Golden Nugz - 09.11.12

Happy Tuesday everybody! For some reason (probably the fact that I have too much to do at work this week) it feels like the weekend will be here in no time. Here's hoping the forecast stays as is and Saturday turns into another glorious fall afternoon!

Fewer (by my usual standards) Gopher related Nugz today as the primary dead tree sources gave their Gopher beat writers a breather after the weekend.

Football

-Fuller brings us a blog post on the newest record broken by MarQueis Gray over the weekend. Saturday was the fifth game where Q rushed for over 100 yards. This broke the record held by Ricky Foggie and Billy Cockerham. The big 75 yard run that set Q up for the record? The longest from scrimmage by any Gopher since Lawrence Maroney busted off a 93 yarder in 2005. The blog post has other nuggest, like the fact that Mike Rallis was the 2nd player to have the honor of wearing #51in remembrance of Gary Tinsley.

"They said I had to take my shoulder pads off for the press conference, but they let me put the jersey back on," he said. "It’s really special to be able to represent Gary like this. I just hope I did him justice."

Another LB note you may have missed. Lamonte Edwards started at Sam LB on Saturday. Also Derrick Wells followed up on his studly performance at UNLV with a team leading 8 tackles (including several great "in space" stops). Loving what this kid is bringing so far.

- Our favorite bearded writer brings us a blog post on Coach Kill's attempts to see the good in Saturday's win. As one would expect from a coach, he is a bit of a perfectionist. He had nice praise for several players, including Ra'Shede Hageman:

And Kill had encouraging words for several players, in particular defensive tackle Ra'Shede Hageman. The junior from Washburn High had three tackles, two sacks, and strangled New Hampshire's attempts to run the ball. The Wildcats had 68 yards on the ground, on 32 carries, an average of 2.1 yards per carry. The best part? "He'll keep getting better," Kill said. "He's not even close to what he'll be."

Keep getting better Shede. I'd love to see you drawing double teams all fall.

More Gopher FB links, a bunch of news from the College FB world, and the Oregon Duck gets a Korean rap song stuck in your head below the jump...

- The Daily looks at Shede and the rest of the D-Line's marked improvement.

This veteran-led unit — which only managed one sack in the four-game nonconference schedule last year — has already amassed six sacks through two games this season.

"I think the most impressive thing for me is … the defensive line is really getting off the football," head coach Jerry Kill said after the 44-7 win over New Hampshire. "We have some athleticism there, but we just have to keep improving."

Kill added that the team didn’t send as many blitzes in the game because of the amount of pressure generated by the four-man rush.

- Sandell breaks down the film from the UNH game. Lots of detail here and definitely worth a read. One nugget at the end that caught my eye...the Gophers ran the ball 85% of the time. Obviously I already knew they hadn't passed much, but seeing the number put it in sharp focus.

- Gopher Sports says Isaac Fruechte is living his dream as a Golden Gopher. They also have notes on Max Shortell and the anchors of our improved D-Line, D.L. Wilhite and Ra'Shede Hageman.

- Gopher Sports also offers up a full recap of the game, including the AP story, links to full stats, Kill's postgame presser, etc. It also has their highlight video:

- FBT Rouses the Rouser with a final look at the UNH game.

- MV also puts on his statsy hat and delivers his prediction for the WMU game via his patented FBT Models and Bottles system. The model predicts a 7 point Gopher win. Hopefully it's off by as much as it was last week!

- Part of MV's statsy model is the Sagarin ratings. The Gophers are currently 59th. Western Michigan is currently 92nd. As always, it's important to remember that Sagarin's ratings become more accurate as his model has more data. Week 2 is still pretty early.

- Jerry Palm feels much differently, ranking WMU 47th and the Gophers 94th.

- Pre-Snap Read bumped the Gophers up to 76th while putting WMU at 72nd.

- KARE 11 looks at the beer sales (and brings us video of some very excited fans).

- Shama says that the Aspire Group has raised their season ticket sales numbers to 600. No word on any update revenue figures though.

- If you weren't at the game, the U has put up the team's entrance video online. Apparently this is a slightly different version than what was played at the game, but it's pretty close. I'm a fan and can't wait to see it in person this weekend!

Misc Gophers

- The U is deciding what to do with the Les Bolstad golf course. I knew the course wasn't tip top, but had no idea things were this rough. As a golfer, I've always found it to be a big bummer that the U didn't have a top notch championship facility like what UW has here in Madison (seriously, if you love golf you'll want to play University Ridge if you're ever in town...it's a great course).

College Football

- Pre-Snap Read's conference rankings still have the B1G at 4th despite the poor showing this past weekend.

- An older note from last week, but ESPN's sources have just learned that they suck at giving credit to people who actually break sports news. Try to imagine a regular news outlet pulling this crap without a massive s**tstorm following them. When random, non J-school bloggers like me know you're effing up it's time to change your tactics WWL.

- Here's a funny video of John L. Smith prank calling one of the Hog beat writers during a press conference. Those were the days...before he brought us a wonderful PIGGY NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!! moment for the ages. Never change JLS, never change.

- CNNSI's Campus Union blog looks at tailgating food.

- Speaking of tailgating, a Notre Dame professor has done a study that says tailgating contributes to team victory (dunno about this) and to a university's brand (this I buy). PAGING NORWOOD TEAGUE.

- Ohio U. has been producing a "Hard Knocks" style set of web videos. Pretty sweet if you ask me. Here's the episode that includes the win over Penn State:

- The Big 12 signed a massive 13 year media deal worth 2.6 billion dollars. It gives each school $20 million a year. ABC/ESPN and Fox will share the football games while ABC/ESPN gets all the basketball inventory. There is also a HUGE penalty for schools that leave the conference:

The deal includes a "grant of rights" agreement, meaning if a Big 12 school leaves for another league in the next 13 years, that school's media rights, including revenue, would remain with the Big 12 and not its new conference.

The deal puts each Big 12 school on par with what B1G and Pac-12 schools get, though you can expect the B1G number to continue to grow thanks to the Big Ten Network.

Marketing

- Northwestern's schedule poster features their new home uniform and is pretty sweet IMO.

Facilities

- Fresh off their recent scoreboard renovations, Michigan State has just approved an additional $18 million in improvements to Spartan Stadium. Included in this will be a new locker room, concessions, and bathroom facilities.

- Illinois will soon have the 2nd largest scoreboard in college football. Remember when the Gophers were at #3? College football arms race at it's finest!

- Purdue just unveiled their new baseball stadium and it is NICE. It has suites.

The Smorgasbord

- Do you know what Gangnam Style is? It's prob better if you didn't. I had no idea. But thanks to Dr. Saturday and the Oregon Duck, I've had this tune stuck in my head for a whole week. I'm considering adding the song to my tailgating playlist just to troll everyone else in the lot and make them suffer like I have. On the plus side, the Duck's remake to this crazy video from Korean rapper PSY is high quality. So...enjoy?

- An Oregon HS tries to one up the Ducks with an all-black football field:

- California has a stupid HS football jersey rule that forced a team to abandon their historic jerseys. Seriously, lame.