On Minnesota sports and the rough week, Parts I-IV

Good grief Charlie Brown, this was a rough week for Minnesota sports.

Emotions were put through the ringer. There were victories on the court, gridiron and rink. There were losses, both real and imaginary. There were tears shed for the fallen and lost.

Over the past seven days, the Minnesota sports landscape has seen its most successful NBA coach in Timberwolves head coach/GM Flip Saunders succumb to cancer and its lone Division 1 football coach step away from the game he loves less than a year after leading Minnesota to its first New Year’s Day bowl in over 50 years for health reasons. 

One passed away far too young. The other, Gophers head coach Jerry Kill, had his livelihood taken away far too soon to the point where any person that can get through his press conference Wednesday without feeling anything is a person I don’t want to know.

Kill stated in his emotional retirement announcement that he “never sole from anybody” and “(didn’t) want to cheat the game.” He’s right. It is him, and Minnesota by extension, who were cheated. The game goes on, however, not seeing how two rebuilding jobs will finish is something stolen from the rest of us.

But that is the kind of sports week it has been in the state. One where grieving and reflection have been the norm. Even the gloomy, cloudy fall weather in Minneapolis and St. Paul has fit in with the cobwebs of the week’s news that have made it difficult to have a clear mind.

It’s a testament to those two that Torii Hunter, the flashiest character the Twins have had over the past 20 years, ending his long career from baseball by retiring Monday in normal fashion seems as if it happened in a different universe.

Any other week and Hunter’s accolades and accomplishments as a Minnesota baseball icon – he was a part of the Twins team that helped stave off contraction – would be re-told, overshadowing early season Wild and Timberwolves scores. Instead, he joins them, his departure softly joining Saunders and Kill in the most un-Hunter way.

Still, there were games to be played.

In a movie version Minnesota sports would take every last bit of motivation and go on to win. And that is how it started.  The Vikings began the week with a road win. The Wild honored Saunders with a moment of silence Tuesday before coming back to beat the Edmonton Oilers with two goals on back-to-back shifts.

Saunders’ Timberwolves team – make no mistake, even now it is still his team - went from being the worst team in the NBA last season to opening the season with a pair of road wins.

In a movie Kill’s team would have won a rivalry game for the coach as underdogs. Life is not a movie, though. Neither are sports games. If it were, Saturday’s script would keep all the Jerry tributes and not be hastily re-written in the way it was.

Following the Gopher women’s hockey team’s first loss of the season the previous night, the Wild fell in overtime to the St. Louis Blues on Saturday. Off the ice, the Gopher football team held its own against Michigan in an attempt to win the Little Brown Jug in Minneapolis for the first time in nearly 40 years.

It nearly happened according to the script. For a minute it did.

Down three points, Minnesota QB Mitch Leidner found Drew Woltarsky on a play that was initially ruled a go-ahead touchdown with 19 seconds left. The play was overturned on replay and the Gophers’ two attempts to re-gain a lead not lost failed.

For all the emotional rollercoaster moments, a chance to match last season's Little Brown Jug victory at the Big House with a new win at the Bank was one more moment on top of a week full of them.

A win, once given, was taken away too soon. There are no guarantees in sports and Saturday’s ending, like the finalities earlier in the week, are a reminder. Sport is just a game. The game goes on. 

Losing the Jug the way it did wasn’t the worst in recent Gopher memory. It wasn’t the most soul-crushing. There are bigger games, lost punts, blown comebacks and whatever pedestal the 1999 NFC Championship Game gets put on that tug at the emotions.

At the same time, Saturday’s game hurt because it was the perfect encapsulation to a week of mourning in Minnesota sports. The script had sports imitating life. The losses this week were unexpected and real.