They like us, they really like us?

Post date: Nov 02, 2019 6:52:9 PM

I haven’t blogged in a while. But I have too many thoughts in my head about Gameday not coming that I had to get them down.

#1 LSU vs #2 Bama. Is it a better matchup? You bet. But the Gameday crew has made it VERY clear that this year they want to go to schools they’ve never been to. Like going to Brookings last weekend. Alabama/LSU is old hat for them. I don’t have the numbers in front of me, but I bet they’ve done those locations AND that matchup more than a few times.

Speaking of Brookings, I was there. Thanks to Dan Svobodny who took a great photo of my sign and Gopher hole for tweeting another one out. The point is that I’ve been to 3 Gamedays now. While you are there, they tell you to get loud and crazy from 9:30-11 because that’s when their ratings are highest. Most watchers tune in right as they get closer to the 11 am game.

Which is also why the 11 am game decision was the death nail for Gameday coming to Dinkytown. The last thing they want is half their crowd leaving the show to get into the stadium, right when their ratings are peaking.

So why was the 11 am game chosen? Pj Fleck was on Pat McAfee’s show this week and stated very clearly that the gophers DID NOT turn down a night game. So who did? Was it Penn State? And what’s wrong with 2:30? Why couldn’t that game be played at 2:30 and the LSU/BAMA game go at night? The point I’m trying to make is that whomever decided the Gopher/Penn State game was at 11 am killed the chances of Gameday coming to Dinkytown. If it was ABC, that’s out of our hands. But if we had a choice between 11 and 2:30 and we chose 11, we did it to ourselves. And if we did it to ourselves, that makes it so much more deserving of being on the Calendar.

One of the other things I’ve heard is that maybe they’ll still come for the Wisconsin game. I hope that’s true, but I just don’t see them coming when its that cold. As a matter of fact that’s another reason I’ve heard they wont come next weekend is because of the cold. If the cold is the reason they wont come on November 9, they sure as heck aren’t going to come on November 30.

There was a moment in Brookings when Kirk Herbstriet was on the back stage doing a segment which led into a video on the main stage. Everyone turned to watch the video monitor on the main stage. I didn’t. I stayed facing Herbstreit. I was about 15 feet from him. I stuck my head out and waved my sign at him. It caught his eye. He looked directly at me, gave me a nod, a wink and a thumbs up. I felt like he and I had a moment and that was his way of saying Gameday was coming. There’s that old Sally Field Oscar speech where she says, “You like me, you really like me.” But I feel like today gopher football fans feel the opposite of that. Maybe they will still come. But I doubt it.

There’s always next year too.

I’m really starting to hate that phrase.