Minnesota vs. Kansas State (FAKE) Q&A

You know what stinks? BYE WEEK. The whole thing is just lame and it’s totally not fun because Minnesota doesn’t play during BYE WEEK. You know who else is suffering from BYE WEEK right now? Kansas State fans. To help us get through the suck that is BYE WEEK a totally fake and not real game between Minnesota and Kansas State has been organized.

Sometime tonight, in the non-existent bowels of a non-existent stadium in the non-existent burg of Des Moines, Iowa, KSU will not play the Gophers. But facts just get in the way of a good time here at TDG and over at Bring on the Cats, where we steadfastly insist that the Cats and Gophers are going to face off at the 14,557-seat Drake Stadium (possibly in NCAA 2014 but we’ll see, maybe we can use our blog riches to pay off the AD’s and actually make it happen).

Since I know only one or two of you are super familiar with Kansas State (/waves hello to wildcat00), we decided to do a Q&A with Jon from BotC to prepare you for this not at all fake matchup that we really hope to have video evidence of.

——————————

GoAUpher: Please share with me your utter joy that is the mess Nebraska has made of itself in the last week.

Jon:

NOTE: When I saw that Jon had only included a single GIF I was confused. But OMG this is the best GIF ever for the question I asked and I cannot stop loving it.

GoAUpher: Also, why does Kansas State hate Nebraska so much?

Jon: Allow me to paint a verbal picture with run-on sentences. Imagine, if you will, spending decades facing a team which filled your stadium every other year with their horrible red everything, beat you senseless, and then had the indecency to patronizingly tell you how hard your boys tried and what good sports you all are.

And then imagine those same fans losing their collective intestinal matter when your team finally gets on the same level and beats them. Indeed, imagine this as if, perhaps, you're imagining old white guys suddenly realizing that they can't have their way all the time, because it really was a lot like that.

And *then* imagine those same people deciding to crap all over you in the process of getting their revenge on Texas, claiming that if you'd just stood up to Texas all those times when Texas didn't do what Nebraska wanted then maybe this wouldn't have happened (even though on every matter of real importance involving actual money, Nebraska sided with Texas every damned time and strong-armed everyone else into agreeing).

GoAUpher: Does Bill Snyder being a wizard unlock any easter eggs in NCAA Football?

Jon: Not that we've so far been able to determine, although I've won like 38 BCS Championships with K-State. Being able to do that has to be a hidden easter egg. I'm stunned there's no achievement for that.

GoAUpher: What should a Gophers fan know about the Cats this year?

Jon: The offense is still pretty run-centric, even though we thought there was a lot of decent receiving depth. Jesse Ertz will run the ball a lot, because he's a K-State quarterback. K-State has *two* running backs on the Doak Walker watch list, Alex Barnes and Justin Silmon. They both generally manage about 6 yards a pop, although Vanderbilt put the screws to Barnes last week. But whether it was just a really bad night for both Ertz and his receivers, or whether Vanderbilt just defended better than a Big 12 team ever has, or whether we've got a serious issue with the passing game... well, I just don't know, man.

The defense was supposed to be the big question mark this year, but the reviews after the Vandy game were pretty much glowing. There are still some questions at defensive end, where some folks argue there's little pursuit speed, and K-State is in the strange position of having its better athletes in the linebacking corps on the second string because the first stringers know the playbook a lot better. The secondary is awesome, with Kendall Adams and D.J. Reed putting in award-worthy work already this year. In general, K-State will run a 4-2-5, although they broke out the standard 4-3 against Vanderbilt.

And also, we should have won that game, because Kyle Shurmur fumbled. Damn it.

GoAUpher: What's your favorite NCAA Football related story? For example, three of my fraternity brothers and I once played dynasty mode non-stop for 72 hours in the middle of the week, taking breaks only for classes with attendance requirements.

That would be the time I got bored and decided to dynasty up as Old Dominion in their first year as a transitional FBS team, with Taylor Heinicke as a sophomore, and had them in the BCS title game before he graduated. He threw for 800 yards one game. It was magically stupid.

GoAUpher: This is the part where you’d normally get a prediction but I somehow forgot to ask Jon what his was. I’ll insert his pithy reply when it arrives via electronic mail courier.

UPDATE WITH JON’S PREDICTION:

NOTE: Jon out here trolling me with a smiling winky face and I’m not going to stand for it. I mean, I will since I have no way to make him pay in NCAA 2014 since PS4 users can’t play it. But mentally I’m making him pay for it. With my mind powers.