Author: David Shama

David Shama is a former sports editor and columnist with local publications. His writing and reporting experiences include covering the Minnesota Vikings, Minnesota Twins, Minnesota Timberwolves and Minnesota Gophers. Shama’s career experiences also include sports marketing. He is the former Marketing Director of the Minnesota North Stars of the NHL. He is also the former Marketing Director of the United States Tennis Association’s Northern Section. A native of Minneapolis, Shama has been part of the community his entire life. He is a graduate of the University of Minnesota where he majored in journalism. He also has a Master’s degree in education from the University of St. Thomas. He was a member of the Governor’s NBA’s Task Force to help create interest in bringing pro basketball to town in the 1980s.

Vikings’ Walsh Shakes Georgia Slump

Posted on September 10, 2012September 10, 2012 by David Shama

Rookie Blair Walsh kicked a 55-yard field goal in the closing seconds of the fourth quarter yesterday to send the Vikings-Jaguars game into overtime. Then the Vikings’ placekicker made an overtime 38-yard field goal in his first regular season NFL game to lift Minnesota to a 26-23 win. But Walsh said in the locker room after the game that neither of those pressure field goals produced the anxiety experienced in the second quarter.

“The most nervous I was all day was my first point after touchdown,” Walsh said. “I was so anxious to get going in the NFL and start a career.”

What a way to begin a career, making all four of his field goal attempts and both extra points including after the Vikings scored a late second quarter touchdown to cut the Jaguars’ lead to 9-7. The performance justified not only the decision to draft Walsh in the sixth round earlier this year, but to cut 15-year veteran Ryan Longwell.

Walsh, who said he “tremendously” respected Longwell, missed 14 field goal attempts during his senior season at Georgia after never missing more than eight in one year. “I think my stats dipped a little bit last year because I was pushing a little too much,” he told Sports Headliners last week. “I missed early on (in 2011) and I hadn’t missed early on in my career. I just pushed. I wanted to be there for my team and help them. One thing led to another and I just never really got back into my rhythm.”

A four-year career at Georgia, playing in college football’s best conference (the SEC), helped develop a philosophy about pressure. “One miss is not going to kill you, and one make is not going to make you,” Walsh said.

Maybe Walsh’s pressure field goals yesterday won’t make him or the Vikings, but yesterday was a step forward for a team that was 3-13 last season. The smallest Vikings home crowd at the Metrodome since December 21, 1997 offered plenty of boos in the first half, often directing the boos to a faltering quarterback, Christian Ponder.

But by game’s end, many in the announced crowd of 56,607 had acquired some faith in the home team. Vikings defensive tackle Kevin Williams told Sports Headliners last Thursday he knew about the doubters.

“We believe in ourselves,” Williams said then. “I don’t think anybody outside this locker room believes in us. We believe we’ve got the talent to win some games. We just need to put it on display Sunday and start with the Jacksonville Jaguars.”

After the game Williams was asked whether the win will make converts. “We might a got one or two people over,” he said. “We (the defense) made a lot of mistakes. We gotta look at this film and get that stuff corrected. We didn’t play as well as we’re capable of playing.”

The mistakes included allowing a 39-yard touchdown reception by Cecil Shorts III to put the Jaguars ahead 23-20 during the final minute of the fourth quarter. Not only did cornerback Chris Cook get beat but there was no help from other Vikings defenders on the play.

But that won’t be remembered as much as this: Vikings 26, Jaguars 23.

Notes:

The Jaguars might have won the game in regulation had their coaching staff decided to go for a touchdown on fourth down from the Vikings one-yard line in the first quarter. Instead, the Jaguars kicked a field goal, taking three points and not six from a potential touchdown. An odd decision early in a game that was the NFL opener for both teams.

One hour before kickoff yesterday there were parking spaces on Park Avenue within about a block of the stadium. A ticket hawker was asking $70 for a $120 seat on the 40-yard line, row 15.

Vikings rookie safety Harrison Smith said last week his parents travelled from Knoxville to watch all his games, home and away, while he was at Notre Dame. He’s told them they don’t need to do that in the NFL but they planned to be in Minneapolis for the Vikings opener yesterday. Smith expected “about nine” family members and a friend to come from out of town to watch him play his first regular season NFL game.

Smith welcomes feeling apprehensive before games. “I like having the butterflies,” he said. “I like being a little nervous before the games—put me on edge a little bit, get me excited. At the same time you don’t want to be nervous and shaky, and everything.”

The Gophers played one of their best games in memory against a non-BCS opponent on Saturday, dominating New Hampshire in a 44-7 win at TCF Bank Stadium. The 2-0 Gophers have won four of their last seven games dating back to 2011.

Quarterback Alex Carder threw five touchdown passes in Western Michigan’s 52-21 win over Eastern Illinois on Saturday. The Broncos (1-1) play Minnesota at TCF Bank Stadium next Saturday.

The Aspire Group had sold “about 600 full season tickets” for Gophers football as of early last week, according to Jason LaFrenz. The Gophers associate athletics director said the Atlanta-based company has 12 sales reps here selling season and group tickets for 12 different University of Minnesota sports including football. The goal for the school year is $1.2 million in ticket revenues.

Former Gophers center Ralph Sampson III watched his father Ralph Sampson II be inducted with 11 other honorees last week into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Massachusetts. The older Sampson is a former three-time college basketball player of the year. Among those also inducted was former Indiana Pacers star Mel Daniels who started his ABA career with the Minnesota Muskies.

Serving on the Hall of Fame’s board of governors is former Gophers golfer and New York Times best selling author Harvey Mackay. Mannie Jackson, a former executive in Minneapolis with Honeywell, is also on the board.

Twins manager Ron Gardenhire tied with the Giants Bruce Bochy for fourth in a Sports Illustrated poll published last week that determined baseball’s most underrated manager, according to a vote by players.

Cole De Vries, 4-4 after beating the Indians on Saturday night, has a 1.54 ERA in his last four starts for the Twins. He’s won his last three starts.

Twins outfielder Ben Revere has stolen 36 bases, the most on the club since Otis Nixon had 37 steals in 1998.

Much publicized Twins prospect Miguel Sano, playing for Beloit, led the Midwest League in home runs with 28 and RBI with 100.

Canterbury Park concluded its 2012 live racing season with an increase in attendance from last year. Average attendance for the 62-day meet was 6,595, up from 6,143 in 2011.

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U Markets but Student Sales Dip

Posted on September 7, 2012September 7, 2012 by David Shama

There will be a noon football pep rally today at Coffman Union that will include coach Jerry Kill, athletic director Norwood Teague and University of Minnesota president Eric Kaler. The event is part of a 2012 marketing plan to promote Gophers football to students. From student orientation to the pep rally to an email message from quarterback MarQueis Gray sent to 42,000 students, the athletic department has been reaching out to students in the days leading up to tomorrow’s opening home game against New Hampshire.

“It’s a pretty extensive plan (to reach students),” associate athletics director Jason LaFrenz told Sports Headliners. “We’re selling where they’re at.”

But when fans show up at TCF Bank Stadium tomorrow the most empty seats in the four-year-old facility could be in the bowl end—the student section. That’s sometimes been the reality in past seasons, including 2011 when student season ticket sales dropped to a TCF Bank Stadium low of 5,600.

Student season tickets ($84 for seven games) will be sold for awhile but it seems likely the final total will be 4,500 or less—way below the 10,000 in the stadium’s first season of 2009 that filled up the bowl end. The totals in 2010 and 2011 were 7,800 and 5,600.

This is the first week of classes for fall semester at Minnesota and 3,400 student season tickets had been sold as of this morning. “We all want to sell more season tickets,” LaFrenz said.

To help fill the student section tomorrow, the Gophers have distributed 5,500 free tickets to freshmen. “We’ve never done that before,” LaFrenz said. “We’re curious to see what happens.”

The athletic department is also selling a $25 ticket package to the public for the first two home games that includes a hot dog and coke. Those ticket holders will sit in the stadium’s bowl end.

Critics question the effectiveness of the athletic department’s marketing in selling student tickets. The opinion here is it’s easy to criticize but to market a product there has to be an attractive product and an audience that wants to buy the product.

During the last 20 seasons the Gophers football program has produced 50 wins and 110 losses in Big Ten Conference games. During that period the Gophers were mostly at or near the bottom of the league standings. Minnesota last won a conference championship in 1967. The Gophers haven’t been to a New Year’s Day bowl game since 1962.

Minnesota’s overall record the last two seasons is 6 wins, 18 losses. The Gophers are 19-31 overall and 10-30 in the Big Ten since 2007. The program hasn’t won a bowl game since 2005.

Students at Minnesota—if they grew up following football—are more likely to be Vikings fans than Gophers followers. That’s almost certainly a valid assumption about students who were raised in the state, surrounded by adults and peers who prefer the Vikings and the powerhouse image of the National Football League.

Most of Minnesota’s 50,000 students don’t reside on campus. That means a less captive audience for football games and other on-campus activities. And that’s been a problem for decades in drawing students to athletic events.

TCF Bank Stadium wasn’t sold out for a single game last season, despite the presence of an unusually attractive home schedule that included Iowa, Nebraska, North Dakota State and Wisconsin. Those schools are box office attractions to many Minnesotans, including students, and the four programs brought thousands of rival fans to town.

Last season the Gophers averaged 47,714 in their 50,805 seat stadium—a facility that is among the newest and best in college football. Unless the Gophers contradict predictions of another unproductive season on the field, attendance is almost certain to be less than in 2011.

LaFrenz said public season tickets ($275 for seven games) renewed at 90 percent and new season buyers are being added. The public total as of this morning is 29,977, according to LaFrenz. Combine the near 30,000 with (maybe) 4,000 student season tickets, and (maybe) an average of 6,000 from single game attendees (including freebies) and the Gophers might average 40,000 fans in 2012.

That would be the lowest home average since 39,996 in 1993. Not so good, but remember part of the adult population in this town and state is as apathetic about Gophers football as the young academics in Dinkytown.

And not so bad when compared with the 16,013 who showed up in Henderson, Nevada to watch Minnesota defeat UNLV last week. That attendance was interesting and so too were the crowds involving some other Big Ten teams. Illinois, Indiana and Purdue—all programs that have produced plenty of heartache and indigestion for their fans during recent autumns—drew home crowds last Saturday of 43,441, 41,882 and 40,572.

If Kill turns the Gophers into Big Ten winners, the athletic department won’t have any problem besting those crowds.

Football & Other Notes:

New Hampshire receives $375,000 for tomorrow’s game at TCF Bank Stadium. Oregon head coach Chip Kelly was New Hampshire’s offensive coordinator before joining the Ducks in 2007. The Wildcats run a spread offense with a 4-2-5 defensive alignment.

“They’re going to snap it 90 to 100 times a game,” Kill said. “They’re no‑huddle offense. They’re going to get up, boom, boom, boom, boom.”

New Hampshire receives a smaller financial payout from the Gophers because the Wildcats are an FCS school. Western Michigan, an FBS school that will play at TCF Bank Stadium a week from Saturday, will receive $750,000. Syracuse, the Gophers’ final 2012 nonconference opponent, will earn $250,000 for playing here. That amount is based on a home-and-home arrangement where Minnesota played at Syracuse in 2009.

New athletic director Norwood Teague talking about future football scheduling: “I think with scheduling, the way I feel about it is that I want Jerry and his staff to do it. I’ll monitor it. …I don’t micromanage that.”

Last month, before the Gophers opened their season, KFAN’s Dan Barreiro predicted Minnesota will start the season with a record 7-1.

In its initial NFL power rankings, espn.com has the Vikings No. 30 among 32 league teams. The Jaguars, the team that opens the season against the Vikings on Sunday at Mall of America Field, is ranked No. 29. The top five: Packers, Patriots, Giants, 49ers and Texans.

Vikings fan and supporter Larry Spooner will sound the Gjallarhorn before the game. He will represent fans and supporters who backed legislation for the new downtown stadium.

Ex-Vikings tight end Mike Mullarkey, now in his first season as head coach of the Jaguars, began his coaching career as an assistant at Concordia University, St. Paul. Mullarkey was head coach of the Bills from 2004-2005, compiling a 14-18 record.

The three Vikings quarterbacks have a total of 13 starts in NFL regular season games. Starter Christian Ponder, now in his second season, has 10 starts while third-year and No. 2 QB Joe Webb has three. McLeod-Bethel Thompson, signed as a free agent in January, has never played in an NFL regular season game.

Coach Leslie Frazier talking about Thompson: “I like his arm strength that shows up. He has accuracy, but his command is one thing that really got all of our attention. Going all the way back to OTAs and doing the things that we did back in April, he has some confidence and some swagger about him. And you like to see that in (a) young guy and he has some talent to go along with that. He has some things that you’d like to try to develop over time and see where he ends up going.”

St. Thomas and Saint John’s, both winners in their non-conference games last Saturday, have games against UW-RiverFalls and UW-Eau Claire tomorrow. Then on September 15 the Tommies play at Saint John’s in a much anticipated MIAC opener. (St. Thomas defeated UW-Eau Claire 27-24 last Saturday.)

MIAC football teams were 7-0 in nonconference openers last weekend.

Last week Becker High School coach Dwight Lundeen won his 300^th career game, while Adrian’s Randy Strand coached his 200^th win and Springfield’s Paul Dunn got career win No. 100.

The announcement about Rochester manager Gene Glynn joining the Twins in September prompts speculation about changes for next season. While it will be stunning if manager Ron Gardenhire doesn’t return, a shake-up in the coaching staff wouldn’t be surprising given the Twins’ on-field performance the last two years.

Glynn, the Waseca native, impressed at Rochester. So, too, did hitting coach Tom Brunansky, the former Twins outfielder.

While releasing its conference schedule last week, the Big Ten office noted that six league teams were included in the early preseason national top 25 ranking by Andy Katz from espn.com: No. 1 Indiana, No. 5 Michigan, No. 8 Ohio State, No. 9 Michigan State, No. 22 Wisconsin and No. 25 Minnesota.

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Look-Alike Vikings & Jags Meet Sunday

Posted on September 4, 2012September 4, 2012 by David Shama

Two second-year quarterbacks trying to prove worthy of leading their teams compete on Sunday at Mall of America Field. The Vikings Christian Ponder and the Jaguars Blaine Gabbert, first round draft choices in 2011, will lead their offenses in the NFL opening game for both teams.

Vikings Nation knows Ponder’s story, a 2011 season in which he started 10 games and at times threw the ball to guys wearing a different color jersey. Sometimes lacking poise and showing his inexperience in reading defenses, Ponder threw 13 touchdown passes and 13 interceptions. His passing rating was 70.1.

Gabbert’s critics “lampooned him for everything from his accuracy to questionable pocket presence,” according to an online story last Saturday in Jacksonville’s Florida Times-Union. Gabbert started 14 games for the Jags last season, threw 12 touchdown passes, 11 interceptions and had a rating of 65.4.

Not surprisingly in the quarterback-centric NFL, neither the Vikings (3-13) nor Jags (5-11) were winners last season. Better times in 2012? Most NFL authorities don’t think so including Sports Illustrated—predicting in its pro football preview issue both franchises will be 4-12, finishing last in their divisions (NFC North and AFC South).

Former Vikings tight end Mike Mularkey, the new Jags coach, has the assignment of helping make Gabbert effective enough to one day remove the 22-year-old’s training wheels. S.I. describes Gabbert as the NFL’s “most skittish” quarterback last season but reports Mularkey, the ex-Falcons offensive coordinator credited for some of quarterback Matt Ryan’s development in Atlanta, has stressed fundamentals with Gabbert.

That seems like a “duh” but the 2011 off-season NFL labor dispute didn’t allow normal preparation for the season. Included among the victims were Gabbert and Ponder, two first round draft choices trying to find their way playing the most demanding position in pro football as rookie starters.

Vikings, Gophers & Other Notes:

Sports Illustrated predicts the Bears will win the NFC North with the Packers, Lions and Vikings finishing second, third and fourth. But the publication picks the Pack to beat the Broncos in the Super Bowl.

Few Vikings observers probably thought that when the club signed McLeod Bethel-Thompson as a free agent last January he would make the team. The 24-year-old quarterback is on the final roster after previous pro football experience in the NFL (no regular season game action), Arena Football League and United Football League.

The strong-armed, strong-willed California native began his college career at UCLA and finished at Sacramento State. He’s interested in becoming a teacher and helping inner-city youth. His grandfather, Wilbur Thompson, was a gold medal winning shot putter for the United States in the 1948 Olympics. The younger Thompson said his grandfather has been a mentor in his life, reminding him “of the power of the mind on the body.”

The Gophers next three nonconference football opponents are New Hampshire, Western Michigan and Syracuse—all home games at TCF Bank Stadium. New Hampshire defeated Holy Cross 38-17 last week, while Western Michigan lost 24-7 to Illinois and Northwestern beat Syracuse 42-41.

Gophers coach Jerry Kill talking today about FCS member New Hampshire playing in Minneapolis on Saturday: “This is a bowl game for New Hampshire. …You’re going to get their best.”

Kill said Gophers freshman running back and receiver KJ Maye “is going to be a special player.”

Two years ago many Gophers fans were criticizing the choice of Adam Weber as the team’s starting quarterback, lobbying for MarQueis Gray. Weber ended his college career as a four-year starter in 2010. He is second only to Drew Brees in career Big Ten total offense. Gray took over as Minnesota’s starter last season, completing 50.7 percent of his passes while throwing eight touchdown passes and eight interceptions. In Minnesota’s first game this season an over anxious Gray missed open receivers and sure touchdown passes.

Ron Gardenhire said on his most recent Sunday morning 1500 ESPN show he accepts responsibility for his team that will finish with one of the worst records in baseball. “I haven’t been able to figure this thing out,” he said. But Gardenhire didn’t talk like he won’t return as manager, and general manager Terry Ryan has been a big admirer of Gardenhire’s managing that started in 2002.

Gardenhire also said on the show he’s seen growing confidence in Chris Parmelee, the first baseman, right fielder and designated hitter that has compiled some frequent flyer miles this season shuttling between AAA Rochester and Minneapolis. Gardenhire has “big plans” for the 24-year-old left-handed hitter who batted .338 at Rochester with 17 home runs and 49 RBI in 228 at bats.

Local businessman John Dovolis was a good friend of the late Dark Star, the former WCCO Radio talk show host and all-time Minnesota character. Star, who died from a heart attack last spring, didn’t have a healthy diet. Dovolis recalled that Star once told him that at his funeral he wanted an open bar and buffet, and “to make sure there was no salad, vegetables or fruit.”

Star’s suburban Minneapolis apartment was filled with sports memorabilia. “There was barely a pathway to go from the kitchen to the bathroom to the bedroom,” Dovolis said.

This Friday, Saturday and Sunday from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. there will be an estate sale of Star’s memorabilia with part of the proceeds going to the new Gophers baseball stadium. Items will include a Michael Jordan signed jersey and basketball, Jim Brown and Dick Butkus autographed helmets, signed baseball bats and balls, model boats and airplanes, slot machines, coin operated games and a lot more. The sale will be at 212 Second Street Southeast in St. Anthony Main and conducted by Dennis Hagen Estate Sales. www.dennishagenestatesales.com. Dovolis said the sale will be advertised in Thursday’s Star Tribune classifieds.

Prep basketball authority Ken Lien emailed today that Edina basketball guard Graham Woodward will make a recruiting visit to Washington State this weekend.

The seventh annual Hockey Day Minnesota, celebrating the sport from the peewees to the pros, will be on Saturday, January 19. Three outdoor high school games will be played on Lake Pokegama in Grand Rapids: Eagan versus Hibbing (boys); Benilde-St. Margaret’s versus Grand Rapids (boys); Hibbing versus Grand Rapids (girls). The Gophers will play at home against North Dakota on Hockey Day while the Wild host the Penguins.

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