Chip: Fleck's big task will be maintaining this season's energy for Gophers football

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BleedGopher

BleedGopher

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per Chip:

Gophers football has carried a fatalistic persona for too long. A well-earned persona, mind you, established through decades of heartbreak, flops and outright nonsense. Generations of fans have been raised to expect the worst possible outcome. Others simply preferred to tune out.

The program finally has energy. It has momentum. November felt different with big games, big crowds and the euphoria associated with being relevant. That’s the key word, relevant. College football matters in the Twin Cities. It has been a long time since that was true.

Fleck’s task now is to sustain it. The next step cannot be a ho-hum 7-5 season. Continue building with the goal of duplicating Wisconsin and Iowa’s consistency.

www.startribune.com

Fleck's big task will be maintaining this season's energy for Gophers football

Gophers football has carried a fatalistic persona for too long. A well-earned persona established through heartbreak, flops and outright nonsense. But now the program has energy it must sustain.
www.startribune.com www.startribune.com

Go Gophers!!
 

I agree 100%:

7-5 is not acceptable. The floor has to be 8-4, and that is absolutely achievable. Anything less than that has to be seen as a regression.
 

MplsGopher said:
I agree 100%:

7-5 is not acceptable. The floor has to be 8-4, and that is absolutely achievable. Anything less than that has to be seen as a regression.
Click to expand...
Anything less than 10-2 is regression. Any coach who stays here long enough will take steps forwards and steps backward (Bama regressed this year), so I'm not saying he should be ripped if we take a step or two back next year, but that's what 8 or 9 wins would be.

Biggest thing to keeping energy going would be to win a bowl so we have a nice taste in our mouth for offseason.
 

To maintain that energy, we need a better non-conference schedule to generate interest and energy earlier. Wisconsin went with this model early under Alvarez. They scheduled perennial top 10 Colorado for two years in a row. They got destroyed in both games but it created interest. Sometimes the lead up excitement to big games is more important than the result itself.
 

We're back at 2014 to 15 again.

We had momentum in 14 with a NYD bowl.

Then 15 happened :(
 


A_Slab_of_Bacon said:
We're back at 2014 to 15 again.

We had momentum in 14 with a NYD bowl.

Then 15 happened :(
Click to expand...

Same with 2000 after the good 1999 year (the most comparable to this/next year where the offense stayed good but the defense got worse), and 2004 after the good 2003 year. I'm hoping the D is able to step up with a bunch of new players next year.
 


Let’s win the bowl game and get to 11 wins
 

DocWrestling said:
To maintain that energy, we need a better non-conference schedule to generate interest and energy earlier. Wisconsin went with this model early under Alvarez. They scheduled perennial top 10 Colorado for two years in a row. They got destroyed in both games but it created interest. Sometimes the lead up excitement to big games is more important than the result itself.
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We should stop concerning ourselves with wins and losses. Instead, we focus on the lead up excitement to kickoff.

I like this approach.
 






This was a great line in the article from Chip and made me laugh a bit, but it is true:

"Fleck ranks recruiting alongside oxygen in importance, so he should continue to replenish talent with equal or better talent."
 



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