Generations lost. Minnesotans in their 20’s, 30’s and 40’s have grown up with little or no interest in the Gophers. Even alums in those age groups are likely to have passed through Dinkytown without a strong connection to Gopher football. There are a lot of gray haired folks at Minnesota football games, people who grew up with the tradition of following the program.
Season tickets. The Gopher public season ticket sales are about 32,500 for this season. The student sale a dismal 6,500 among a student population of over 50,000. When you start each game with a base of 39,000 tickets, it leaves a long distance to reach a 64,000 seat sellout.
Front runner town. Tough to say it about your home turf, but fans are quick to bail on the local teams. Start with the Minneapolis Lakers who a few years after they had won the last of their five NBA titles left town because of poor attendance and need for a better playing facility. The Gopher football team couldn’t even fill its stadium in the late 1960s after winning a national championship in 1960 and the Big Ten title in 1967. The North Stars left town in 1993 after season ticket sales and overall attendance had failed dramatically after the glory years at the box office in the 1960s and 1970s. The Twins, who won the World Series in 1987 and 1991, weren’t exactly the toast of the town in the later 1990s when annual attendance dropped to the 1 million to 1.5 million ranges and contraction loomed. The Wolves were a hot ticket when they went to the Western Conference finals in 2004 but a playoff drought since has shown how indifferent the public can be. Even the Vikings, by far the most bullet proof to the fickled fandom, have seen ticket sales soften following 6-10 and 8-8 seasons. The Wild will likely see a fallout of support, too, if Marian Gaborik leaves town and the team begins to lose.
Not hopeless. The Holtz years and occasional big crowds since indicate the Gophers could significantly create a larger fan base if they were to capture the public’s attention in a credible way. Holtz wasn’t here long enough to win a lot of games (10 in two years) but he was perceived as a winner. Brewster doesn’t have Holtz’s proven resume so he must do it all on the field. Give the Gophers two or three consecutive years of New Year’s Day bowl games and watch the fan interest soar.
Next year the Gophers give up about 14,000 seats to move into the 50,000 capacity new TCF Bank Stadium. Because of smaller capacity and increased season ticket sales, sellouts for all home games are expected before the first game on September 12. The stadium is built for expansion and the state has the ticket buying potential to one day demand just that.