STrib Letter to the Editor: It may be 'goodbye, Gophers'

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Spoofin said:
Right. We have too many fans in attendance already. Who needs ones that don't agree with you.


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I think it's more like who needs fans that don't want to be there?
 

I’m appalled at this letter writer -he paid $80 for an upper deck end zone seat? Stubhub, brother.

When P.J. delivers the goods tickets will be $$$ and hard to come by. Save up.
 

Pompous Elitist said:
I’m appalled at this letter writer -he paid $80 for an upper deck end zone seat? Stubhub, brother.

When P.J. delivers the goods tickets will be $$$ and hard to come by. Save up.
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Didn't look online for tickets. I went down with a buddy and we got tickets for $40 each after kickoff. Scalper was still trying to sell 2 club level seats, not with each other, for $120 each after kickoff. My guess is he chose to eat them.

Maybe because it was Wisconsin but we were never offered lower than $70 before kickoff.

Still not sure who made out better, us, or the guy that sold us the tickets.
 

PhillyGopher said:
At my advanced age I can't remember the old saying - something about doors and asses

If anyone can come up with it, send it to the letter writer
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I think it goes, "you can close the doors, if you can't put asses in the seats."
 

Pete smith said:
not sure he will be missed. Perhaps he is running short on money and is using the lack of improvement as an excuse for not buying tickets. Anyway, if he is a true Gopher Fan, he will come back for key games next fall. Looking at Fresco State, they will be a real load for the 2018 Gophers. Maybe he can find tickets and become a vocal supporter at this game.
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That's funny, not sure if you've ever been to Orono but it pretty exclusive, not exactly shacks in that part of town next to Lake Minnetonka!
 


short ornery norwegian said:
If one fan leaves, it's regrettable, but not a major impact.

So, I query, how many fans have to leave before it does matter: 100 - 1,000 - 5,000 - 10,000?

Is there anyone here who thinks it's a positive for the program to have teams playing before a half-empty stadium?
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I think the administration needs to do some serious thinking about that or you may be very right about some games next year. It’s fine for some posters here to be happy that a “fair weather fan” is going away, but how much money will the school spend in marketing etc to replace him in the seat next year?

“One death is a tragedy; one million is a statistic.” Joseph Stalin
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/joseph_stalin_137476
 

The 70-0 rout the last two games admittedly was very stinging. I can understand Bruce being cantankerous.

We live on hope here in North Country. I wasn't depressed for too long. Vic Viramontes' commitment put a damper on the sad face around my house. It is PJ Fleck's first season. Rome was not built in one day.

It is easy to say, we have seen this rodeo before like when Carpet Bagger Lou left town and took most of the commitments to Notre Dame. I remember how badly I felt he betrayed us. It is not good for ones' health to linger on with bad feelings. Forgive and forget.

Forget about the 70-0 ending of this season.

Hope Springs Eternal. What are you going to do? Say tomorrow is a new day. Life goes on in spite of the Gophers being down. We start a new set of anticipation and excitement.

You never know. PJ Fleck may surprise us and give us the elusive gift of a championship.
 

lrgeek said:
I think the administration needs to do some serious thinking about that or you may be very right about some games next year. It’s fine for some posters here to be happy that a “fair weather fan” is going away, but how much money will the school spend in marketing etc to replace him in the seat next year?

“One death is a tragedy; one million is a statistic.” Joseph Stalin
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/joseph_stalin_137476
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There is a strange sort of snobbery to Gopher football fandom. From our fans to our marketing, the message seems to have at least the subtle undertone of if you don't like then don't come. Unfortunately, that seems to be the option much of our fan base has taken.
 

MnplsGopher said:
Well, what do you propose, other than -- as the letter author explicitly cited as his main reason for leaving -- winning more games?

They're not trying not to win games ...
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Well, according to our head coach, winning doesn't matter, at least in year zero. He certainly coached like he didn't care if we won, so while technically he only didn't coach to win, it's still hard to separate from he coached to lose (or not win games, as you wrote).
 



He's not wrong, homers. If you're fine watching garbage and repeatedly investing in empty promises, good for you, and by all means keep up the strange virtue signaling. It most certainly means you're a better person and fan.
 

hungan1 said:
The 70-0 rout the last two games admittedly was very stinging. I can understand Bruce being cantankerous.

We live on hope here in North Country. I wasn't depressed for too long. Vic Viramontes' commitment put a damper on the sad face around my house. It is PJ Fleck's first season. Rome was not built in one day.

It is easy to say, we have seen this rodeo before like when Carpet Bagger Lou left town and took most of the commitments to Notre Dame. I remember how badly I felt he betrayed us. It is not good for ones' health to linger on with bad feelings. Forgive and forget.

Forget about the 70-0 ending of this season.

Hope Springs Eternal. What are you going to do? Say tomorrow is a new day. Life goes on in spite of the Gophers being down. We start a new set of anticipation and excitement.

You never know. PJ Fleck may surprise us and give us the elusive gift of a championship.
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Was Rome built in 60 years?
 

Heracles said:
He's not wrong, homers. If you're fine watching garbage and repeatedly investing in empty promises, good for you, and by all means keep up the strange virtue signaling. It most certainly means you're a better person and fan.
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This is the truth.

I hope all you virtue signalers do not end up in the same situation that I am after thirty-five years of supporting this team. You would think that after fifty plus years of languishing in the second tier of the Big Ten Conference things would start looking up. Yet it is very easy to just go on churning change after change after change.

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Some of these threads are sooooooooo repetitive. Wash, rinse and repeat.
 


Heracles said:
He's not wrong, homers. If you're fine watching garbage and repeatedly investing in empty promises, good for you, and by all means keep up the strange virtue signaling. It most certainly means you're a better person and fan.
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What’s the alternative? A prospective coach who says “meh, we may suck, who knows.” The play this year was mostly garbage but Fleck was substantially worse his first season at WMU. How many coaches can turn around a football program in one year?

It sucks being a Gopher fan and I understand the pessimism, but judging Fleck and his slogans after one season is dumb. And the StarTrib is dumb for publishing this.
 

Bruce Lemke is also on record as saying traffic in Two Harbors is worse than the Twin Cities. He seems to have a ton of time to write letters to the editor with complaints. Fun life Bruce lives
 


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Generally, coaches and players that talk a bunch of ****, back that talk up. Time to stop the crazy talk and start coaching imo. It strangely seemed like Fleck was trying to set a low bar near the end of the season, and like 70-0 was some how right on schedule, instead of a total disaster like it was. It seemed like a bit disconnect between the coaches utterances and reality by year end. Anyway, onto year 2, errr year 1.
 

Ewert86PC said:
This is the truth.

I hope all you virtue signalers do not end up in the same situation that I am after thirty-five years of supporting this team. You would think that after fifty plus years of languishing in the second tier of the Big Ten Conference things would start looking up. Yet it is very easy to just go on churning change after change after change.

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There you are! We missed you over in the basketball board. You know, when all you did was rip Pitino and say how he’s awful and the whole university is a disgrace. How you’re done with the hoops program and the Barn will be empty for years to come. How’s that working out for ya?


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dtrain19 said:
There you are! We missed you over in the basketball board. You know, when all you did was rip Pitino and say how he’s awful and the whole university is a disgrace. How you’re done with the hoops program and the Barn will be empty for years to come. How’s that working out for ya?


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Um... critical thinking is working just fine for me. If you search the Bball boards you will find that I expressed doubts about last night's Miami game based on how the team collapsed when they had a 5-on-3 advantage over Alabama.

The sad part is you expect alums to be rah-rah and cheery when the football team has not won a conference title since 1967 and the basketball team hasn't officially won a conference title since 1981.

The bitter taste of inferiority doesn't get rinsed out so easily. One season does not offset thirty-five years of always contending for Turkey of the Year.

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So did he attend the game expecting the Gophers to win? Or just be competitive? What led him to think either of those things were going to happen? Fans like this jump back on the bandwagon when the Gophers win. And he will be wearing a Viramontes jersey like nothing happened.
 

Ewert86PC said:
Um... critical thinking is working just fine for me. If you search the Bball boards you will find that I expressed doubts about last night's Miami game based on how the team collapsed when they had a 5-on-3 advantage over Alabama.

The sad part is you expect alums to be rah-rah and cheery when the football team has not won a conference title since 1967 and the basketball team hasn't officially won a conference title since 1981.

The bitter taste of inferiority doesn't get rinsed out so easily. One season does not offset thirty-five years of always contending for Turkey of the Year.

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I’m not gonna search for anything you post. What will get rid of the “bitter taste”? If a top 15 team won’t do it then I’m afraid you’re hopeless. Classic MN fan...bitch while waiting for something good then when it’s here bitch that it’s not good enough.


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DelawareGopher said:
What’s the alternative? A prospective coach who says “meh, we may suck, who knows.” The play this year was mostly garbage but Fleck was substantially worse his first season at WMU. How many coaches can turn around a football program in one year?

It sucks being a Gopher fan and I understand the pessimism, but judging Fleck and his slogans after one season is dumb. And the StarTrib is dumb for publishing this.
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Again with the turnaround BS. Broken record time again...it's almost as likely that a new HC matches or exceeds the previous season win total of predecessor as that he won't.
 

dtrain19 said:
I’m not gonna search for anything you post. What will get rid of the “bitter taste”? If a top 15 team won’t do it then I’m afraid you’re hopeless. Classic MN fan...bitch while waiting for something good then when it’s here bitch that it’s not good enough.


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In terms of teams performance it is sport subjective. Basketball, in the short term, finishing in the top three of the regular season, or winning the conference tournament, for four years in a row.
I think the same can apply to other non-football sports.

For football, it is winning two-thirds of our trophy games, at a minimum each season. Doing that should ensure that we have a winning conference season, which means we are more likely to be in a position to win the conference title game.

Off the field, I would like to see greater undergraduate student participation in attending games. Students are your future alumni, why do we need to treat them like cattle. I would also like to see more visual alumni and faculty support. I don't care if they are bandwagon jumpers or not. Bandwagon jumpers mean greater visibility for the school as a whole.

Most of this will help with keeping a majority of the athletes from misbehaving, but if there are discipline issues, I would like to see the administration follow what we consider due process, not have a political kangaroo court.

In short, teams win with an abundance of school support for athletes who behave like other peopple matter besides themselves.

Good luck.

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Spoofin said:
Right. We have too many fans in attendance already. Who needs ones that don't agree with you.


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if we agreed with him, he would continue to buy tickets. we should immediately fire Fleck to win back Bruce.
 


60's Guy said:
Drastically Cutting prices is not the answer. It creates more problems with premium season ticket holders. 1000 x $10 is $10,000. It does nothing. Start 6 and 1 and we’ll have people. Put a better product on the field.
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I couldn't disagree more. Maybe someday we'll be 6-1 and then finish 11-2 every year and the U can charge whatever they want. But for now we're not there. If the marketing plan is to sell tickets by winning games, history tells us we're in big trouble. It doesn't look like 6-1 is going to happen next year, either, so we'll continue looking at empty seats. How long do we wait for a string of 10- and 11-win seasons to fill the stadium consistently?

The stadium was full for most of the games in 2015, when we were 5-7. Sure, coming off a nice year, but even that was 8 wins. One big difference: price. We don't need to be great, although we do need to be competitive. And prices need to be realistic. They're not.
 

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