Happy New Year to you and Best Wishes in 2009.
This post is entirely about sports, most of it on the Minnesota Golden Gophers and college football with some short thoughts on the Minnesota Vikings, Minnesota Timberwolves and Minnesota Wild at the end.
So no recruiter, career or business stuff today.
College football bowl season is one of my favorite times of the year to go along with spring practice, fall practice, non conference schedule, Big Ten season, rivalry weekend and for the other conferences their conference championship game.
Yeah, I have a bit of an addiction to college football. I do not smoke, gamble, eat too much, drink much or often so as far as addictions go this is rather low on the list of bad ones. I also tend to get more work done because I can watch and type at the same time.
The Minnesota Golden Gopher football season ended last night not as a Gopher fan would hope. As I stated in my Minnesota Morning yesterday I predicted the Gophers by 4.
And I was wrong.
The first quarter and early minutes of the second quarter went well with a tie game but then something happened and we went in the tank.
Adam Weber had a decent game but did not have enough time to do his job. Looks like the 15 practices with new offensive line coach Tim Davis were not enough.
Eric Decker had a good game at wide receiver as did Troy Stoudermire on special teams.
And I should say something about the Kansas Jayhawks. They are a good team. Todd Reesing is a good quarterback and Dezmon Briscoe is an awesome wide receiver who compares very well with all everything Michael Crabtree of Texas Tech.
The ongoing debate on an extension for Head Coach Tim Brewster will get louder now. If we won it would have been an easy thing to do. Starting 7-1 but losing the last 5 games kind of, err, really sucks but at least after all the changes made last year we are now to where we were under the Glen Mason era.
With better recruiting classes and the new TCF Bank Stadium that opens this year I still believe we are on the right track.
So far the Big Ten is throwing an "O Fer" as in 0 for 3:
Wisconsin lost to Florida State 42-13 in the Champs Sports Bowl. Lost is a polite term. They got their butt whooped on. There a lot of stories from before and during the game about the arrogant attitude of the Badgers, their coach, and their fans. Huh, I guess they could not back it up.
Northwestern lost to Missouri 30-23 in OT in the Valero Alamo Bowl. This was a great game to watch. The “experts” predicted Missouri would whoop Northwestern. This was a very close game through out and well played by both teams.
And the Gopher loss to Kansas.
Bowl Central
Because I get too competitive and would put a lot of time into picking winners and losers I go with who I cheer for. So far I am 13-9. Not so good really but as a fan I also move on quickly.
Games today
- Outback Bowl: South Carolina over Iowa
- Capitol One Bowl: Georgia over Michigan State
- Konica Minolta Gator Bowl: Clemson over Nebraska
- Rose Bowl: Penn State over USC
- FedEx Orange Bowl: Virginia Tech over Cincinnati
More college football tomorrow with three more “predictions” and thoughts from today.
I watch so much football on Saturdays and combined with the college game day experience care very little for the NFL. The NFL(No Fun League) is boring and I am annoyed with the big dollar players and their issues.
So the Vikings made into the playoffs with their win last weekend (although they were in anyway with the Chicago Bears losing) and I care about this much. Sure I want the home team to win but if they lose my world goes on. I do like when they win because those that follow are of course in a much better mood.
The Vikes play the Philadelphia Eagles this Sunday but as of now we may not see the game as the game is far from a sell out. I find it ironic that for all the hype of the last weeks about getting to the playoffs that now there they cannot find 60,000+ for a game.
Blogs to read:
They started to lose me after the Kevin Garnett trade to the Boston Celtics. I like many of the players on the team but the games give me no reason to watch. They suck are not very good.
Kevin McHale has done a lot of good for the Minnesota basketball community but it is time for him to cut his ties. He does not seem to be that great as the vice president of basketball operations and as a coach he is worse.
How bad has it become? Tuesday the Wolves were up 21 on Dallas in the 3rd quarter (in Dallas) and lost by 9. Amazing.
The Wolves are 2-10 (6-25 over all) since McHale took over the head coach job following the firing of Randy Whittman.
Blog to read:
The Wild are 18-16-2. 4th in the Northwest Division and 9th in the Western Conference
To be honest I usually do not start following hockey until around this time of the year so I know little of what has been going on other than Marion Gaborik missed 27 games with a “lower body” injury. He came back and I think he has recently missed a couple of more. The talk of signing him to a new contract will become louder in coming weeks unless his “lower body” injury becomes an issue again.
Blogs to read:
OK, thanks for letting me get my sports thing out of my system.
The Vikings ticket sales are interesting. According to the Strib, only 55% of season ticket holders bought playoff tickets. My boss was part of the 45% who did not purchase playoff tickets. When asked why he cited two reasons:
1. They jacked up the price because they are playoff tickets, so he'd have to pay an extra $30 per seat.
2. They required him to buy tickets for all of the home playoff games, so that meant he had to purchase tickets for this Sunday and for the NFC Championship because it could be potenitally played at the Metrodome. If the Vikings did not host the NFC championship game, then the money would go as a deposit towards next year's season tickets.
So here's a few thoughts:
Why charge season ticket holders the higher playoff price? Charge the premium on general ticket buyers, but they should reward those loyal season ticket holders by keeping their price the same as a regular game. The Vikings are already going to come ahead just by getting to host one more home game. No need to get too greedy.
The second thought is that if 45% of your season ticket holders aren't buying those tickets right away, then I'm guessing that those 45% are considering not ordering season tickets for next year. The ticket sales office is going to have their work cut out for them this season.
The final thought is that as of yesterday, a reported 3000 tickets still remained. I checked online and there were only two price ranges available: $120 and $160 per seat. Let's just say that the remaining seats average out to be $150 per. That means it would cost $450,000 to buy out the remainding tickets. Is it worth it to the NFL, FOX, or any other local or national advertiser to chip in and make sure this game is broadcast in the Twin Cities? This is a playoff game. The national audience will be much higher than the regular season, thus making the local viewership in Minnesota less vital.
It'll be interesting to see what happens. They have about an hour and half left today.
Posted by: CGBrummund | January 03, 2009 at 01:51 PM