Minnesota beat Michigan 20-14 at Huntington Bank Stadium on Saturday, and the Little Brown Jug is headed back to Minneapolis. The bigger number is the year attached to it: this was the first time the Gophers have beaten Michigan at home since 1977. Michigan had won 35 of the previous 38 meetings in the series. Saturday ended all of that in one afternoon.
The last Minnesota home win over the Wolverines came on Oct. 22, 1977, a 16-0 result at Memorial Stadium. Most of the students who stormed around that stadium Saturday have parents who were not born for it. That is the kind of drought that changes how a fan base sees itself.
P.J. Fleck Cashed The Check Before Kickoff
Fleck did not wait for the result to start celebrating. During FOX’s Big Noon Kickoff pregame show, he crowd-surfed off the studio stage into a mass of Minnesota students. It was the single most un-coachlike thing any head coach did on Saturday morning, and it would have aged horribly if his team had lost by 17.
Instead his team went out and held Michigan to 14 points. That is the only reason the stage dive gets filed under legend instead of embarrassment. Fleck has always sold belief harder than almost anyone in the sport, and for one Saturday the selling and the scoreboard matched.
Michigan Is 3-2 And Kyle Whittingham Does Not Have Answers
This was Michigan’s second straight loss. They fell to Iowa the week before, and now they sit 3-2 overall and 0-2 in the Big Ten after wins over Oklahoma, UTEP and Western Michigan. Two conference losses before October is over means a season has already reclassified itself.
Kyle Whittingham, in his first year running the program, sounded like a man staring at something he has not seen before. “I’m still trying to figure that out,” he said. “I’ve been in this profession 40-some years, and this is the biggest challenge I’ve had. I promise you we’re going to figure it out.” He also said “everything’s in play” and that the staff is evaluating everything without panicking.
Forty years of coaching and this is the hardest thing he has faced. Read that again and then remember he took the job in January.
Bryce Underwood Is The Problem Michigan Cannot Coach Around Yet
Underwood finished 10-of-21 for 101 yards and added 20 yards on 10 carries. He doubled his season interception total in this game and now sits at five touchdowns against four interceptions through five games. He has 212 rushing yards and two scores on the ground this year, which tells you where the production is actually coming from.
He was the most hyped recruit Michigan has signed in a generation, and he is being asked to carry an offense that gives him nothing easy. “We have to go back to square one and figure out what we can fix so we can be the best team we can be,” Underwood said afterward.
Here is the honest read: Michigan’s path to a Big Ten title is already gone at 0-2 in the league, and a playoff case built on beating Oklahoma in September will not survive two more losses. The Wolverines have to win out and hope. Minnesota, at 4-1 and 2-0 in the conference, has the jug and the better October.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.