand...

Mecklenburg (Snow Goose!) is one of the all-time great Gophers stories, in my opinion. Always the underdog. Despite being an all-stater at Edina, he didn't receive even a whiff of a Big Ten offer coming out of high school. He was fast and explosive as hell, but he weighed about 190 and just wasn't big enough to attract any D-1 scholarship offers. He was offered as a walk-on here, but instead took the scholly to Augustana in South Dakota, played there for two years, blew that league up, put on some weight, transferred to the U as a walk-on for his junior season, immediately blew out his knee, but then when he came back he played and played quite well and played all over the field on defense. He was about as versatile a defensive player as you will ever see in modern football.

He was an afterthought though so far as his NFL prospects were concerned, because he was still considered just too small, and there wasn't a whole lot of market for a 230 lb. defensive lineman. It was when we played Northwestern in 1982 that NFL eyes got opened though. Every team in the NFL had scouts there to see Chris Hinton, who was by far the best left tackle in college football. Mecklenburg was lined up against him and absolutely schooled him, working him for two sacks and just running around, over, and through him all game long. Hinton ended up being the fourth player chosen in the 1983 NFL draft (and then was immediately traded to Indianapolis as part of the package for the rights to John Elway and ended up having a phenomenal professional career himself), while Mecklenburg went in the 12th round to Denver with very little expectation that he'd even survive the first days of training camp. But he blew Dan Reeves socks off with his versatility, his speed (those two aspects of his game always being his trademarks right up until the end of his career) and his strength, quickly becoming one of the strongest players on the Broncos, and then he just went on to six Pro Bowls and three Super Bowls and for the next decade plus became one of the best linebackers in football not named Lawrence Taylor.

He was always smart as hell too. Before he blew up as a player, he had plans of becoming a doctor, and he certainly had the brainpower to do so. Of all the draft eligible players who took the NFL's intelligence test prior to the 1983 draft, he scored the highest of all. But unfortunately he's one of the many players who suffered multiple concussions during his career, and he suffers from severe disorientation and memory lapses such that he'll suddenly find himself in places while having no awareness of where he actually is nor recollection of how he got there, which much be absolutely terrifying.

I had the pleasure of meeting him at a function in Denver back in the early 2000's and wow, he's just a wonderful human being. He is so inspirational, and just a really, really nice guy.
 

You must log in or register to reply here.



Top Bottom