Gopher Power

In the modern era of College Football, the Minnesota Gophers football team has been far from elite.

In fact, a six win season and a trip to a bowl game seems like the barometer for the program on success vs. failure.

Long before my generation or even my parents one, the Minnesota Gophers football program was racking up not only Big10 Titles, but National Titles as well.

A total of 18 Big10 titles in football and 7 National Championships were tallied up during the hay days of Gopher Football.

The main domination came from 1900-1941 as they accumulated 16 of their 18 Big10 titles in the process and 6 of their 7 National Championships came during that time as well.

During the glory days, it was all started with head coach Henry Williams who won the first title in 1904 and the next five titles were won by head coach Bernie Bierman.

Clearly it's a different time in college football. There are many more programs, many more with additional resources over the last 20 years that they didn't have previously, accompanied by the fact that almost every game is on TV, allowing kids to choose on preference instead of motive to be seen.

Furthermore, with the success of the "Glory Days" happening back in the early 1900's, the ability to promote the history of the program to recruits is non-existent.

There have been moments since the 1940's where the Gophers have had success, including two Big10 Titles in the 1960's as well as one National Championship during that decade too.

Since then there have been glimmers of hope, including a few fast starts by the Gophers under then head coach Glen Mason. Those fast starts however, never turned into anything other than mediocre bowl game appearances.

Nothing productive happened under the Tim Brewster era at the tale end of the 2000's and Jerry Kill was brought in to clean up the mess.

He has, and the Gophers have made it back to where bowl game appearances are a reality.

All that said, they still are so far removed from being a national power and in the confines of the Big10 and the college football landscape as a whole, it would be a miracle to regain that prowess once again.

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