Game Week: Minnesota (2013)

“Ten Twenty-Two,” said the only man to ever own a Minnesota Gophers Starter jacket. Really, the only man to ever wear any Starter jacket in 2011. It took a few minutes for my two friends and I to realize he was talking to us.

We’d driven up to Minneapolis in July to catch a couple of the Twins’ first games at Target Field. As we procured our first of many $9 Miller Lites, we were ID’d by the stadium vendor, who of course felt the need to point out that we were from Nebraska.

That’s when we heard the first of many “Ten Twenty-Two” threats from the aforementioned portly midwesterner, standing a few feet away. Throughout this whole interaction, he kept his eyes trained on the field. Eventually, we pieced together that he was referring to October 22nd, the date of Nebraska’s journey to Minneapolis for its first Big Ten tilt with the Gophers. This man was trying to intimidate us about the game. He was not noticeably drunk. We tried to play the Friendly Husker Fans.

“Well that’ll be fun.”

“You have a nice stadium that we almost hopped the gate to sneak into last night.” (true story)

“Good luck on Ten Twenty-Two.”

Throughout our 3-minute string of niceties, Starter Jacket Guy barely mad eye contact with us. At one point he uttered some half-intelligible threat about the Gophers “surprising” the Huskers, but otherwise he stared deadly onto the field from the mezzanine, with only an occasional nod, sideways glance, and his catchphrase. “Ten Twenty-Two.” We walked away, and made fun of the man behind his back for the rest of the weekend.

Three months later, on Ten Twenty-Two Eleven, Nebraska beat Minnesota 41-14 without really trying much in the second half.

The moral of the story is that being a Minnesota Gophers fan is really fucking sad.

So this week’s comic doesn’t go to hard on them. Instead, Bo and the boys breakdown the team, assess the competition and welcome back an old pal.

Follow TWOS on Twitter for daily fun, like this! Also, if you missed it, I did an interview with my friend Feit Can Write. But first, here’s this week’s comic, which begins with another really fucking sad Gophers fan.