'Pressure is awesome': Gophers next 1-game championship season? No. 5 Penn State
MINNEAPOLIS - The stage is set for the biggest Gophers football game since that fateful October night in 2003 against Michigan at the Metrodome.
PJ Fleck has the University of Minnesota football team unbeaten at 8-0 for the first time since 1941, since World War II. The Gophers are 5-0 to start the Big Ten season for the first time since the 1960s. They’re ranked No. 13 in the country, with undefeated Penn State (8-0) coming to TCF Bank Stadium in nine days.
The only thing missing is ESPN’s College GameDay coming to Dinkytown. But we won’t know about that until Saturday night. Gopher fans shouldn’t hold their breath, with a likely No. 1-ranked LSU vs. No. 2-ranked Alabama that same afternoon. Fleck made his pitch after last Saturday’s 52-10 pounding of Maryland.
Penn State will come to Minneapolis as roughly 6.5-point favorites, and the Gophers would enter college football’s top-10 with an upset. Fleck wants his players to embrace the experience.
“Pressure is earned. Pressure is awesome,” Fleck said.
It’ll be the most highly-anticipated game in the 10-year history of TCF Bank Stadium. The Gophers will soak it all in and enjoy it, but they’ll also stick with the process that got them to this point: It’s a one-game championship season.
“You have to go out each week and prepare like it’s the Big Ten championship or national championship, because any team can beat you as you’ve seen,” said senior running back Rodney Smith, who became Minnesota’s all-time leader in total yards in the win over Maryland. “Earlier in the season we were in some dogfights with teams, good teams. If you don’t come out and play your best football, turn the ball over and don’t execute as a team, then anybody can be in a game with you and beat you.”
Smith has a point. The Gophers needed late comebacks to beat South Dakota State, Georgia Southern and force overtime before beating Fresno State.
They’ve apparently learned from their early-season adversities. In five Big Ten wins, the Gophers are outscoring opponents 206-72. That includes a 161-37 mark over the first three quarters.
They’ve scored at least 28 points in every game this season, and the first-team defense has allowed one touchdown in the last four games.
One thing we can be sure of? The Gophers will be ready to play. Fleck keeps the four walls of his program very tight, and their only focus is daily improvement.
“People picked us sixth in the West. They said we’re still a ways off, this team doesn’t listen to all that. They hear it, but then we get inside our culture, our four walls, bring it all in, evolve with what you say,” Fleck said. “It’s human nature stuff, but our program is designed to fight human nature every single day, to become elite. I’m just proud of how our players handle that.”
Staying in the moment, and the one-game championship season are two of the pillars of Fleck’s program. He doesn’t look ahead, and doesn't need to look far to find examples he can give his players. Wisconsin had an inexplicable loss at Illinois two weeks ago, and after losing at Ohio State, the Badgers are on the outside looking in at the top of the Big Ten West. Oklahoma lost to Kansas State as multiple touchdown favorites.
Don’t blink, because if you do, you’ll get beat.
“Just focus on the now. If you don’t play your best on any Saturday, you can get beaten. So we just focus on one day at a time, being our best that day and the next day being better than that. One game championship seasons allow us to be totally locked in to be able to be our best on Saturdays,” quarterback Tanner Morgan said.
A win over Penn State, and the Gophers can legitimately be in the conversation for the College Football Playoff. They’re in the national spotlight, it’s now time to celebrate it and embrace it.
But the stage and the magnitude won’t change the Gophers’ approach. It’s gotten them to this point.
“It’s a big stage, we haven’t been there in a while so it’s big. We’re just excited just to go out there and continue playing our game. We just know that we’ve got to work hard and go to work,” Antoine Winfield Jr. said.