Nine Years Ago Today...

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I wasn't going to, but I just can't resist wallowing in the 2003 Michigan loss. It was like the sky parted and the football gods were saying "Welcome to the next level!" only to have it all snatched away. It will be a great day when this loss ceases to be "living history". A Big Ten championship would do it, maybe a divisional championship or a New Year's Day bowl would as well. Once we get what slipped out of our fingers in 2003, it will close a lot of wounds.
 

I don't remember many specifics of the game itself, but this night is forever memorable for two reasons:

1. My nearly blackout-drunk friend throwing me clothesline-style (a la WWE) into an occupied port-a-potty in the Metrodome parking lot in a fit of rage after the game.

2. Same obnoxiously drunk friend piling onto the hoods of several cars sitting idly in traffic as we crossed streets on our way back to our West Bank parking spot.
 

dpodoll68 said:
I don't remember many specifics of the game itself, but this night is forever memorable for two reasons:

1. My nearly blackout-drunk friend throwing me clothesline-style (a la WWE) into an occupied port-a-potty in the Metrodome parking lot in a fit of rage after the game.

2. Same obnoxiously drunk friend piling onto the hoods of several cars sitting idly in traffic as we crossed streets on our way back to our West Bank parking spot.
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This might explain why you were so pro the beer garden. The good news is that you probably will never have to relive that memory or should I say nightmare.
 

dpodoll68 said:
I don't remember many specifics of the game itself, but this night is forever memorable for two reasons:

1. My nearly blackout-drunk friend throwing me clothesline-style (a la WWE) into an occupied port-a-potty in the Metrodome parking lot in a fit of rage after the game.

2. Same obnoxiously drunk friend piling onto the hoods of several cars sitting idly in traffic as we crossed streets on our way back to our West Bank parking spot.
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Sounds like either AT, or DH, but I'm leaning AT...
 

I debated if I should even read through this thread. At first I avoided it. Now I have returned and I'm glad I did. It is at least nice to share the pain with others as we remember that night. I think I have shared my own story of that night on Gopher Hole before but if not here was my situation:

I did not yet have season tickets at that time and I was pretty heavy into my OTHER passion: walleye fishing. October/November is prime trophy time for walleyes and in those days I never missed fall FULL MOON trolling for walleyes. So, there I was... 3.5 hours north of the Twin Cities on Woman Lake in my boat, taking advantage of the full moon and I felt like I was at the crossroads of all the things that make me happy. I had clear sky, full moon, one walleye after another, and the best Gopher game I have ever heard playing on my boat radio. I was fishing with a casual Gopher fan and I remember being almost a little embarrassed about how I was going on and on about the game. I wouldn't shut up about it and I was pinching myself thinking about the Rose Bowl.

As the game turned... the fishing just became un-fun and I basically went through the motions the rest of the night. From that night forward, I have only been able to make myself fish that exact spot/reef a couple times, and even when on boat rides that pass over that spot I get flashbacks to that night.

I was so distant compared to anyone that was at that game, or even watching it on TV... but for some reason the memories are even more intense and I have had a favorite fishing spot tainted for life.
 



Get over it already !!!!!!!!!!!! Here's to a string of great comebacks.


Go Gophers
 

"Nine Years Ago Today..."

The beauty of aging for me. I had forgotten all of this. :)
 

Dr.Don said:
"Nine Years Ago Today..."

The beauty of aging for me. I had forgotten all of this. :)
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Ask Red Sox fans if they've forgot the ground ball that went through Bill Buckner's
legs ( hit by Mookie Wilson/ New York Mets) There was an Old Timers game several years later and
they booed Buckner off the field. Doc, I'm up there with you age wise, but that game will always be a recurring nightmare whenever we play Michigan.
 



I was there...I just remember a lot of fans leaving after the game saying "The Gophers suck" and "I will never go to another Gopher game again". Sad time in Gopher history.
 

I was so mad that night a vein in my eyeball burst - leaving the white part of my eye red for weeks. My friends refer to it as "the night that Glen Mason made your eyeball blow up".

9 years later and I couldn't watch that tape. I can't even watch the youtube video posted in this thread.

Call me what you will, but with the conference championship game now an extra hurdle to our ever making the Rose Bowl... well, I think our hopes for playing in Pasadena died with Glen's refusal to do something, anything, different on defense to try to stop that same effing screen pass over and over and over. Reminds me of watching the Glen's Gophers rush two, count 'em two, people entire games against people like Philip Rivers and Drew Brees.
 

Please tell me, why are we re-living this painful day again? Beat NWU, that's all that currently matters.
 

The sadness.

It is overpowering still.

I can't even pretend to joke about it.

Soul-crushing.
 



Jike Spingleton said:
The greatest high I've had as a Gopher fan was sitting in the student section that night as we entered the fourth quarter, with a packed house chanting "We Want The Jug!"
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I dunno. Doing the dancing-rebel-with-six-shooters in Tempe was kind of fun.

While it lasted.
 

Replacement Gopher said:
I was so mad that night a vein in my eyeball burst - leaving the white part of my eye red for weeks. My friends refer to it as "the night that Glen Mason made your eyeball blow up".
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xxxxxx
I am assuming that you have fully recovered from vein bursting, but that is funny as hell! And I never thought that there would be a day that I found anything funny about that loss to Michigan .
 

it was even worse. My buddy get a DWI on the way home, I went to jail for an unpaid speeding ticket.

Worst night ever for a gopher fan. GODAMMIT!
 



I was so stooooopid, I was talking Bigten championship in the third effing quarter.
 






If you did not give up on them that night, you never will.
 

I remember playing football that night and every time there was a stop of the clock the announcers would update the crowd how the Gophers were doing. After the game, I remember hurrying back to change and get in my car to listen to it on the radio. The only good part about it was that I lost reception the last part of the game and didn't have to listen to the entire comeback.
 

I was amazed at the crowd - the Metrodome packed to the rafters with maroon and gold; I didn't think we were home free until our lead became 21. I was wrong. I still don't understand why the Gopher corners were providing such a big cushion and why we didn't blitz more - do something! We just let it happen. The loss stands with '49 Purdue, '56 Iowa, '61 and '62 Wisconsin, as a game that robbed the Gophers of a B10 title and Rose Bowl.
 

That was the first Gopher game I attended at the dome following my graduation from UW where I was not cheering my alma mater but instead my boyhood team, the Gophers.

I remember chanting "We want the jug".

I remember wanting to punch the rich Michigan kid down the aisle who was screaming wildly throughout the comeback. He was the quintessential "Born on 3rd base and thought he hit a triple" kind of a kid. It looked like his parents were alums and had flown the whole family in, assuming they'd win, of course. Funny how you can tell so much about a person just by looking at them. :)

I became a season ticket holder the following year.
 

I hate myself a little bit for opening up this thread. That game was one of the biggest disappointments in a lifetime full of them as a Gopher fan. The real kick in the nuts is the Gophers somehow lost a 28-7 lead in the 4th quarter...and they actually scored themselves in the quarter! It was a defensive meltdown from a team/coach who made an art of them.

The rest of the 2003 season seems to be "misremembered" (copyright Roger Clemens) by a lot of Gopher fans. The Gophers still could have went 7-1 in conference play if they just won two games they were favored in: at home against MSU and on the road against Iowa (I believe the Iowa game was only like Gophers -1.5), but they lost both. The Gophers ended that season in a 3 way tie for 4th place in the Big Ten, but they lost to the two teams they tied with (MSU and Iowa). The Gophers had a favorable schedule (missing 6-2 Purdue and 6-2 Ohio State) and still essentially finished 6th in an 11 team conference. Maybe things would have been different if they don't pull one of the all time collapses against Michigan, but the Gophers of that era had a bad habit of losing almost all the coin flip games that they really needed to win to get over the hump (see their record against Purdue/Iowa).
 

When Khaliq threw the pick 6, I thought "we're going to lose." Of course, then Khaliq turns around and scores on a long TD run putting us up 14 again and I breathed a sigh of relief. Which, of course, only made the next 11 minutes all the more painful.
 

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