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Minnesota +1.5 two days out.

Yet all we hear in the local media is "better win the next three."

Forget any other well-known schism in Minnesota sports this year. The difference between the local media's expectations for this team and the nation as a whole is very noticable.
 

Goldmember said:
Minnesota +1.5 two days out.

Yet all we hear in the local media is "better win the next three."

Forget any other well-known schism in Minnesota sports this year. The difference between the local media's expectations for this team and the nation as a whole is very noticable.
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ummm, there is no correlation between the two. The odds makers couldn't give a rats a$$ that the Gophers schedule gets much more difficult after the next three games. but the media and anyone who has a rooting interest in the team realizes that for us to take that next step in the bt we should win the next three games. of course if we lose one of those three and win at Penn State or Ohio State then all the better, but your odds makers will have us as a much greater underdog for those games. So yes, we are underdogs, but we better win the next three.
 

It's all part of Ruesse's gambit. His hatred for Brewster is so severe he now schemes to destroy him. He's working very hard at getting buy in from the local media who should know better but apparently don't, and has set up his gambit very carefully. It started a couple of weeks ago.

The basic plan to set the stage so that the only reasonable expectation is three wins. If he can sell this notion it set's the stage for his two 'if then' statements. Which is simply "If Coach loses one or more of the games then he is a failure". and "If he wins he is not a success as he is simply doing what he should be doing, it is after all what is expected of him". The only question that remains is which article does he write.

Brilliant. But incredibly unprofessional and irresponsible.

For him it's par for the course, so it doesn't surprise me. However I am surprised by some who have bought into this, people who should know better.
 

Brewsters energy, enthusiasm and rhetoric (not meant in a bad way) raises our expectations about the team. That, of course, can be a double-edged sword.
 

Schnoodler said:
It's all part of Ruesse's gambit. His hatred for Brewster is so severe he now schemes to destroy him.QUOTE]


Everybody needs to relax when it comes to Ruesse.

If he wanted to destroy Brew, he would just come out and say, "I want to destroy this guy and do everything I can to get him fired." At the end of the day I think he enjoys bothering Gopher/Brew fans much more than he would enjoy a new coach that wasn't as Rah Rah as Brew.

Everytime Ruesse says anything that isn't extremely positive, people flip out and scream about bad reporting and anti-gopher bias. This has caused most of the people on Gopherhole to lose any shred of objectivity they might have, and has made the board unreadable for the most part. Most of you hate Ruesse and nothing on Gopherhole goes out to the masses anyway, so you are all preaching to the choir and not reaching people that like Ruesse because none of them seek out message boards. Stop complaining about the guy!

At the end of the day, Brew does have to win the next 3! I think most people will agree that all of the remaining games sans SDSU will be more difficult than NU/Purdue, and losing to Wisconsin AGAIN will be terrible for recruiting, morale, etc. It doesn't matter if they are 1-3 point underdogs, they need to win these games otherwise the season will likely end up mediocre at best.
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The easiest way to a 5-3 BT season is to win the next three games, is it not? Of course if we lose one of the next three it doesn't mean it's not possible, but it will be more difficult. I don't buy the "must win" mantra, but a big step forward in Brewster's ability to turn the program around is to have a winning BT season and the easiest way for us to get that is to win the next three games. The fact that we're a 1.5 pt dog is completely irrelevant of the goal, IMO.

Go Gophers!!
 

What Bleed said. That sums it up perfectly.

Patrick is just being Patrick. I can't ascertain why so many folks get so upset by the things he says/writes. Follow the Gophers; they're your team; enjoy the journey. Don't let someone else's opinion of them (good or bad) work you into a lather. I would think eventually that being overly concerned about your team getting "love" would sap all the enjoyment out of following your team.

Just a thought.
 

Northwestern favored?

I'm not going to question the folks in Vegas, but this line of NU -1.5 doesn't make sense, at least to me. The Sagarin Rankings are most times a very good indicator of the spread for a given game. The current rankings have the Gophs #49 and a Predictor of 70.65. NU is #112 with a Predictor of 62.13.

Simple MN high school math....

70.65 - 62.13 = 8.52

Give NU 3 points for home field and the Gophers should be 5.5 point favorites in this game, at least according to these numbers.

Now, I know Vegas doesn't use the Sagarin Rankings but I look at these every week for fun to see hypothetical match-ups (i.e. Gophers vs. Florida) and the spreads are pretty close give or take a point. The fact that the actual line is 7 points from the Sagarin Rankings is really odd...
 

It's the nuance that's important. To have a great season we must win the next three games. It's a fair statement.

The difference is in saying the program is a failure if they don't.

You need to look at each game independently and analyze each on it's own merits. It's the difficult part of this year. There are only three games we should be heavily favored in. And four we should be heavy dogs in. The base line is 3-4. The other 5 games are toss ups. Even if you want to say we are favored against purdue we still only have a base of 4-4 with four toss ups. for those of you who have difficulty with math that means a likley outcome of 6-6.

Don't misread this, we can win any game. This team and program has improved, but the breakdown of the games and schedule create a very different picture of what any outsider would expect, yet the ruesse's of this world have convinced everyone that we should be 8-4. That's a great goal, but an absurd expectation.

We should have an expected outcome that is equal to where the program is at. By that i mean when we judge the program it should be based on a realistic picture of the program and what growth might look like. That's very different than our hopes and our goals. They are different. We need to be smarter than the Ruesse's of the world. Anything exceeding what is most likely is over achieving.

There is a huge difference between saying we must win the next three to be 8-4, and saying this team should be 8-4 therefore we must win the next three. This is Ruesse's gambit, the nuance that he is trying to sell, don't be a dupe and buy in.

I'm still surprised at the number of you that are falling for this and don't see the difference.
 



I'll say it, Northwestern is a must win. This is exactly the type of game Mason used to lose. Upset Penn St/Michigan/Ohio St - lose to Northwestern. These are the types of games we must win in order to position ourselves for big seasons.
 

If he wanted to destroy Brew, he would just come out and say, "I want to destroy this guy and do everything I can to get him fired."
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If he made a public statement that his goal was to get Brewster fired, that would seriously undermine such efforts. I don't know that he is trying to get him fired, but he does resent a Gopher football coach daring to be optimistic.

Everytime Ruesse says anything that isn't extremely positive, people flip out and scream about bad reporting and anti-gopher bias.
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Nice spin. I'd be satisfied is he were to merely be non-positive once in a while. The day after the first game in the new stadium, you would think he might take a break from it for one day, and make a good will gesture to say something positive about an event that was objectively positive. Instead you pick up the paper, and there he is taking a big steaming dump on the Gophers.

This has caused most of the people on Gopherhole to lose any shred of objectivity they might have, and has made the board unreadable for the most part.
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You may find it unreadable, but I and many others find it quite readable. What loss of objectivity? He just mails in his regularly scheduled dump on the Gophers. After the loss to Bowling Green in 2007, he pledged that he would rub that loss in our face if we ever did get to the Rose Bowl. Knowing him, that would probably be his first piece if we make it to the Rose Bowl.

Stop complaining about the guy!
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No. You stop complaining about our complaining.
 

It is not just Patrick that has adopted the "win the next three or else..." attitude. The local media, consisting of writers, talking heads and disembodied radio voices have mostly been saying the same thing. These people get paid to "cover" or team.

The fact is: Northwestern is favored to win by the people who know best. The spread suggests it will be a hard-fought game that will be lost by mistakes, turnovers and penalties.

Anyone who makes this game sound like the first of three gimmes is a fool.

I will continue to enjoy watching the team every week (not just check-in every 3rd week to see how full the dandwagon looks). But I do feel bad for the people who may get more out of this season if the local "coverge" were not so shallow and terrible overall.
 

Not only that, but if we win all three, they will downplay it - if the games are all "must win or else", then it's no big deal to win them all. If we go 2-1, they'll just dump on the Gophers as usual. It's just a question of how much they dump on the Gophers.
 



The line makes perfect sense. At -1.5 it means that
if it were a toss up bet that about 5% more people would be betting on NU. The bookies have dropped the line on Mn to get more people to bet on us. It seems like I write this every week, but the bookies have no opinion about whose best. They only know who is betting how much on whom.
 

We know nc, but they are very accurate anyway. You might say it's the mass conciousness or whatever you will, but the point is that the lines are oddly accurate and they tell a story much different than the local media.
 

Chicago money moved the line in NU's favor. The line has nothing to do with who vegas thinks will win. It has everything to do with who the public majority is in favor of.
 

As I said, it's oddly accurate anyway. I think Chicagoans like winning their bets just as much as the next guy.
 

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