The best fake sports debates are the ones in which both sides have logical points to be made. And when we say "fake," we don't mean bogus. Rather, we mean manufactured — a talking point that need not be raised, but is fun to bring up nonetheless.
As such, we bring to you a fake sports debate this morning: which football team will win more games this season — the Gophers or the Vikings.
On the surface, the Vikings should always have the edge since they play four more regular-season games than the Gophers. Then again, the U gets a chance for a pretty good head start every season with the squishy soft non-conference schedule favored by many BCS schools. A decent year in college football, really, is 7 or 8 wins. Same goes for the NFL.
This year, if you really had to guess, you would say the Vikings are in line to win 6 or 7 games, maybe 8 if they overachieve a little, maybe 9 or possibly 10 with some breaks. You could say the same exact thing about the Gophers.
So who is going to win more games?
Here's how we'd frame it: The Vikings have more upside since they have more games, and the NFL generally produces surprise teams every season. Minnesota had a comedy of QB errors last season and lost many games by narrow margins thanks to poor QB play and a bad defense. If those problems are even somewhat solved by a few new players and a new regime, this team could be intriguing.
The Gophers are more of the known commodity because they have one unit — defense, yes we know that's shocking to say — that should keep the team in virtually every game. We still fear that the passing game will come up short against the best teams, but this team won 8 games last year and even against a tougher schedule this season shouldn't do any worse than 6-6 (and very well should do better than that).
Gut instinct: Gophers win 7, Vikings win 6. But two years from now — when the Vikings theoretically should be better and the Gophers could be ready to contend in the Big Ten — this should be a race to 10 wins instead.
