The Gopher football team that takes the field against Kansas Wednesday night for the Insight Bowl is likely to be highly motivated. The season ending 55-0 loss to Iowa was humiliating and is a five star stimulus to prepare for the bowl game. The consensus of the college football world, though, is that Kansas will win and the Jayhawks are favored by about 10 points.
Kansas is led by Mark Mangino who some will argue is the best coach in school history. He’s created attention for his success like last year’s 12-1 season (7-5 this season) at a school long known for basketball championships and a suffering football program. Mangino is also the fattest major college coach in memory, probably weighing north of 350 pounds and for years the subject of jokes (“our coach beat anorexia”).
The Jayhawks’ star receiver is Kerry Meier who 18 months ago was competing for the starting quarterback job, according to a story last week on LJworld.com. The Lawrence, Kansas newspaper Web site told the success story of Meier who has become a Sports Illustrated cover boy and one of the Big 12’s best receivers. Meier, from the small town of Pittsburgh, Kansas, has older brothers who played for Kansas State.
Jason LaFrenz, Gophers’ assistant athletics director for marketing and ticketing sales, reported via e-mail on Saturday that he’s expecting more than 10,000 Minnesota fans at the Insight Bowl. He also reported that about 1,000 tickets remain for Wednesday’s Minnesota-Michigan State basketball game at Williams Arena.
Former Bloomington Jefferson center Cole Aldrich is leading the Kansas basketball team in rebounds, 9.9 per game, and is second in scoring at 13.6 points. The 6-11 sophomore, along with former Minneapolis North guard Khalid El-Amin, who led Connecticut to a national championship, could be remembered as one of the two best Minnesotans ever to leave the state and play elsewhere.
The Giants scored 12 of their 19 points against the Vikings yesterday on field goals by 44 year old John Carney. The team’s punter is 42 year old Jeff Feagles.
Third year linebacker Chad Greenway hasn’t received a lot of publicity but his improvement has been noticed by many observers including teammate and fellow linebacker Ben Leber. Greenway said he believes his performance has been consistent during the season.
Vikings’ defensive end Ray Edwards finished the regular season yesterday with five total sacks in 15 games. That’s a long way from the goal he set before the season of breaking Michael Strahan’s NFL single season record of 22.5. Earlier this month Sports Headliners asked Edwards if he had regrets about going public with his goal. “Who me? Nah. I don’t have no regrets at all. I mean I set goals high for myself. Sometimes you fall short of your goals but you keep on moving. You don’t let that stop you.”
Edwards, in his third season as a pro, had to adjust to playing on the left side after being a right defensive end. I missed a lot of sacks I should have had,” he said. “Once I get there I gotta cash the check, as they say.”
Vikings’ rookie offensive lineman John Sullivan might be the successor to center Matt Birk but this season was a time for learning. “I can just ask Matt about anything…(for example) why he used a certain technique in certain situations,” he told Sports Headliners earlier this month. “He’s always eager to share that information with me and try to help me to become a better player.”
As a reserve, Sullivan prepared to play either center or guard if needed but had no game starts.