STrib: Are we sufficiently excited for 7-2 Gophers vs. 7-2 Nebraska?

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gopherdudepart2 said:
I don't think were going to win either(Big 10 Referees will make sure of it) and we will see the Gophers playing two opponents on Saturday Big 10 officials and Nebraska. But it is no surprise that the Twin Cities media all expects Nebraska to route the Gophers.
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B1G Commissioner met with B1G officials and worked out a plan to stop the Gophers from winning the B1G West at any cost.


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Word said:
I am not a conspiracy theory guy - more of a "referees are human" idea. They will tend to favor the home team, especially when there are large crowds (I hear Nebraska draws large crowds).
See: https://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2013/apr/28/referees-home-team-sean-ingle
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Interesting read and there is definitely something to the concept but that is not what Gopherdude was saying. He and others love to float the idea that the conferences are somehow manipulating the games (and always against us) in order to get an outcome they want. Of course they don't have proof other than attributing a bad or missed call to some sort of intentional mistake as opposed to just human error.
 

Hoping for a Gopher win but expecting a Gopher loss. I don't think this football team is as good as a 7-2 Nebraska and a 7-2 Wisconsin.
 

MNVCGUY said:
Interesting read and there is definitely something to the concept but that is not what Gopherdude was saying. He and others love to float the idea that the conferences are somehow manipulating the games (and always against us) in order to get an outcome they want. Of course they don't have proof other than attributing a bad or missed call to some sort of intentional mistake as opposed to just human error.
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Yeah, I definitely don't think there is a league conspiracy. I was just throwing it out there as an alternate explanation for a possibility that Nebraska will get some home cooking.
 

Gopher2017 said:
Hoping for a Gopher win but expecting a Gopher loss. I don't think this football team is as good as a 7-2 Nebraska and a 7-2 Wisconsin.
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I don't think we are as good as Wisconsin, not totally convinced we aren't on a very similar footing as Nebraska though. They have wins over Northwestern and Wyoming who are both quality teams but they have not played a brutal schedule to date (Oregon looks impressive on paper but this is a very down year for the Ducks). Would give them a slight edge over us (especially if Armstrong plays) but wouldn't say the gap is all that large.
 


Some great Twins analysis going on over on 1500 ESPN.
 

Your a Gopher fan correct?

MNVCGUY said:
And the Big Ten's motivation to commit fraud and risk destroying the reputation of the conference to put Nebraska over the top would be what exactly?

Heck if they were going to cheat for a team to win it would make far more sense to cheat in our favor in order to setup a potential matchup of 2 - 9-2 teams playing for the Big Ten West title in Camp Randall in a few weeks.

But feel free to run with your conspiracy theories about it being rigged ahead of time, our fans are great at assuming the officials and conference are out to get us even when there is really no reason why they would be.
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The phantom hold call against Minnesota in Camp Randall two years ago, or the bogus Tommy Olson penalty when we were rolling in Madison in 2014 anyone? Completely changed momentum in that football game. The brutal targeting flag against Ohio State when Minnesota was on the move and the Big 10 officials picked up the flag even though all replays showed it was targeting and clearly helmet to helmet contact.
How many times have you seen Mitch get hit in the head or jaw area like the Iowa game this year with no penalty or targeting called for the Minnesota QB.

Minnesota football gets jobbed by Big 10 officiating it's a fact of life. You have to deal with it and overcome. Minnesota is one of the most historically penalized teams in the Big 10 conference. Pretty clear that Minnesota is not a favored team of relevance like Nebraska "National name" and Wisconsin, plus bowl pecking order and travel of fan bases plays a role. The bowl pecking order actually benefits Minnesota in that more teams get in and they get more revenue because of that.
Big 10 officiating bias is real when you're at the bottom or mid tier it's something you play against and have to practice for. Minnesota players have to overcome it and play harder against the cheats that is all. May be chicken little and whiney, but the bias does happen, seen it to much even in our own stadium not to believe it.
 

MNVCGUY said:
Interesting read and there is definitely something to the concept but that is not what Gopherdude was saying. He and others love to float the idea that the conferences are somehow manipulating the games (and always against us) in order to get an outcome they want. Of course they don't have proof other than attributing a bad or missed call to some sort of intentional mistake as opposed to just human error.
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Your kidding if you don't think gambling on College games, plays a roll and the human nature of bias, or reputation of a program. It exists for all Big programs, and yes those big programs sometimes just have better players.
 

Gonna be a fun watch on Saturday night. How often do you get to see you get to see the Gophers playing under the lights in prime time.
Like the players like to say ALL IN! ALL OUT, this will be a fun Gopher game to watch. Go Gophers.
 



If there is officiating bias - I suspect it runs more along these lines:

(B1G supervisor to refs) "The Gophers get a lot of targeting calls. Better be looking out for any questionable hits when the Gophers are on defense."

in other words, the Gophers only have themselves to blame. They know (or should know) they're being scrutinized more closely by the officials, but they keep going in high enough on tackles to draw the refs' attention. Last I checked, it's still legal to tackle the ball carrier or receiver at or below the waist. You can argue it's not fair - but this is one of those cases where perception trumps reality, and the perception is that the Gophers are head-hunters.
 

gopherdudepart2 said:
The phantom hold call against Minnesota in Camp Randall two years ago, or the bogus Tommy Olson penalty when we were rolling in Madison in 2014 anyone? Completely changed momentum in that football game. The brutal targeting flag against Ohio State when Minnesota was on the move and the Big 10 officials picked up the flag even though all replays showed it was targeting and clearly helmet to helmet contact.
How many times have you seen Mitch get hit in the head or jaw area like the Iowa game this year with no penalty or targeting called for the Minnesota QB.

Minnesota football gets jobbed by Big 10 officiating it's a fact of life. You have to deal with it and overcome. Minnesota is one of the most historically penalized teams in the Big 10 conference. Pretty clear that Minnesota is not a favored team of relevance like Nebraska "National name" and Wisconsin, plus bowl pecking order and travel of fan bases plays a role. The bowl pecking order actually benefits Minnesota in that more teams get in and they get more revenue because of that.
Big 10 officiating bias is real when you're at the bottom or mid tier it's something you play against and have to practice for. Minnesota players have to overcome it and play harder against the cheats that is all. May be chicken little and whiney, but the bias does happen, seen it to much even in our own stadium not to believe it.
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See the thing is that every fanbase across the country could point out a handful of examples like you did of a time when a ref made a bad call against their team. That doesn't mean the ref was cheating it was just a bad call.

Look at the board, when we win you hear very little about the officials (outside of this last game in regards to the Rallis targeting), when we lose there are countless threads blaming the refs for the loss. And this is not exclusive to Minnesota, fans always want to make it into some big conspiracy, "my team didn't get beat fairly, the refs and the conference were out to get us."

Refs make mistakes, bad calls....it happens because they are being asked to do an insanely tough job (don't believe me go ref a high school or youth game and see how easy that is then multiply the pressure by 1,000,0000). But just because they made a bad call it doesn't mean there was intent behind it or some direction from the conference to cheat in order to change the outcome of the game. Don't you think if wide scale cheating/game fixing was going on somebody in the media might have picked up on it? I mean if the cheating is so obvious to the fanbase why is it that it hasn't been blown up as a National Scandal yet?
 

short ornery norwegian said:
If there is officiating bias - I suspect it runs more along these lines:

(B1G supervisor to refs) "The Gophers get a lot of targeting calls. Better be looking out for any questionable hits when the Gophers are on defense."

in other words, the Gophers only have themselves to blame. They know (or should know) they're being scrutinized more closely by the officials, but they keep going in high enough on tackles to draw the refs' attention. Last I checked, it's still legal to tackle the ball carrier or receiver at or below the waist. You can argue it's not fair - but this is one of those cases where perception trumps reality, and the perception is that the Gophers are head-hunters.
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And yet, don't they teach to tackle with your head up?
It's confusing...
 

Wisky has 2 penalties in the last 3 games. They are historically not flagged although the holding is obvious and often.

Explain.
 



MNVCGUY said:
See the thing is that every fanbase across the country could point out a handful of examples like you did of a time when a ref made a bad call against their team. That doesn't mean the ref was cheating it was just a bad call.

Look at the board, when we win you hear very little about the officials (outside of this last game in regards to the Rallis targeting), when we lose there are countless threads blaming the refs for the loss. And this is not exclusive to Minnesota, fans always want to make it into some big conspiracy, "my team didn't get beat fairly, the refs and the conference were out to get us."

Refs make mistakes, bad calls....it happens because they are being asked to do an insanely tough job (don't believe me go ref a high school or youth game and see how easy that is then multiply the pressure by 1,000,0000). But just because they made a bad call it doesn't mean there was intent behind it or some direction from the conference to cheat in order to change the outcome of the game. Don't you think if wide scale cheating/game fixing was going on somebody in the media might have picked up on it? I mean if the cheating is so obvious to the fanbase why is it that it hasn't been blown up as a National Scandal yet?
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I see your point, but still think gambling money has influence on how games are officiated by humans. I do think because of the disparity in calls for some teams that there is bias, not just normal human error. I don't think the fact that Wisconsin has received only two penalties flagged in the last three games each is statistically probable. That would be a huge outlier to how the games were likely played.
 

gopherdudepart2 said:
I see your point, but still think gambling money has influence on how games are officiated by humans. I do think because of the disparity in calls for some teams that there is bias, not just normal human error. I don't think the fact that Wisconsin has received only two penalties flagged in the last three games each is statistically probable. That would be a huge outlier to how the games were likely played.
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I'm not sure if its malfeasance or bias, or what. Wisconsin has a reputation as a running team, and let's face it, getting their backs to the outside or through the tackle box is very difficult without a lot of tugging and grabbing. Tugging and grabbing, yanking, pulling, tackling is ok in the dorm room but not ok on the football field. If I have to watch one more obvious too-long hold or tackle to spring an outside zone I'm going to puke. Holding is one of those pretty black and white rules that has been culled into a nebulous, squishy, gray zone by years of de-emphasis and a desire to promote offensive scoring. It's a "sorta" rule. Another one: college is notorious for being more lax on PI than the pros. These rules are, ahem, flexible. It's frustrating.
 

Real Gopher here, from MoTown..

Trump was Not given a shot...why not the GoPhers?!? I mean, Kill retired last year before the MICH game. A good game with a bad finish. We played good teams last year and were competitive but over-matched. I think if we look at this team and record, we could be 9-0! 2 heartbreaking losses. Really, with Mitch in there as a seasoned leader, I EXPECT TO WIN!

I love how the Defense plays hard! Offense, I believe has some tricks up its sleeve tonight.

Tracy C...show MN "would be" fans something tonight with a convincing, clean and well-coached game and the world will be your oyster!!!

Go 'Gophers!

UofM 32
Nebby 16

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More excited about this game than any Gopher game in a while. We win and no matter what, the game against Wisconsin is played to go to the Big 10 championship game. Mitch must step up big-time and erase the debacle that was Iowa 2016.
 


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