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John Galt

John Galt

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Check out the history of our Gophers on Wikipedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_history_of_Minnesota_Golden_Gophers_football

Some notables:

1. Back in 1882, we lost to Hamline 2-0 at the fairgrounds.
2. In 1883, we lost to something called the "Ex-Collegiates" and Carleton 4-2
3. We lost to Shattuck in Faribault multiple times, in 1886, 1888, and 1889.

Now for the good news: we turned it all around and beat Wisconsin 63-0 in 1890 and went 5-1-1, with the only hiccups being those "Ex-Collegiates."

Point is, just when it looked most bleak for those early Gophers, they eventually turned it around.
Here's hoping Jerry Kill's squad does the same real soon.

Ski-U-Mah
 

The Gophers had a 6-3-1 record against the Ex-Collegiates, and a 2-1 record against Alumni. I know who the Alumni were, obviously, but I'm not sure who the Ex-Collegiates were. Presumably, they were former college players from different colleges. It might be interesting to know more about them.

I found a book from 1914 called "Football at Minnesota: the story of thirty years' contests on the gridiron" It's is available for download as a free e-book at this link from Google Books: http://books.google.com/books?id=vH...v=onepage&q="ex-collegiates" football&f=false

Back in those early days, there wasn't a distinction between the levels of football. Hamline had a nationally ranked basketball team in the 1930's, they could have been Division I if they hadn't decided to stick with the MIAC schools. Grinnell used to be a regular opponent, Minnesota has an 11-2-2 record against them. They tied with the Gophers in 1899, but in the next four games, Minnesota beat them by an average of 78.25 points, including 102-0 in 1902, and 146-0 in 1904. The teams were moving apart. It's a sort of forgotten period in football history that I find interesting.
 

I can say with certainty that 1882 was not a rebuilding year for the Gophers.
 

I vote that we add Grinnell to the 2015 schedule.
 

As the scores indicate to a certain extent, the modern game didn't really develop until 1911. That's right, we should be celebrating the 100th anniversary of modern football this year! What do I mean by modern? Standardization of 4 downs to get 10 yards, 6pt TD, 3pt FG, football pointed at the ends so it was pass-able. Before 1911, you had variations on all those rules plus a rugby-style ball that was near impossible to throw for much distance. The game was more like a hybrid of rugby and football than what we think of football now. Even more odd, initially, TD's didn't even get you a score, you just got a chance to kick the XP, which was worth 2. Thus, you have 2-0 and 4-2 scores. Anyway, football's come a long ways but it's been somewhat stable since 1911 at least.
 


They are 3-2, with victories over Macalaster, Lake Forest and Beloit.
 

There are a lot of ideas when to consider the game "modern". The legalization of the forward pass in 1906 is one, others rather arbitrarily use the end of WWII. That matters for certain purposes, when the rules have changed so much that comparing records from different eras gets to be difficult.

But while the rules have changed a lot from the beginning, the football that know is a direct descendant of these early games, and they all count. I'm hoping that Rutgers and Princeton decide to play a game in 2019, to commemorate the 150th anniversary of intercollegiate football. Sure the rules have changed greatly, but it's still football.
 

I'm still pissed about that loss to Hamline.

Don't mention that 63-0 drubbing of Wisconsin to anybody. Don't need any bulletin board material that will give the Badgers extra motivation to reverse that result this year.
 

From the e-book at the above link:

The beginning of football at Minnesota is not easy to trace with any degree of certainty. The Ariel, the student publication, devoted very little space, in the early days, to athletics and the chronicling of athletic contests. The first mention of football is found in the Ariel, in the issue of October
30th, 1878, almost a year after the first number was issued. The Ariel says, "Football
has been the all-absorbing amusement for
the past few weeks." The Ariel then goes
on to state that in a game between the
freshman and sophomore class, played Oc
tober l2th, 1878, the freshmen won; it is
suggested that this result was due to the
fact that, "the freshmen outnumbered the
sophomores." The following Saturday, Oc
tober l9th, another game was played by the
same parties, with "even sides" and the
sophomores won by a score of six to five.
The same season the Third and Fourth class-es, corresponding to two years of prepara-tory work below the freshman class, played
a game which was won by the Fourth class.
The account reads, "Still the ball rolls and
we are anxiously waiting for some one to
get his head knocked off and give us a
boss' item." It appears that the Fourth
class were so set-up by their victory that
they challenged the seniors and the faculty
to a game, which was declined.

*****

Sorry that the above is a mess.
 



This book is really a fascinating look at Gophers history. It's a scanned PDF, so it is images rather than text. I'm going to run it through an OCR and get it converted to a text file, then I will post it. There are some interesting pitures in the PDF. I like the one with Goldy mounting a Beaver pelt on the wall.
 

Wow, I didn't realize that we had the same coaching situation in 1882 and 1892 as we did from 2007 to 2010-1/2. The only difference is we won half our games that first year and went undefeated in 1892.
 


RodentRampage said:
This book is really a fascinating look at Gophers history. It's a scanned PDF, so it is images rather than text. I'm going to run it through an OCR and get it converted to a text file, then I will post it. There are some interesting pitures in the PDF. I like the one with Goldy mounting a Beaver pelt on the wall.
Click to expand...
My wife got me a book called "Gophers Illustrated" by Al Papas, Jr. I think it was like $25, but there are some really cool old drawings of places the Gophers used to play, legends throughout the years and a drive-by-drive chart from several of the greatest games.
 



Did it have a yellow cover? I remember it being entitled "Gopher Sketchbook", if we are thinking of the same book.
 

It is called GOPHER SKETCHBOOK. I have an old copy.

And, things have never been better for Gopher Fans: "...these are the good old days..."
(Carley Simon)

; 0 )
 



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