This obviously hasn’t been possible in the Big Ten, but he’s become popular nonetheless for the kinds of antics fans love when you win and hate when you lose. He did this by vastly out-recruiting the rest of his conference. Fleck rose to prominence leading a post-Bill Cubit Western Michigan from 1-11 all the way to the Orange Bowl in four years. The Illini never had a chance in this beatdown, largely because they couldn’t stop the run and they only gained 23 yards on the ground. The Illini have suffered some very decisive losses to Fleck’s Gophers, but none were as horrible as the beating Fleck’s Western Michigan Broncos delivered to Lovie Smith’s first Illinois team back in 2016. Fleck’s endlessly-repeated personal mantra goes, “row the boat.” Somehow this was enough to vault them to #20 in the polls ahead of a home game with Illinois. However, they rallied for four Big Ten wins in a row, which included Purdue and culminated with a demolition of Northwestern. They lost 14-10 as 30-point favorites, largely thanks to three turnovers and a baffling inability to gain yards on offense. After escaping Miami of Ohio, they slaughtered Colorado on the road 30-0 before returning to face the worst offense in college football at the time in Bowling Green. This took the wind out of their sails and Ohio State iced it late. ![]() Minnesota started off with a shootout against Ohio State in which they were going toe-to-toe with the Buckeyes until a devastating injury ended the season of star back Mohamed Ibrahim. Overall, Illinois (5 national championships, 15 conference titles) is 31-40-3 against Minnesota (7 national championships, 18 conference titles) Last Season This was the case in 2014, 2018 and last year. Illinois’s last three wins against Minnesota have all been at points in the season where the Gophers were starting to think this could be a magical season…only to lose to the Illini. It’s not like all these losses are to good teams either Ron Zook went 2-3 against Minnesota when they were at their lowest point and these losses included a Homecoming game where 462 passing yards resulted in only 20 points a Senior Day debacle against a Gophers team that had already fired their head coach and the nail in Zook’s coffin, a lifeless 27-7 burial by a 2-9 Minnesota team that cemented his 2011 squad’s fall from 6-0 to 6-6. However, it really started to turn about 25 years ago: since 1995, the Illini have won just six of their last 21 games against the Gophers. The series went back and forth until the Illini racked up a winning streak in the 80s. Oddly, Illinois only played Minnesota fifteen times before 1940. Fleck has managed to sustain over-.500 football with minimal damage to the community. They’ve only canned one coach for incompetence in the last 25 years (former Illini Tim Brewster), while Jerry Kill resigned and Tracy Claeys was run out of town for overseeing horrific crimes by his players and covering it up. Fleck, but they blew their shot at Pasadena against Wisconsin. The closest they came was in 2019 under P.J. However, they’re resentful because in that timeframe Illinois still managed a conference title, a Sugar Bowl and a Rose Bowl in another season. In the last 25 years, however, Minnesota has been consistently better than Illinois, which is to say they have more winning seasons and their floor is generally higher (for instance, only three seasons of 3 wins or worse in that time frame-we have 10). ![]() 500 until falling off a cliff in the early 80s as Illinois swept the Big Ten, then recovered to 7-5 under first-year head coach Lou Holtz only to watch him go to Notre Dame and win a national title. Since Warmath’s final Big Ten title in 1967, Minnesota’s history has been very similar to that of Illinois, but without the occasional conference title or Rose Bowl berth. ![]() Williams, Bernie Bierman and Murray Warmath, the Gophers racked up an impressive winning record in the first hundred years of college football’s existence. Minnesota claims seven national titles, albeit one in 1960 that finished 8-2 with a home loss to 4-4-1 Purdue. The history of the Golden Gophers is actually very similar to that of the Fighting Illini-prior to the mid-1960’s, they were recognized as a national powerhouse. Today it’s time to talk about Wisconsin’s blood rivals.
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