As if Wisconsin fans needed another reason to dislike the Gophers - but this one was too great to pass up and not share.
Over at SportsbyBrooks, there's a link to a video tour of Minnesota football's new digs at TCF Field from EveryDayShouldBeSaturday. When you watch it, you see a giant, tacky flashing M on the ceiling, but really, on first viewing, it's nothing exciting.
But Brooks points out that Minnesota coach Tim Brewster's push for the Gophers to once again find the status the school once enjoyed includes displaying a fake National Championship trophy.
From the SportsbyBrooks post:
Inside the locker is the iconic “crystal football” trophy for Warmath’s 1960 national title with Minnesota, the last in Gophers history. It’s a perfect reminder that expectations in Minnesota are for a title and nothing less.
One little problem, though; the title was in the 1960 season, but the “crystal football” trophy wasn’t first issued until 1986.
Digging a little further, and trying to give Minnesota the benefit of the doubt, SbB hypothesized that the crystal football may have been retroactively handed out.
No such luck.
We talked to someone at the AFCA, however, who assured us that they never issued any of the trophies to teams who won the title earlier (like, say, Minnesota in 1960), and that the Gophers would have had to order one from elsewhere.
So the whole thing comes off as a little questionable and certainly inauthentic, but as SbB points out, it's not the first time Brewster has fudged the truth. They link to this BlackHeartGoldPants post pointing out that Brewster's own promotional materials are less than truthful, as well as un-spellchecked.
