Just a reminder of last season's game. We know Brewster doesn't remember it.
I still hate the doofus they put in charge three years ago, a man who is the antithesis of our own coach. Brewster talks in endless platitudes about FIGHTING and TRYING and WINNING for GOPHER NATION, and he records videos in the locker room, and he Twitters like a teenage girl, all in the hopes that recruiting will cover up his biggest fatal flaw: He has absolutely no idea what he is doing. He is a football nihlist, changing coordinators every season and throwing out his offense at least once a year (remember when Minnesota was going to run the spread?), not because he's some sort of football chameleon but because he's clueless to anything but the newest recruiting tool. He's Ed Orgeron, only somehow less talented. My animus for Brewster isn't mine alone. Make no mistake: Kirk Ferentz won't hang 55 unanswered on any other coach. But as we've seen, he'll gladly pummel this bloviating moron.
I still hate their fans, who walked out of the Metrodome for the last time with their collective tail between their legs, their embarrassed faces matching their hideous sweatshirts. In many ways, last year's thrashing was even more cathartic than the goalposts game in 2002; there was an inevitability to the former engagement that was lacking for the first three minutes of the latter. But both games were rife with the same emotions, as the Hawkeyes wiped the smug grins off their cheese-fed Norwegian faces and left them stammering for explanations. Minnesota fans will inevitably tell you that it doesn't matter as much to them because they have other pastimes, like the worst NBA franchise not located in Tennessee, or a hockey team with a stupid name. I have yet to understand why following inferior teams in inferior sports somehow makes them feel so superior.
I still hate their damn colors. I still hate their damn cheers. I still hate so, so, so much.
Minnesota football is a fraud. They spent the last generation pretending to be a professional team in a professional stadium, and failed so miserably in that modest task that we had no choice but to repeatedly mock them, beat them, and take pieces of their stadium as souveneirs. They have moved on, into a fake stadium in a fake college town, inhabited by a fake coach and his fake team, capped with a fake national championship trophy. Brewster and his program are the college football equivalent of Bernie Madoff, built on a foundation of lies but constantly paying lip service to the false premise that its supporters' investment will pay dividends. Yes, Minnesota Golden Gopher football is the world's biggest Ponzi scheme.
And so we come to it, the finale, the eternal battle of modesty and hard work versus exaggeration and gimmickry. It is a battle that we can win and must win and will win, because a conservative philosophy must win out over no philosophy at all. Because single-minded dedication to a common cause is superior to platitudes. Because Iowa football is simply better in every possible way. Sure, it's for 10 wins and a possible BCS berth (and an outside chance at a share of the conference title), but it's bigger than that.
It's Floyd of Rosedale. It's Iowa-Minnesota. It's Hate Week. Bring the hate.