Minnesota's best victory of the 2016 regular season was a 29-12 thumping of Northwestern on Nov. 19 at TCF Bank Stadium. The Wildcats were a competitive Big Ten team, and at kickoff there still was a chance the Gophers could be playing in the conference title game.
In a way, that solid effort vs. Northwestern could have been the beginning of the end for Tracy Claeys as the leader of the football program.
Yes, it was cold, but the turnout of fans was horrendous. Most estimates put the crowd at 25,000, which would mean a half-full stadium for a worthy opponent.
There had been other hints during the 7-3 start to the season that the mini-revival of interest in Gophers football with Jerry Kill had waned, but seeing the complete absence of enthusiasm for Northwestern had to put a fright into the new athletic director, Mark Coyle.
I would bet every moment of intuition experienced while covering sports forever that Coyle started his dialogue after that game with university president Eric Kaler on what to do about Claeys.
It would have taken place in the hope that Claeys could win at Wisconsin and start to gain a Kill-style connection with the public.
As is their custom, the Gophers played tough in Madison, before fading to a 13th consecutive loss to the Badgers.
This left local football fans yawning at an 8-4 first season for Claeys. They went back to making excuses for Mike Zimmer and the disaster the Vikings had become over the final 70 percent of his third season.
If the same troubles had befallen a group of Gophers coached by the popular Kill -- the suspension of 10 players for an alleged sexual assault, the leak of the outrageously slanted EOAA report that led to the suspensions, the "boycott" by players that was actually a protest -- there would have been no drama about a coaching change.
You can say that there wouldn't have been a players protest under Kill, but you're just guessing.
It is known that a year earlier, Kill had been outraged at an inflammatory e-mail sent by Kimberly Hewitt, the EOAA director, accusing the football team of sexual misconduct based on no evidence.
I'm guessing that Kill, too, would have defended the right of the players for more fairness initially from the EOAA. What Kill wouldn't have done was send a tweet of support as poorly phrased as Claeys.
Tracy is an extremely bright man, but clearly he was not able to prove that in 140 characters.
Still, I don't think his handling of the players protest and the tweet are what got Claeys fired. If all of that had happened with Kill, and then his remaining players put their guts on the field as Claeys' lads did in upsetting Washington State in the Holiday Bowl, Country Jer would have received post-game hugs from Kaler and Coyle.
Instead, Coyle remained reticent, and Kaler looked as if his family's new puppy had been run over and smashed into the asphalt by a garbage truck.
Two days earlier, on Christmas, I had written a mini-column for the Sunday Strib offering the suggestion that Claeys could be gone, and if so, Western Michigan's P.J. Fleck would be the replacement.
That was intuition -- nothing more.
When I saw a couple of shots of Kaler on the sideline, it became more than that. I saw a university president who was suffering at the sight on his football team winning a game.
Count on this:
Coyle and Kaler already had decided to fire Claeys well before the Holiday Bowl. And they already had assurances that Fleck, the wild-eyed salesman they wanted as coach, was available at the right price.
Coyle and Kaler had known since the middle of December that Fleck was their guy, but they had to wait for him to be done with his grand, resume-building season at Western Michigan.
Enjoy the bluster, Gophers zealots. Sometimes it can work at a higher level than the MAC.
Sports on 01/09/2017