Scoggins Nails It

[Mulligan]

Why I think he's the best local writer around:

AARON LAVINSKY – STAR TRIBUNE
Gophers coach PJ Fleck celebrated with players during a team photo following their Outback Bowl victory against Auburn, part of a historic season.


CHIP SCOGGINS@CHIPSCOGGINS

Let us start here at the beginning with an exercise. Find a happy place. Picture your dream vacation destination.
See it? Hawaii perhaps. Or maybe some remote island with sugary white beaches and no shot at cell service.
You’ve saved up and waited forever for this getaway. Like, your entire life. Bags are packed. No work. No distractions. All you can see in your mind’s eye is paradise.
Sorry, vacation is canceled. Postponed actually. Maybe you’ll be able to go in seven months. But even that seems tenuous.
Pull up a chair. Fans of Gophers football are buying the first round.
What a kick in the pants for those patient souls. The Big Ten began playing football in 1896. Of all the seasons to be postponed by a global pandemic, it had to be this one?
The Gophers are coming off a historic season — one in which they won 11 games for the first time since 1904, finished with their highest ranking in the polls (No. 10) since 1962 and hosted “ESPN College GameDay” for the first time — sparking interest and enthusiasm, in this big-league market, not seen since the program’s heyday in the 1960s.
I feel bad for Gophers fans. I really do. The die-hards have lived through geezo-beezo; Nebraska 84, Gophers 13; Michigan ’03; 14 consecutive years Axe-less; Tim Brewster; a near boycott.
This fall in Dinkytown was supposed to be their version of Andy Dufresne’s prison escape in “Shawshank Redemption.” They crawled through 500 yards of foulness and came out the other side.
Then the world got turned upside down, and now Saturdays in the fall will be silent.

 

[BleedGopher]

per Chip:


The Gophers are coming off a historic season — one in which they won 11 games for the first time since 1904, finished with their highest ranking in the polls (No. 10) since 1962 and hosted “ESPN College GameDay” for the first time — sparking interest and enthusiasm, in this big-league market, not seen since the program’s heyday in the 1960s.

I feel bad for Gophers fans. I really do. The die-hards have lived through geezo-beezo; Nebraska 84, Gophers 13; Michigan ’03; 14 consecutive years Axe-less; Tim Brewster; a near boycott.

This fall in Dinkytown was supposed to be their version of Andy Dufresne’s prison escape in “Shawshank Redemption.” They crawled through 500 yards of foulness and came out the other side.

Then the world got turned upside down, and now Saturdays in the fall will be silent.

As one university employee so eloquently put it, “This stinks.”

Just when going gets good for Gophers football, health crisis takes the air out

Poor Gophers football: Just when the going gets good, a new adversary takes the air out

www.startribune.com

Go Gophers!!

 

[BilldGopher]

Tried to find a snakebit image but just is not out there.

It's the right term though for this program for the last 60 years save a few bright moments.

Problem is the bright times were merely moments...

On the right track though...just need for CFB to make it to the other side...whatever that means.

 

[upnorthkid]

the good news is it looks like PJ is building something sustainable so this program will be ready to rock on the other side

 

[KD6-3.7]

well, he may have some interesting points, but he’s not a good writer. the first half of that blog is filled with sentence fragments (“like, your entire life?” really?!) and his shawshank metaphor doesn’t follow his vacation exercise. how easy it could have been to begin the blog: “picture yourself on the eve of your parole from prison for a crime you did not commit...” and then end with the shawshank metaphor. i think that image better fits the theme of the blog post as well as the theme of gopher fandom’s 50-year exile.

and yes, i understand, he’s a paid writer and when you become a professional you can break the rules. but this is written for a newspaper, you’d think the editor would send this back for revisions.

 

[GringaGopher]

Literary critics aside his message is spot on.

 

[Mulligan]

well, he may have some interesting points, but he’s not a good writer. the first half of that blog is filled with sentence fragments (“like, your entire life?” really?!) and his shawshank metaphor doesn’t follow his vacation exercise. how easy it could have been to begin the blog: “picture yourself on the eve of your parole from prison for a crime you did not commit...” and then end with the shawshank metaphor. i think that image better fits the theme of the blog post as well as the theme of gopher fandom’s 50-year exile.

and yes, i understand, he’s a paid writer and when you become a professional you can break the rules. but this is written for a newspaper, you’d think the editor would send this back for revisions.

Unless this is a spoof, I take it you're a professional so you also can break the rules?