It has been an interesting college football season. Last week, four of the remaining undefeated teams met in two dramatic head-to-head games. On Saturday night, LSU hung on for a close victory over perennial champs Alabama. Earlier in the day, Minnesota defeated Penn State. “LSU, Alabama, Penn State,” you might say, “big deal; they’re always good.” But Minnesota? They haven’t been any good since the Eisenhower administration! How can this be that they are now 9-0 and in the discussions involving the national championship race?
Well, anyone following the careers of Jack and Kathleen Henderson would have seen this coming. Allow me to explain.
When I first moved to Gainesville for grad school in 1988, Florida had a mediocre football program, with more losing seasons than winning ones. Then, in 1990, Steve Spurrier was hired as football coach. In 1991, Kathleen and I were married and the confluence of events began to run together. That year, the Florida Gators won their first SEC title. A few years later, they won their first of three national titles. Despite this success, we were not big football fans while we lived in Gainesville. We loved the basketball team and had season tickets to the games. The football fans, though, were too loud and obnoxious for our taste. We never attended a football game while living in Florida. Then, in 1997, we moved to Tennessee and learned what truly obnoxious fans were like.
We arrived in Nashville during the Peyton Manning Era. We didn’t really have an opinion about the Vols or Peyton before moving to Nashville, and I’ve come to admire and appreciate Manning since then. But at that moment in 1997, every day featured more hagiographies in the papers and on TV about the quarterback who had apparently arrived in Knoxville by walking across the Tennessee River. We grew to hate him and UT just because of our contrary natures and the insufferable fans we encountered. We became fervent Florida football fans during that fall and cheered Manning’s fourth consecutive defeat at the hands of the Gators. Despite our opposition to the favorite sons of our new home, however, they won their first national championship since 1951 the following year. If you are keeping score at home, that means we lived in two places, and both of them claimed national championships for the local college team.
That brings us to this year. The University of Minnesota is about 30 miles from where we live today. The football team has a storied history that included three AP national titles before World War II and another in 1960. Since then however, the Gophers have experienced decade after decade of disappointment. The last few years brought more losses and a new coach, C.J. Fleck, to campus. We arrived in the region in mid-September of this year. The Gophers have not lost a football game since then. I’m just saying. After beating the Nittany Lions last weekend, Minnesota is 9-0 for the first time since 1904, 115 years ago. By this point, it must be viewed as something more than mere coincidence that everywhere Kathleen and I have lived as husband and wife, the college football team in the area became national contenders. Call it a Midas Touch in terms of football teams.
In short, don’t count the Gophers out for the NCAA football championship for this season.
Go Gophers!
Jack, you might want to revise this after last week.
Yep. Perhaps I jinxed them by mentioning my Midas Touch. But if they beat Wisconsin, then knock off Ohio State in the Big Ten championship game . . . .
Since Seth has been at the U, we have become big Gopher fans. P.J. Fleck is an Illinois high school kid making good, so we have to like him. Besides, it is one of only a few NCAA stadiums you can buy a beer.