Reusse: You can’t compare Gophers and Tommies in football ... although both have Lindenwood on their schedules

There is no collection of Minnesota sports followers more hypersensitive than the hardcore believers in Gophers football. Heck, two years later, they still can get upset when anyone makes a joke about needing an imaginary fair catch to get a win in Iowa City.

As part of their devotion, they insist on putting P.J. Fleck on a pedestal, based on raw numbers of victories and coming home with bowl wins that have been 86% meaningless. There was beating Auburn in the Outback Bowl to end the 2019 season that was notable, disinterested though the Tigers appeared to be.

There is no attention paid to the fact Fleck’s win total is inflated with 12-game schedules that have cupcakes at the start and mostly gimme bowl games added on — rather than shorter and more difficult schedules when going back in time as far as P.J.’s acolytes choose to travel in praising him.

What remains is he’s still under .500 in the Big Ten and failed to win a West Division in seven seasons (2017-23), even when the mediocre competition was sitting there a couple of times ready to be carved up like Christmas geese.

It has been one thing for these Goldies to complain that the Vikings dwarf the Gophers (and everything else) when it comes to attention in this media market. What’s downright humorous is the need to ridicule St. Thomas for having the temerity to finally have given Minnesota a second athletic program with Division I status.

No one is claiming this is the Big Ten and what’s now Power Four football. And as long as the Tommies are in the Summit League (and not the Big East), they will be playing for one bid to the NCAA men’s basketball tournament and the Gophers for one of eight or so.

Football is not even full-fledged FCS, since the Tommies — because of a land-locked facility and finances — will remain in the non-scholarship Pioneer Football League.

One day after Phil Esten, the most-dynamic Division I athletic director in Minnesota (it says here), showed off to local media the almost-finished, $183 million facility that will begin housing St. Thomas hockey and basketball in October, the Tommies reversed that historic beating with a 34-13 upset of the Lions.

Coach Glenn Caruso had many outstanding victories in his Division III seasons (2008-19) with the Tommies, including two runs to the national title game. Their last D-III season was cancelled by COVID-19 in 2020. There was an unbeaten run through the Pioneer in 2022, although it took until this season for the Tommies to be eligible for the league’s berth in the FCS playoffs.

As far as an entertaining and important evening, this opener rated high: Kickoff at 6:05 p.m. on a beautiful night; two sections filled with the 1,600 freshmen making up one of the school’s largest enrollments; and then a dynamic performance.

New quarterback Andy Peters, a graduate transfer from the NAIA College of Idaho, was solid. JaShawn Todd, a receiver and NAIA transfer from Benedictine (Kan.), was explosive. Sophomore Joseph Koch took over as the starting running back and continued the Tommies/Caruso tradition of always having a very good one.

The evening started solemnly with a long moment of silence for the children murdered and terrorized across the river at Annunciation parish, and then a heartfelt national anthem was offered by student Ashley Wongbi.

An hour after the game, walking the distance that’s always required to find legal street parking at St. Thomas, there was a loud postgame celebration of students taking place in the middle of campus.

On arrival at the vehicle, there were nine-some minutes left in the Gophers’ game with Buffalo. Fleck’s pounding offense killed all of that with Darius Taylor and Co. to conclude the 23-10 win.

Next week, the Tommies will play at Idaho, an FCS team that played Oregon within 10 points in the 2024 season opener. The Gophers will be charging the usual prices to entertain Northwestern (La.) State, which ended a 20-game losing streak by beating Alcorn State on Thursday. Six of those losses came in 2023, when the season was halted after player Ronnie Caldwell Jr. was killed in an unsolved murder on campus.

And in September 2027, the Lindenwood Lions will be back in the Twin Cities … to play the Gophers. Presumably, that one will move Fleck even closer to Bernie Bierman’s 93 wins — Bernie’s Gophers having been proclaimed national champions only four times in 16 seasons, interrupted though Bierman was for three years by that dang World War II.