Three years from now, the story is similar but a bit different. Fleck remains the head coach, having maintained a program that is successful by their standards. He has beaten Iowa twice in a row — winning each of Kirk Ferentz's last two Floyd games — but Luke Fickell's ascendant Wisconsin holds Paul Bunyan's Axe after two consecutive victories. Rossi and Matt Simon have left to begin their head coaching careers. Athan Kaliakmanis is now backing up Bryce Young in Carolina, having missed out on Round 1 of the NFL Draft but becoming the first Gopher quarterback selected since Craig Curry in 1972. The new Big Ten schedule is difficult, but Minnesota is managing.
Five years from now, cracks have begun to appear. Losing Rossi has proven a serious blow to the defense, and Minnesota's rivals have not shown signs of slipping. Fickell has the Badgers competing for Big Ten titles (but has not yet made it to Indianapolis), and LeVar Woods has kept Iowa running at a respectable level. Fleck continues to rely heavily on transfers to replenish the roster, which has created a cycle of bringing in experienced players to replace those leaving, which is in turn at the expense of younger players, who transfer out and leave a thin depth chart. The Gophers' streak of making bowls (in non-pandemic seasons) has been interrupted by a 5-7 season.
Ten years from now, a larger share of Minnesotans are attending the U of M instead of smaller schools, thanks to years of neglect for the Minnesota State system, rising tuition costs, and continuously falling birth rates nationwide. The school is therefore flush with money, bolstered by the Big Ten's new contract with Amazon. Attendance at Gopher games, however, is mediocre due to a stagnant program.
Fleck is no longer the head coach. A combination of factors has led to his departure: The grind of a Big Ten schedule has gotten worse with the additions of Notre Dame, Oregon, Stanford, and Washington. Fleck has publicly toned down the degree to which he is himself (something started years ago), but his personality has nevertheless worn down many fans now that they've spent more than a decade with him as head coach. Simply put, Fleck had an expiration date like any other coach. Not that the annual roster churn and allegations of player mistreatment helped. Mark Coyle's retirement from the role of athletic director left Fleck without a key ally in the administration, and that was the final domino.
Twenty years from now, FBS football as we know it in 2023 is no longer, yet in ways it remains very familiar. The top subdivision of the sport has split off from the NCAA, but the lack of an effective central governing body possessing foresight or ethics means it remains a mess. The universities must now pay players directly as employees, a breakthrough only achieved after the players took them to court. Fewer schools are fielding football programs, but the largest causes are societal rather than legal: Youth football participation has decreased dramatically since the start of the 21st century, and it is harder for many schools (especially in the South) to justify spending resources on football with global warming making those resources endlessly scarcer. The regular season is now 14 games long, despite the number of cancellations forced by air pollution and extreme heat.
The Gophers, for their part, have remained an also-ran of the Big Ten. They finish above .500 roughly as often as they finish below it. They beat Wisconsin sometimes, and Iowa a bit more. Like other schools, Minnesota's athletic department has used the ruling on player compensation as a cynical excuse to jettison varsity sports that are not profitable.
Meanwhile, the players wear a Land O' Lakes patch on their chest, and 3M has purchased space on the sides of their helmets where the M used to be. (As some like to point out, there is technically still an M.) Fans can no longer see the Minneapolis skyline from their seats, as their view is blocked by lavish, mostly vacant housing developments. There are fewer fans than there used to be, however, as the school has followed the rest of the sport in replacing all traditional seats with luxury spaces. A dwindling Pride of Minnesota still plays at halftime, but only for 10 minutes, and they must watch games on television from their rehearsal space.
Thirty years from now, the heating of the earth continues apace. Several teams south of Mason-Dixon have folded, beginning with the likes of Troy and New Mexico State and Louisiana Tech. It is simply too hot to play football outdoors. High-profile programs such as LSU and Oklahoma still make enough money to construct opulent, climate-controlled domes while many of their fans struggle through power outages and prolonged drought.
Through all of this, Gopher football has seen an uptick in its fortunes. The Upper Midwest has, to use a callous word for it, benefitted in the short term from people's migration from warm climates into cooler ones. Consequently, Minnesota is an increasingly fertile recruiting ground. Blue-chip prospects have begun popping up in growing metros like Duluth and Winona, and even in previously small towns like Fairmont and Nisswa. The recruiting message boards — because those are never going away — are starting to catch on, and buzz is building for what head coach Thomas Barber might accomplish.
Fifty years from now, there is still Gopher football, but on a far smaller scale. Some time ago, the biggest programs in the sport realized that they don't need the Minnesotas and Missisippis of the world to make money. Legal agreements required them to stay with the chaff as long as they could, but as soon as it was possible, Ohio State and USC and Alabama and Texas and Clemson and so forth formed their own, closed-shop 20-team league. The NFL press universally celebrated the move.
The Gophers are now in a conference with Iowa, Iowa State, and a few others around the region. In a major upset, they defeated Michigan in the teams' final meeting in 2062. The Little Brown Jug sits permanently in a glass case in the football offices. Wisconsin, thought by most to have a chance at being invited to the new "Super League," instead settled for this makeshift Midwestern conference when no invitation came. Somehow, the Badgers' equipment staff "lost" Paul Bunyan's Axe after beating the Gophers in the last Big Ten season, so the two schools played without a trophy for a few seasons while trying to agree on a replacement. After five straight Minnesota victories, UW conceded that the Axe was stored in a closet all along and handed it over to their rivals.
The top-end talent in the state leaves for blue blood programs, but there are enough good players left over for Minnesota to field an entertaining team. They win some, they lose some. Gopher football remains just popular enough for the university to keep paying the players. The fans who are still here can find some joy in their scaled down version of the sport. They share food and drink every weekend in the fall and cherish the time they have together. A revived, if small, band has commandeered one of the suites. The stadium is starting to show its age but has some life left in it. It's a privilege to attend these games, considering how many football programs nationwide no longer exist.
The team has still not been to a Rose Bowl since 1962, and there's never any going back to those times. (The Rose Bowl itself burned down a long time ago.) In another five years, Gopher football might be done. In another 50 years, there might not be any people left on earth anymore. But for now, those that are here have something to share with each other.
Presented with acknowledgement to the podcast Split Zone Duo, as well as the discussions of issues facing college sports, and higher education in general, in the Moon Crew Discord
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