So once a week (cross fingers) I'm going to order our pro teams and some prominent University of Minnesota teams according to how they're doing lately. There are some rules I plan to follow:
- Unless there's some news that I want to write about, the weekly survey only covers teams that are actually playing.
- Winning and losing will be the main criteria. However, signings, front office moves, off-field incidents, even something as supposedly benign as uniform changes are all fair game in this survey. I will even rank teams not playing if the news is significant.
- They will be ranked by negative numbers, from -1 to whatever, because the sports scene in this town is so negative they'll have to prove us wrong by pulling off a string of championships before we start to think we're not just a cursed sports town.
- I will make exceptions. If there is a team that's got a bit of a streak going, I may put them at 0, just to point out their success. If they do something really special, I will place them in a special group at the top of the heap called "Positive Numbers." Let's not get too excited and give them an actual integer, but I ain't gonna hate.
- At the other end of the spectrum, long losing streaks, spectacular losses and boneheaded moves by a team's management can and will be given the ultimate low score: -infinity (is there an infinity button?). And it is automatic that an end to a team's season will get this damned designation. Hey, did one star-crossed franchise just lose in the playoffs?
With that:
Positive Numbers: Gopher women's hockey. A 12-game winning streak starting on Halloween is hard to beat. However, the last team the second-ranked Gophs lost to was Wisconsin, who are ranked number 1, are in the same conference, and still get to face them here. It doesn't look like they'll be able to unseat the Badgers is what I'm saying.#0: Timberwolves. Four in a row? Good for them! For a long time I thought that Rashad McCants was underrated as a player on this team and that Randy Foye would never blossom to a good point guard. But maybe banishing #1 to the bench and simplifying the playbook for #4 -- not to mention scoring 6-of-9 from the Land Of The Three-Pointers and 26 points in the first half tonight against the Bastard Seattle SuperSonics -- was the best thing for the Ostrich (aka Kevin McHale). They still ain't goin' nowhere, but I have to give them props.
#-1: Gopher men's basketball: Great win against Ohio State ... after an ass-kicking to Michigan State, a vulnerable lead dog in another down year in the Big 10. Undefeated records are great but they don't mean a whole lot if they're against a bunch of low-level scrubs. How will they do in conference play on the road, starting at Iowa?
#-2: Gopher men's hockey: They are ranked 4th in the nation, but they have a lot of losses in their record. Worse yet is coach Don Lucia is sick with ... something that apparently even he doesn't even know. Hey, get that asshole Dr. House on the case! He'll view you as a medical case and not as a person, but you have no right to complain because he just saved your life!
#-3: Gopher women's basketball: Is it just me, or should there be more heat on Pam Borton? Her Final Four appearance came with predecessor Brenda (Oldfield) Friese's recruits, she ran off half her team several years ago, and she hasn't even sniffed the Big Dance since. They've won two in a row after losing three in a row, including at home to South Dakota State (a school that is coming up big this season, credit to them). Are they supposed to be in the tournament this year, or are we going to bask in the memory of Whalen-McCarville for yet another year?
#-4: Wrestling. If I started this last year I wouldn't've put them on the survey at all because I would've given them a one-year reprieve for winning a championship. But the way they thudded last year means there needs to be scrutiny in this program. This year looks like it's not going to be a great one either, exposed as incapable in losses to Oklahoma State and Nebraska. They're ranked 11th right now, but aren't there only, like 15 wrestling programs in the country?
#-5: Wild. They suck less. That 1-0 win at Boston, the best team in the East, is a great accomplishment, and congratulations to Niklas Backstrom for being named to the All-Star Game. You can put that on your resume when you shop it to other teams after the season since it looks like North Stars v.2.0 won't re-sign him. Oh yeah, and that shutout still proves that this team still can't score. It sucks that the only person who can create his own shot (Marian Gaborik) has an old man's hip, is shelved for the season and wants out. We should be spending money like Detroit, yet this team continues to stick to a development system that hasn't panned out.
#-6: Gopher football. Their defensive coordinator, Ted Roof, quit so he can do the same thing at Auburn, which is a reality check of where the Gophers are in the hierarchy of college football. The same day, the offensive coordinator, Karl Dunbar, quit because head coach Tim Brewster hired running game maven Tim Davis to supplement/replace Dunbar's spread offense. Plus they end their season losing five in a row. It feels like they went winless in their conference again, doesn't it?
#-Infinity: Vikings. Like I said in an earlier post, all seasons that end without a championship is a failure, but I'm not too bent out of shape over the loss to the Eagles. That said, there are a lot of good players on this team capable of bringing home a Super Bowl title and they're not getting younger. I don't know who you're going to get who's better than Tarvaris Jackson, but this is not a development league, this is a freewheeling free-agency league that the hard salary cap has devolved into a pickup game. The means to just plug in a better QB is there and should be explored, even if there isn't a better QB out there. Wait till next year?
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