I went to the Golden Gopher Fan Fest 2005 today. It was an open practice/scrimage in preparation for the upcoming football season. You can find the rest of the pictures that I took in the Fan Fest 2005 Set on Flickr.

Saturday afternoon, a member of the Gophers football traveling party looked around Camp Randall Stadium and asked, “How do you compete with this?”

He wasn’t talking about the Wisconsin football team, which proceeded to beat the Gophers 38-14.

He was talking about the Wisconsin football experience, which established a similar advantage over a college game at the Metrodome.

Jim Souhan: Setting just says college football

It’s so true, the atmosphere at the metrodome is just anemic. None of the fans seem to care about the game at all.

Now jump to Camp Randall and the fans are going nuts the whole game. Not to mention the vast majority stay for the 5th quarter (after the football game is over) just to watch the marching band screw around and play a bunch of songs.

Why can’t we have that atmosphere at the U? I know a lot of people say it’s the metrodome… that you just can’t get a crowd pumped up in there. But certainly Vikings games are wild and crazy.. so much for that hypothesis. It doesn’t help that the dome is so far from campus, but I think that the U tries their hardest to have enough shuttle busses to get students back and forth.

I think Minnesota fans just don’t care. And that makes me sad.

Anyway, enough directionless ranting, just read the article above. It has a slightly different view, but agrees with me in most accounts.

The AP Poll has us as #24 and the Coaches Poll at #23.

Awesome. Our victory over Indiana next week should move us up a little bit as well, in preparation for our game against WisconSIN.

I hope the Gophers beat Michigan on Saturday.

The Big Ten Conference announced today that the Illinois at Minnesota football game, currently scheduled to be played on Saturday, October 23 at the Metrodome in Minneapolis, will be moved to Friday, October 22 at 7:30 p.m. CDT if the Minnesota Twins advance to the American League Championship Series. The World Series is scheduled to begin at the home of the American League champion on Saturday, October 23.

Final score: Minn 43- Northwestern 17.

Interesting fact:
Marion Barber III racked up 86 yards rushing, 23 yards receiving, and 21 yards passing for a touchdown. Quite the versatile player.

Minnesota vs. Northwestern: Scoring Summary