....it would turn down a bowl game and focus on next season after such an inept performance against a bad Michigan State team...AT HOME. Instead, the Gophers are going to waste their time preparing for a worthless bowl game and continue to embarass themselves. Downright aweful game today.
I was going to ask if any team ever had turned down a bowl game out of pride, but unfortunately, according to Unregistered User, a team has done that, which, as he said, is a lame thing to do to the seniors, and just kind of dumb because there really isn't a negative to going to the bowl game. Ohio State and Florida, teams that have played for national titles in the last 10 years, still took their 6 or 7 win teams to the Gator Bowl last year, and those programs are on a completely different level than ours. Have you ever seen anyone knock a team for not turning down a bowl bid, much less a team that is frequently finishes toward the bottom of its conference?
Now Michigan St is a good team after they destroyed Minnesota physically. Funny how that works after all sumner and fall this board was all about how Minnesota only lost to MSU last year by 7 and MSU isn't that good this year. All the post about how Minnesota "should" win this game and they matchup weill against the Spartans.
Now everything is totally different.
Michigan State lost 5 conference games by a total of 13 points. Our closest conference loss was by 8, all of our other conference losses were by more than two touchdowns. Michigan State was ranked top 10 going into the season. We haven't been ranked since 2008. I thought this was a pretty good opportunity for a win, a better one than I thought it was at the beginning of the season, but Michigan State is a better team than we are and a 16 point loss isn't surprising or anything to get really worked up about in my opinion. Their three cross-division games were against Indiana, Wisconsin, and Ohio State, and they beat Wisconsin at Camp Randall. We played Illinois, Wisconsin, and Purdue. They were one game behind us going into this game, with a harder conference schedule, and a non-conference schedule with two ranked teams on it. The win/loss records do not tell the full story, Michigan State is a better team than Minnesota right now.
I'm a little surprised at how down some people are on Gopher football right now, apparently 6 wins in season 2 just isn't enough. It isn't great, but it's certainly not terrible for a program like ours. I guess maybe I'm just too hyped on the basketball team right now after our wins against Stanford and Memphis, and so this loss to Michigan State just isn't bothering me that much.
