The Vikings will finish the regular season having played their last seven games either in warm weather sites or covered stadiums. Place-kicker Ryan Longwell, who played nine seasons with Green Bay before coming here, was asked about how “neutral conditions” help execute a game plan.
“It’s tough to play December cold games when there’s field conditions, and weather conditions, and wind conditions,” he said. “…I’ve seen it so many times in Lambeau (Field) when you game plan all week for a certain thing and you show up on game day and it doesn’t allow you to do what you practiced. So you scrap it, you figure out a way to get through the game. So having neutral conditions, you can kind of expect what you game plan for you can actually do.”
No league does parity better than the NFL and although seven teams have only won four or fewer games, the playoff contenders are many and it’s anyone’s guess which two teams will make the Super Bowl. The Vikings are 9-5 and in first place in the NFC North but with two weeks left in the season could even miss the playoffs depending on how they and other teams perform. Eleven teams in the NFC have seven losses or fewer. And all of this means at least several NFL head coaching jobs could open up after the season.
Mike Sherels, who was a senior on Tim Brewster’s first Minnesota team in 2007, has a prediction as to when the Gophers will be special. It will be the 2011 season when Brewster’s first full recruiting class (last February) become seniors.
Sherels is an assistant football coach at Prior Lake High School.
What’s in a name? Apparently a lot if you’re former Gopher football player Greg White now in the NFL with the Tampa Bay Bucs. On Monday a judge approved his new name, Stylez G. White, according to www.miamiherald.com and other news sources. He chose the name because he liked a particular character in the Michael J. Fox movie “Teen Wolf.”
Former Gophers national championship coach Murray Warmath will be 96 on December 26.
Jerry Burns, former Vikings coach, will be 82 on January 24 and works out at a local health club every other day.