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The Gopher women were a big deal in Minnesota, no doubt about that, but I don't think its like that everywhere. I think Minnesota just actually did a good job for once, and it really paid off.
I don't know how you can be a fan of the Gopher men right now. They have no identity. Grier is real good, but the team is made up of a bunch of juco's from around the nation and the top white guys of the twins cities. I don't know what it is, if they aren't getting the right characters or what, but I am just not a fan of that program right now.
I agree completely with what you said about the women though. They have an identity, they were like the home grown girls (that sounds kind of bad) who played basketball the right way. They didn't need to go out and get thugs, they got the right girls who knew how to play the game. It paid off for them tremendously, I think a lot of it is because of the decline in the mens team, but a lot of it also should be attributed to great promotion to the younger women players and the alums. They took that program from schambles and made it into the pride of the University.
I guess that was more just my opinion of Gopher basketball, but as a whole I agree that good promotion could play a big part in it. I have the softball beat for the paper I work for, and really it is very entertaining. Our team is top 20 right now, and when you get that amount of talent it will be entertaining. For things like that it is more just getting people to show up to begin with.
Not really title 9, but why is there major college golf? There has got to be a sport better then that, and one that would bring in at least some money.
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