Know Your Foe: Minnesota 2012

There I was -- swamped at work this week.  But since we moved Rigby to the Photoshop position, Andy to wallpaper specialist and with Benny having transferred from the MZone during our last hiatus, we were left without a capable back-up blogger to step into the starting line up to do Know Your Foe.  Luckily, my work situation healed in the nick of time.  So after a couple practice tweets to make sure my blogging skills were okay, I sat down at the computer and...

Tomorrow, Michigan faces Minnesota for the 99th time, with Michigan holding a commanding 71-24-3 advantage in the series including last season's 58-0 bludgeoning in A2.  Both Michigan and Minnesota are 5-3 but the Wolverines are 3-1 in B1G play while the Golden Gophers are 1-3.  Of course you knew all that.  What you didn't know is below in this week's installment of Know Your Foe - Minnesota 2012.

This looks like some coin
recovered from a shipwreck

History – Founded in 1851, the original campus overlooked the Saint Anthony Falls on the Mississippi River (yes, the Mississippi divides the Twin Cities), but it was later moved about a mile to its current location. During the Civil War, the school shut down following a financial crisis (probably The Jessup's Trading Post, Saloon and Bank mortgage meltdown caused by those shitty Louisiana Purchase derivatives). It reopened in 1867 - with the help of Minneapolis entrepreneur John Sargent Pillsbury, (yes, that Pillsbury) - and was upgraded from a preparatory school to a college in 1869. There was no graduating class until 1873 when two students received their diplomas (and thus setting the stage going forward for the all-time shittiest class reunions in recorded human history).

Location – The Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul. Yes, there is a campus in each city, kind of like North Campus and Central Campus in Ann Arbor (they even have their version of the Bursley Bus connecting the two). Though the winters in Minnesota last about 11 ½ months, the Twin Cities are actually a fun place. There’s a legacy of great music – Prince, The Replacements, Husker Du and Lazy Bill Lucas (props to Bill for overcoming his laziness and making something out of himself). Mary Tyler Moore lived there, too.

You've got a dental school - use it

Nickname – Golden Gophers. Goldy the Gopher to be exact.  After being chosen as the state's official animal in 1857, Minnesota was declared the Gopher State. Taking advantage of this natural connection, Minnesota football coach Clarence Spears named his team the Gophers in 1926. Several years later, Bernie Bierman’s champion football team was coined the “golden swarm,” a reference to their gold-colored jerseys, and the team soon became known as the “Golden Gophers.”

Have to say, a mascot named after the vermin/varmit/varmint from Caddyshack doesn't quite strike fear into an opponent's heart.  Plus, even with such a fine dental school on campus, you'd think the actual Minny mascot would get his teeth fixed by now.

We're told Goldy "energizes thousands of student fans as they chant 'Ski-U-Mah,' a rally cry that means 'Victory UM.'" We at the MZone think it actually just means "another reason not to have a mascot roaming the sidelines.  Ever."

Dreads on your QB?  Nice try, Minnie

Colors/Logo –Maroon and Gold.  While they use Goldy the Gopher a lot as a logo, on their helmets, they have that funky "M" with those weird serifs on them. They’ve had some version of it on their headgear since at least 1968. This year they rolled out new uniforms and were so excited about it, they made a YouTube video.  Woo hoo!  They also sport new helmets this season which have a "textured maroon finish."  At least they didn't succumb to the all-black uni craze sweeping college football.

Fight Song - The Minnesota Rouser is a very underrated fight song, though the title sounds like a porno movie from 1955 or a drink somebody talks you into trying at 1 a.m.  The song was originally known as Minnesota, Hats Off To Thee, and was written by a church choir director. Know Your Foe practically guarantees you've heard it and you might have even hummed it to yourself without even knowing whose fight song it was.

Academics – According the latest U.S. News and World Report Ranking, Minnesota is the #68 National University, same as last year. That ties it with Clemson, Rutgers and BYU - and places them ahead of #72 -- Michigan State (Suck it, Sparty).  It has a total undergad population of 34,812 and accepts just under 47% of its applicants

In his 2007 Minnesota KYF, Benny claimed that the pride of the University is the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute which ranks among the top 15 professional schools of public affairs at public universities in the country. I beg to differ.  According to the U.S. News and World Report Ranking linked above, the school is 52% female and apparently has coeds going there like former American Idol contestant and bikini calendar girl, Casey Carlson, shown here:

Must...resist...making..."little brown jugs"...joke

Stadium/Fans - The Gophers got a shiny new home for football in  2009 called TCF Stadium which is sometimes referred to as "The Bank" or "The Gopher Hole."  Unfortunately for the football team, as is often the case with gopher holes in real life, usually others simply come and destroy what is inside leaving nothing but greasy, grimey gopher guts behind.

Athletics – If it weren't for hockey, wrestling and football glory from over 50 years ago, the sports tradition at Minnesota would be pretty lame.  Academic fraud wiped out their lone Men's basketball Final Four appearance (as opposed to the cheating that wiped out our most recent Final Fours in the early 90s). But Williams Arena is one of the more unique places to play with those sunken benches. How no one gets hurt diving for a ball, I don’t know. Plus it forced former head coach Clem Haskins to sit on a bar stool, which was kind of cool.

Famous alums – Kind of like their sports teams, good but not great.  From actors such as Loni Anderson, John Astin, Peter Graves, TR Knightm Kate Mulgrew, Ron Perlman and a Ghostbuster; to a number of Congressmen and cabinet members you've probably never heard of unless you're from Minnesota; to business leaders including Robert Gore, the inventor of Gore-Tex (the cold weather material, not the robotic inventor of the Internet).  In the Space, Bitches, Space category, they have two astronauts.  And they have two Vice Presidents but, alas, no presidents.  However, they do have Erica, Nicole, and Jaclyn Dahm of Playboy fame.

The Game – Minnesota started the season 4-0, beating UNLV, New Hampshire, Western Michigan and Syracuse then dropped three in a row to Iowa, Northwestern and Wisconsin before bouncing back last week against the corpse that is Purdue. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.  Is Denard healthy?  He is?  Okay:

Real U-M -28
Other U-M -10

More on NCAA Investigations

Stephen Miller--my friend, law school classmate, and Philadelphia attorney who does some representation of college athletes before the NCAA--is back with more thoughts on how the NCAA can improve the speed and efficiency of its investigation and enforcement systems.

Slant Route - Getting Leverage on the Defender

This film is from 2003 Norm Chow era USC TV cut-ups, which is all I had to study before access to coaches film became more prevalent.  These are the best examples of the right and wrong way to run the Slant route that I have ever seen.  Both examples are from the same game and both were 3rd Down plays.  I coach my WRs running the Slant route to attack the inside # of the defender with their three steps.  I have heard coaches before tell their WRs to attack the outside # to open the DB's hips and then come inside.  That works in theory, but as you will see in the cut-ups, it does not always work in practice.  Mike Williams was a Freshman running the Slant route in the first cut-up.  He doesn't attack the inside # of the defender to gain leverage (position) and he ends up running into the CB.  It's a sloppy route by an inexperienced player that leads to a Punt.

The second cut-up shows a veteran WR, Kerry Colbert (I believe), running the Slant the correct way: attack the inside # to get leverage, stay low and stick the foot in the ground with a head nod away, and catch the ball with the hands away from the body.  It's a thing of beauty to see proper technique ruthlessly destroy opponents time and time again.

Versus Press coverage, I do coach my WRs to use a Diamond release where they work outside and then back in, but that's vs. Press, not vs. Loose Man or Zone coverage.  That will a future mini-post.

Here's the film:

Slant Route - Getting Leverage on the Defender from Barry Hoover on Vimeo.

The Other (More Silent) Challenge to Sports Anti-Gambling Laws

Ryan Rodenberg blogged yesterday (here) about how governor Chris Christie is moving forward with plans to bring sports gambling to New Jersey, and how America's major sports leagues have brought suit to stop this under the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act ("PAPSA").

However, the flamboyant Governor Christie is not the only person engaging in conduct reasonably likely to test the scope of PAPSA.  Several online fantasy sports websites are also challenging PAPSA in more subtle ways, such as by offering pay-to-enter NCAA tournament contests or NFL survivor pools that involve predicting the winners of actual sporting events.

A quick perusal of the Internet reveals at least a few well-established U.S. websites that currently offer pay-to-enter NFL survivor pools.  For example, the company Real Time Fantasy Sports runs an NFL survivor pool called King of the Mountain, in which participants pay $9.95 to enter and are awarded with a $10,000 prize if they pick the most consecutive NFL games correctly. 

While hosts of pay-to-enter survivor pools probably liken their games to fantasy sports leagues, there is technically a distinction between the two, at least under federal law.  As discussed in my recent law review article, A Short Treatise on Fantasy Sports and the Law, the Uniform Internet Gambling Act exempts from federal scrutiny games that meet three specific criteria: (1) the "value of the prizes is not determined by the number of participants;" (2)  "[a]ll winning outcomes relative the relative knowledge and skill of the participants," and (3) no winning outcome is based on the outcome of the score of games or the single performance of an individual athlete in a single, real-world event."  While some pay-to-enter fantasy sports games may fall within this three-prong safe harbor, it seems doubtful that any NFL survivor pool could meet the third prong.

Of course, in the grand scheme of things, running a pay-to-enter survivor pool is probably not the worst act someone could commit, and a creative lawyer might be able to argue that a small entry fee actually represents the cost of operating the website rather than a wager to enter.  However, if authorities choose not to challenge these type of contests, it becomes all that much harder to make a good faith argument against regulated sports books, such as the type that Governor Christie wants to allow in New Jersey.

Thus, perhaps sports leagues might soon seek to challenge these sorts of complex picking games as a way to preserve the strength of their argument against Governor Christie's plan to allow for more traditional sports gambling.  Authorities may also seek to challenge these games as a way to halt a slippery slope back toward gambling on individual game results.

Focus On Cornell

In this week's video from the Dartmouth office of sports publicity, Big Green coach Buddy Teevens looks back at Harvard and ahead to Cornell:



•
Dartmouth's game notes for Saturday against Cornell are found here. A few nuggets straight from the notes:

Lafayette-Lehigh may get all the publicity for longest running series in the Football Championship Subdivision, having played at least once

LaGrange @ FerrumGame Preview

To predict a Panther victory would be too easy....since both teams are called Panthers, but this week, an unpredictable LaGrange team, that has shown flashes of greatness, rolls into Adams field with getting a win a must if they want a chance to get to the conference championship. Of course, this is a must win for Ferrum also, so both teams have a lot to play for.
LaGrange defeated CNU 20-6 denying the Captains a trip to the end zone the entire game. LC also has lost to Averett, and to Methodist. so what can we expect Saturday?

I look for Ferrum to face the triple option most of the game, and if there is a team that knows the triple option, it's Ferrum. I believe Ferrum is disciplined enough to stop the option, but the home team must be as resolved on defense as LaGrange was against CNU. I look for this to be as tough of a contest as Ferrum has faced all year, but winnable. This could be a high scoring game, and could come down to a special teams play for Ferrum to win....but Ferrum gets the home win.

Ferrum 34  LaGrange 32

In other games:

Averett @ Methodist
NCW @ Maryville
Greensboro @ CNU

No thanks, we'll just have our Apple Jacks, please

Our pal Surrounded in Columbus sent us the picture below of "Buckeye Heroes" cereal commemorating the 10th anniversary of OSU's National Championship.  But judging by the fire sale on the stuff, apparently even Tosu fans think it's a bad idea.

No word if the prize inside is a coupon for Grey Goose Vodka.

Yeah, we saw the typo, too.