Would You Rather...? Gopher Football Bowl Season Edition

Back in the day Jeffrick and I shared a two bedroom apartment in the swinging Twin Cities suburb of New Brighton. Boy were those the days! I would stay up until 4am chatting online with babes after coming home from loading packages at UPS, and Jeffrick was up early on weekday mornings to head off to school. We barely saw each other during the week. Ships passing in the night.

But on the weekends... we drank. I think we both also had restaurant jobs too, but mostly we drank.

Quite often during that drinking we would launch into one of our favorite games. A game we called "Would You Rather...?" This certainly isn't a unique game as I am sure almost everyone has played it at some point, specifically while drinking. But the games that Jeffrick and I played had two particular caveats that made it interesting... at least as far as we were concerned.

First, we always used "watch a WNBA game" as the litmus test for everything, and this litmus test, in a way, became the "Kevin Bacon" of our game (as in: 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon). So, the line of questioning I might pose to Jeffrick would go something like this:

Would you rather see Kevin Garnett play for a team other than the Wolves, or watch a WNBA game? (Note: this was clearly when KG was a T'Wolf. It's also worth noting that our obsession with KG was not healthy. Nor were our eating habits.)

Would you rather never again be allowed to wear a hat, or watch a WNBA game?

Would you rather shove a lit cigarette in your eye, or watch a WNBA game?

Would you rather see Kevin Garnett play for a team other than the Wolves, or shove a lit cigarette in your eye?

I think you get the idea.

The other caveat was that there was always a third, unspoken option, that one could choose in the event that one couldn't possibly bring oneself to make a choice.

Death by Killer Bees.

This third option was chosen FAR more often than is reasonable.

On Saturday, after enduring the dumpster fire that was the Gophers 6^th loss of the season to a Michigan State squad that was a corpse compared to the expectations the Spartans had at the beginning of the season, and then Notre Dame winning again, I started thinking about "Would You Rather...?"

Would you rather watch this Gopher offense play another football game, or watch a WNBA game?

Would you rather see Notre Dame win the National Championship, or watch a WNBA game?

Would you rather see the SEC win another National Championship, or watch a WNBA game?

Would you rather see Notre Dame win the NC, or see the SEC win another NC?

Would you rather see the SEC win another NC, or have to watch this Gopher offense play another game?

Death by Killer Bees.

Death by Killer Bees.

Death by Killer Bees.

Death by Killer Bees.

Death by Killer Bees.

Don't get it twisted (as the kids say), I'm ecstatic that the Gophers are going bowling (which I predicted, by the way, with perfection). To go from 3 wins each of the past two seasons to bowl eligibility this year, no matter how ugly it got at times, is a big accomplishment for this program. And the point that has been beaten into the ground by this point: 15 December practices for such a young team is huge.

But is it weird, at this moment, that I'm almost more excited for the team to get those 15 practices than I am to actually see the Gophers play in a bowl game?

The Gophers got to 6 wins, and deserve to go to a bowl, so I am definitely not arguing that they shouldn't go to a bowl game or anything of the sort. But the reality is that the Gophers beat 4 bad football teams, an FCS team, and a team that just won a share of the Big East Championship, not because they are good, but because ERMAGERDTHE BIG EAST IS AWFUL, to get to those 6 wins.

If the sanctions fairy hadn't hammered the B1G this season the Gophers would likely be going to Detroit to take on a MAC team in the PIZZA!PIZZA!BOWL! (A fate we'd certainly bemoan if it were the case.) Instead the Gophers will face a Big12 team such as, quite possibly, West Virginia, who, despite underachieving under Holgo, is dangerous.

But bowl season really is the college football fan's great equalizer. While we're all breathing a bit of a sigh of relief that the season for the Gophers is over and we don't have to watch this offense struggle to... do nothing again this Saturday, at around 12:15 on Sunday, when the Vikings are losing to the Packers, panic will begin to set in. That's about the time we'll all start to realize that this, NFL Football, this craptastic brand of football where nobody ever takes a risk, is as good as it gets for the next 2 months. Not to mention the fact that we'll have to stomach hearing everybody we know talk about their fantasy football playoffs./drinks Windex (<---- hilarious picture)

And that's about the time we'll start getting excited for whatever opponent the Gophers will play in whatever bowl they end up going to in whatever Texas city it happens to be in on whatever non-New-Years-Day day it happens to be on. And that's the beauty of being a Gopher fan. There's always next year, and next year starts in December.

Would you rather watch the Gophers offense play another football game, or watch a WNBA game?

Would you rather face the off-season now, or watch a WNBA game?

Would you rather watch the Gophers offense play another game, or face the off-season now?

I guess Death by Killer Bees can wait another month.