What are your favorite and least favorite moments in the Dome?

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BleedGopher

BleedGopher

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My favorite moments in the Dome:

- Meeting Rickey Foggie for the first time after a spring game when I was young in the mid-80s. I got a great picture with him that I still have buried somewhere in my closet.

- The 2003 win over Wisconsin...that game was unreal.

- Darrell Thompson's 98 yard TD run against Michigan.

- Chip Lohmiller's 62 yard FG

- Leaving the Dome this Saturday evening after reclaiming Floyd and knowing that I'll never step foot in that place wearing maroon and gold for the rest of my life (that is unless the Gopher hoops team somehow gets sent there for an NCAA tourney game).

My least favorite moments in the Dome:

- The Michigan debacle.

- The dropped punt against Wisconsin and the punch to the gut loss.

- The hailmary against NU and the punch to the gut loss.

- Leaving the Dome against Iowa and finding out later that their fans tore down our goal post.

Go Gophers!!
 

Favorite:
This Saturday's game because it's the last one in the Humpty Dump

Least Favorite:
Pretty much every other gopher game played in the dome.
 

Favorite moment:
Beating Wisconsin 28-21 in 1993. Enough said.

Worst moment (least favorite does not make sense to me):
31 point lead blown against tOSU in 1989.

Good riddance to the damn dome.
 

Favorite:
I was pretty young, but I think the Gophers had a home game on Halloween or the day before or day after and I dressed up in my costume and after the game all the Gophers took pictures and signed autographs on the field.

Least:
Hands down Michigan '03.
 



Favorite was in the early 90's when Minnesota beat Purdue 59-56. Both teams were unstoppable. Good guys score last!

Worst. Easy. We were demolishing Michigan in '05 and I was being very gracious to the little 10 year old sitting directly behind me, even though he was screaming "I'm still proud, to be, a Mich-a-gan Wolver-ine." His chant became quieter and less frequent throughout the game. Then, the final quarter debacle. When, I got up to leave, he said, "Take that sucker!" Ugh.
 

I think Bleed hit all the low and highlights regarding Gopher football. What an epic list of loses that often times defy explanation. Another inexplicable loss not mentioned above but I believe was highlighted in Brackin's article in the Strib was the Purdue loss in 2001. Travis Dorsch's long field to tie the game capped Purdue's 19 second drive starting at our 19 yardline. Unbelievable set of circumstances allowed Purdue to win that game.

Yet to this day that 2003 loss to Michigan is the most gut wrenching loss this Gopher fan has ever been witness to. So much so that I don't know how to classify it according the Bill Simmon's 13 Levels of Losing. I'll copy the highest level of loss according to Simmon's and let you decided where that 2003 loss ranks.


Level II: The Stomach Punch
Definition: Now we've moved into rarefied territory, any roller-coaster game that ends with A) an opponent making a pivotal (sometimes improbable) play, or B) one of your guys failing in the clutch ... usually ends with fans filing out after the game in stunned disbelief, if they can even move at all ... always haunting, sometimes scarring ... there are degrees to the Stomach Punch Game, depending on the situation ... for instance, Sunday's Kings-Lakers game and Monday's Celts-Nets game featured agonizing endings, but they weren't nearly as agonizing as Cleveland's Earnest Byner fumbling against Denver when he was about two yards and 0.2 seconds away from sending the Browns to the Super Bowl).

Level I: That Game
Definition: Game 6 of the 1986 World Series ... one of a kind ... given the circumstances and the history involved here, maybe the most catastrophic sports loss of our lifetime.
Click to expand...
 

Favorite: The Victory over IOWA this weekend!
Least Favorite: Michigan 2003 (not even close)
 

Favorite- Attending the Syracuse game in '96 and high-fiving the players who ended up celebrating in the corner where we were seated. (Just happened to also go to the Vikes-Pack game the next day and saw the Vikes beat the Packers on a long Robert Smith run after which he vomited)

Least favorite- Attending the Wisconsin game in '97 when the becky player (Hayes, I think) who set up the winning TD stepped out of bounds and the refs didn't see it and we ended up losing by 1.

Tied with the NW game in 2000. :(
 



Favorite moments:
~Michigan 1987...the first game I ever attended. Even though they lost, Darrell Thompson's 98 yard run was a thing of beauty which I will never forget. That play hooked me on Gopher football.
~Indiana 1992...forgettable game in which the Gophers blew a 17-0 to lose 24-17 but my cousin and I bought tickets on the 40 yard line for $10 from a "scalper" just moments prior to kickoff. It was also Halloween night so afterwards we got to go on the field for candy/pop and a laser light show with the players and cheerleaders. Good time.
~Syracuse 1996...Tyrone Carter's 3 fumble returns for TD's.
~Michigan State 1998...Mason's 2nd Big Ten victory. I was sitting in the front row of the student section by the tunnel. Mason himself dogpiled into the endzone during the celebration and I got to high-five the players as they left in a 19-18 victory.
~Wisconsin 2003...Despite it being one of the coldest tailgates I've ever been a part of, Rhys Lloyd's FG capped off a terrific victory and his post-game rush to the sidelines is an image that will be remembered for my entire life.
~Purdue 2005...Beating a top 10 team in a thrilling OT game. Bryan Cupito overcame his early game slump and the boo-birds to lead a terrific comeback. It cemented him as the starter for the rest of his career. Before this game there was A LOT of rumblings about letting freshman Tony Mortensen take over. If we lose that game Mortensen is probably the starter through the 2006 season at least.
~Iowa 2008...Last game in the dome. Win or lose it will be nice to say 'good riddance'

Worst moments:
~1994 Penn State...A huge marketing push got about 58k into the dome on Labor Day weekend to see us get dismantled 56-3 by Kerry Collins and KiJana Carter.
~2000 Northwestern...WHy don't my Hair Mary prayers ever get answered like this?
~2001 Purdue...Purdue drives 70 yards in 19 seconds with no timeouts to force OT and then the officals screwed us.
~2002 Iowa...THe goalposts was bad enough but the boorish behavior by the Iowa fans made this day completely miserable. Seeing a 40 year old Hawkeye "fan" tell a 10 year old Gopher fan to "shut up you little s--t" was infuriating...as was the 2 Iowa fans that were urinating in the seats after the game during the meely. Stay classy Iowa.
~2003 Michigan...Hands down the worst experience ever. Felt like a family member died.
~2005 Wisconsin...2nd worst experience ever. Felt like Santa burned my Christmas presents and kicked me in the nuts.
~2007 season...Feels like a bad dream.
 

The Worst, absolutely worst memory is the lost to Pacific. Foggie, Mel Anderson, Darrell Thompson this was the team that went to Michigan and won the jug, but no I can still the chants of U of P!

The best, the shellacking of Iowa in Hayden Fry's last game. 42-7.
 

Dome memories

The good

Wisconsin '93, my first bigten game. Sat in a see of Red in the upper deck section 220.
Ball St. '95 my first pregame ever marched. I'll never forget the nervous anticipation waiting in the tunnel listening for the drum majors whistle.
Iowa '96 Watching a drunk Iowa fan dive down a few rows at a couple of Gopher fans, and then recieving the beat down of the century. His gold sweatshirt was red as they escorted him away
Mich St. '98 My fourth year in band and the first win against a bigten team with a .500 record. Down 8 with under two to play and pulled out a sweet homecoming victory!
Iowa '00 Came back from down 12 late to pull out the 27-24 win. My last game as a Gopher in the band.
Wisky '03 Incredible watching the team braveheart charge the sideline to grab the axe.
Mich '03 1-3 Quarters Gopher football had finally arrived. We dominated the flag bearers of the conference and they didn't even belong on the same field as us. Barber, Maroney, and Tapeh punish Michigan for 424 yards on the ground. Until....

The bad:

Mich '03 4th quarter I will forever remember the dome in light of this one 15 minute quarter which seemed to drag on for hours. It was like being drawn and quartered and watching the entire thing. Out gained 236 to 125, outscored 31-7 on our home turf we were cruely reminded of who we were not. Nothing really compares to that memory. I could talk about the 56-3 loss to Penn St in '94, or the '98 loss to Purdue where Drew Brees went 31-36, 522 yards, 6td's, or the 99 loss to wisky in overtime where we actually moved the ball backwards on our opening drive, or the '00 kick in balls courtesy of Zak Kustak, or the dropped snap by Kucek in '05, or the phantom pass interfence call in '06 against Penn St. But all these pale in comparison to that one game where Gopher football had regained it's rightful place in the bigten only to see it fade away in 15 short minutes.
 

That was against Indiana...'92 or '93??...I believe. I remember standing on the 30 yard line and thinking...how the heck does any kicker make a FG from here?

GM
 



After reflecting on the 2003 Michigan game and studing the Levels of Losing 2.0 I pegged it as a level 4 "The Guillotine". Of course it has elements of many other levels mainly Level 8 "This Can't Be Happening" and Level 6 "The Broken Axle". Here is the URL of the Levels of Losing 2.0 then you can decided for yourself what level is correct.

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=simmons/071001
 

Top 3:

1) The pregame of the 2003 Michigan game was my favorite moment in the dome. Expanding the M and playing the Rouser in front of 60,000+ GOPHER fans was something I will never forget.

2) Beating #11 Ranked Purdue in double OT in 2005. I still have the sports section from the day after!

3) Beating Wiscy in 2003.

WORST 3

1) 4th quarter Michigan 2003.

2) Mich St 2003 the week after the big collapse. Going from an announced attendance of 62,374 to 38,778 sucked. That was the least amount of fun I've ever had at a Gopher game.

3) Losing to NDSU in 2007. I hated sitting there listening to their fans cheer their win.
 

rovert M said:
Top 3:

1) The pregame of the 2003 Michigan game was my favorite moment in the dome. Expanding the M and playing the Rouser in front of 60,000+ GOPHER fans was something I will never forget.
Click to expand...

I'll never forget that either. I've been going to Gopher games for 15 years and the Michigan pre-game atmosphere and excitement was by far the most I've ever witnessed.
 

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