BleedGopher
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per the Spokesman-Review:
We all know that there are optimists in life who see the world for what it can become, and pessimists who see it for what it fails to be.
There are some world-is-ending nihilists, too, but they don’t care about college football and so we don’t care about them.
In the sporting world, we finally have a litmus test you can use to test your friends and figure out whether or not you belong to the same tribe. Just ask them what they thought of Minnesota’s football season.
The optimist will tell you that the Golden Gophers, who finished with a good-but-not-great 8-4 record, were just a couple of plays a way from being in the College Football Playoffs conversation. And he or she would be right. Minnesota did not lose a game by more than a touchdown until the regular-season finale, on the road at No. 6 Wisconsin, and the Golden Gophers held a fourth quarter lead in that game.
They played good teams close – all that outrage over Penn State not making the playoffs was on behalf of a team that only beat Minnesota by three at home. And they did what they had to against the bad teams, winning by an average of 14.8 points during a four-game winning streak against Big Ten teams.
But those pessimists have some points, too.
Minnesota did not beat a single ranked team in 2016 and benefited from a Big Ten slate bereft of conference heavyweights Michigan and Ohio State. The Golden Gophers just barely squeaked past Oregon State in the season opener, and they only beat Rutgers (2-10, 0-9 Big Ten) by two points.
The team is ranked outside the top 30 in scoring offense and scoring defense, never establishing an identity outside of a pretty decent pass defense, which recently lost multiple key players to suspension.
http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2016/dec/21/analysis-optimists-pessimists-would-have-different/
Go Gophers!!
We all know that there are optimists in life who see the world for what it can become, and pessimists who see it for what it fails to be.
There are some world-is-ending nihilists, too, but they don’t care about college football and so we don’t care about them.
In the sporting world, we finally have a litmus test you can use to test your friends and figure out whether or not you belong to the same tribe. Just ask them what they thought of Minnesota’s football season.
The optimist will tell you that the Golden Gophers, who finished with a good-but-not-great 8-4 record, were just a couple of plays a way from being in the College Football Playoffs conversation. And he or she would be right. Minnesota did not lose a game by more than a touchdown until the regular-season finale, on the road at No. 6 Wisconsin, and the Golden Gophers held a fourth quarter lead in that game.
They played good teams close – all that outrage over Penn State not making the playoffs was on behalf of a team that only beat Minnesota by three at home. And they did what they had to against the bad teams, winning by an average of 14.8 points during a four-game winning streak against Big Ten teams.
But those pessimists have some points, too.
Minnesota did not beat a single ranked team in 2016 and benefited from a Big Ten slate bereft of conference heavyweights Michigan and Ohio State. The Golden Gophers just barely squeaked past Oregon State in the season opener, and they only beat Rutgers (2-10, 0-9 Big Ten) by two points.
The team is ranked outside the top 30 in scoring offense and scoring defense, never establishing an identity outside of a pretty decent pass defense, which recently lost multiple key players to suspension.
http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2016/dec/21/analysis-optimists-pessimists-would-have-different/
Go Gophers!!
