OT: Minnesota starting to care about football?
lhttp://www.startribune.com/sports/gophers/252564751.html
Minnesota is building a new indoor practice facility for the affordable price of $70 million. Doesn't that seem like alot? How much did Glick cost?
March 27th, 2014 at 10:49 PM ^
March 27th, 2014 at 10:51 PM ^
- 20,000 sq. ft. of extra insulation costs $44MM, or
- They're secretly building a hockey rink underneath, eh.
March 27th, 2014 at 11:00 PM ^
Thoughts: Denver did that to themselves. I'm sure it was a big oversight, but honestly they couldn't have done a better job trolling the conspiracy community, if that's what it's called, if they had tried. Apocalypse murals with gasmasks and Nazis? Random Mason statues? Come on.
I have to ask, didn't you think it was a trifle unnecessary to see the crack in the horses bottom.
March 28th, 2014 at 10:30 AM ^
...but that might be the scariest part. Who wants to see horse anus at the airport? Artists can be so f'ed up...quite ironic that a falling piece of the horse killed the sculptor too.
And if Minnesota builds a statue featuring the apocalyptic anus of a gopher then we'll know it's another clue.
March 27th, 2014 at 10:57 PM ^
I smell Putin's hands all over this...
March 27th, 2014 at 11:21 PM ^
You can't beet the flavor.
i just recently learned it's actually pronounced borsch, with no t on the end. борщ
In which case, it's "barszcz" (pronounced "barshch"). Yeah, that's a lot of consonants strong together in one word, but Poland is not in Polynesia, so there's that.
Football teams in Minneapolis have learned not to cheap out on building extra roof reinforcement.
March 27th, 2014 at 10:51 PM ^
Do they have toilets in their stalls?
March 27th, 2014 at 10:52 PM ^
Toilets? I would hope so.
TV's? Unsure.
March 27th, 2014 at 10:52 PM ^
Kill is building a good thing, but needs a way to stand out. This'll do it.
March 27th, 2014 at 10:53 PM ^
I meant tv shitters.
March 27th, 2014 at 11:01 PM ^
You would think that a larger sign of "caring about football" is that Minnesota just built a brand sparkling new outdoor stadium to play football in, but perhaps not.
Either way, this has been in the works for a while--practice facilities are a significant issue for Minnie, one that they have been working to raise fund to rectify for some time. I'm actually surprised football is coming first, since a lot of noise has been made about the basketball team's lack of a facility and the relative age of the two main game facilities.
Keep in mind that the University of Minnesota has serious space-crunch issues that most other schools do not; Michigan has a large athletic campus, and many other universities sit on large land-grand properties that have all the property they need to expand; Minnesota's key space is in central Minneapolis, and there just isn't the space.
Also, it sounds like they are building more than a fieldhouse--the football offices will be located there, which suggests that this also includes the rough equivalent to a Shembechler Hall on the premises. Thus some of the extra expense.
March 27th, 2014 at 11:06 PM ^
March 27th, 2014 at 11:11 PM ^
Heh. Putting a practice facility there would be like Michigan putting its basketball practice facility in Dearborn.
But lunches could be catered by La Penguina deli on Greenfield and the New Yasmeen Bakery on Warren. If I were a football player, I'd be okay with that.
I'm pretty sure St. Paul is closer to Minneapolis than Deaborn is to Ann Arbor.
Well, after consulting google maps, apparently one only needs to cross eithe Emerald Street or 33rd Street to travel from Minneapolis to St Paul so technically that's closer than U of M's North Campus to Central Campus.
That actually came as a bit of a surprise to me as I had always thought that the U of Min was actually in St Paul because it was on the other side of the river from downtown Minneapolis. As it turns out, the river is not necessarily the border that I had assumed it was.
Learn something new everyday.
The Minneapolis campus is on both sides of the river, west and east bank of Mississippi. Undergrads are mostly on the east bank, but business, policy, and law schools are on west bank.
When I was there, bike (20-25 min) and bus (10 min) take the private campus road between Minny and St. Paul campuses...so rush hour doesn't matter much.
All the same, rush hour adds 10 min at most when driving regular roads if you know the short-cuts.
March 27th, 2014 at 11:14 PM ^
I just downvoted this comment for including a paragraph that contains only one sentence but two semicolons.
Pretty sure I meant for that first one to be a full sentence break, but the road to perdition is paved with good intentions.
There's all that open space on the river. FLOATING BASKETBALL ARENA!
...they could build a temp facility on the river each winter and do some ice fishing during timeouts.
March 27th, 2014 at 11:15 PM ^
March 28th, 2014 at 12:15 AM ^
March 27th, 2014 at 11:57 PM ^
but I still don't care about Minnesota
my ass
This is probably the biggest thing that they do that pisses me off. Not only do they refer to themselves as "U of M" (or "the U of M"), they also call themselves "The U".
Um, Minny? Miami (YTM) would like a word with U.
In fact, it's common slang in many college towns to refer to the local school as "the U" as a matter of vernacular convenience.
Probably only football fans would be inclined to think of Miami as a default when thinking of "the U" in a national perspective.
March 28th, 2014 at 10:03 AM ^
Correct. Everyone in Minnesota knows the University of Minnesota as "the U". Just the way it is.
I will admit that from what I've seen Minnesota fans have been quite delusional, but so are the fans of Purdue, Nebraska, and Penn State, all of whom believe that their programs are good enough to be in the national title discussion.
Besides, the Big Ten in general is a conference of delusion. But yes, most Minnesota fans should appreciate going to bowls more, and they should have never let Glen Mason go. Hands down their biggest mistake of the past decade.
But before we shit on and hur-hur Minnesota, let's note that at least they had an offensive line.
Wouldn't that chap you?
March 28th, 2014 at 10:06 AM ^
Minnesota even raised their ticket prices (12%) for the 1st time in four or five years (1st time since the new stadium opened).