September 25, 2025 by Philip Lewenstein

Can Gophers, Trojans Ever Regain Football Glory?

As the 2025 college football season begins in the new pay-the-players era, I am following two historic teams that have captured my attention for decades: the Minnesota Gophers and the University of Southern California Trojans.

I have been a diehard Gopher fan since the 1950s; several years later, I became a Trojan follower. The teams faced each other occasionally over the years, but their fortunes intersected more permanently last year when USC joined the Big Ten conference.

The two teams have met nine times, with USC holding a 6-2-1 record. Last fall, however, the Trojans faltered on their visit to Huntington Bank Stadium on the University of Minnesota campus as I broke a 21-year moratorium on attending Gopher games.

I am watching this fall to see if either or both teams can regain prominence and to see which team will have a better season than the other.

Watching Minnesota and USC each fall is a family matter. My oldest daughter has two USC degrees. My son, like me, has a University of Minnesota degree but is an avid Trojan fan. The three of us gather most Saturdays to watch the Trojans.

After following the Gophers for 70 years, I am trying to adapt to the new era in college football: Name, Image, and Likeness; revenue sharing; transfer portals, and the College Football Playoffs.

As I reflect on my years of watching, I am trying to reconcile the popularity and role of college football in the broader, turbulent environment of higher education, suffering on many fronts, particularly from the Trump administration.

Despite their storied histories in college football, both Minnesota and USC are suffering national title droughts, 65 years for the Gophers, 21 for the Trojans.

The Gophers date back to the 1882 season, when they defeated Hamline 4-0. The Gophers claim seven national championships and 18 conference titles. Four of the national championships –1936, 1940, 1941, and 1960—are from wire services or the coaches poll, or both. Bruce Smith won the Heisman trophy in 1941; he is the only Gopher to win the honor.

Growing up as a sports fan in the 1950s in Duluth, I followed the Gophers each Saturday on the radio. I played the Rouser on my trumpet when Minnesota scored. My father participated in occasional Saturday excursions by train to Minneapolis to watch the Gophers.

While attending the University, my mother had a 1937 season pass. A student-faculty athletic card cost $7. The Gophers finished 6-2 that fall, winning home games against North Dakota, Indiana, Northwestern, and Wisconsin but losing 7-6 to Notre Dame.

The 1937 season was part of the Bernie Bierman era; he is considered among the greatest college football coaches. Bierman coached the Gophers from 1932 to 1941 and after World War II from 1945 to 1950. From 1934 to 1941, his Minnesota teams won five national championships, captured seven conference titles, and had four perfect seasons.

Warmath Coached the Gophers for 18 Years

In February 1954, Minnesota hired Murray Warmath, who became an outstanding, respected coach at the University for 18 years, compiling an 87-78-7 record. Through 1964, the Gophers played nine games per season. From 1965 through 1970, they played 10 games, then 11 in 1971. Unlike today, Minnesota played strong nonconference opponents.

As a student journalist, I enjoyed interviewing Warmath several times; speaking in his southern drawl, he was always friendly and gracious.

Warmath came to Minnesota after coaching two seasons at Mississippi State. He played at the University of Tennessee under famed coach Robert Neyland. Warmath was an assistant at Tennessee, Mississippi State, and Army under Earl Red Blaik.

The Gophers were 7-2 in Warmath’s first season. They fell to 3-6 in 1955 but defeated USC 25-19 on October 28 before 64,592 in rain, sleet, and snow—equalizing the speed of the Trojans’ great backs Jon Arnett and C.R. Roberts.

Minnesota rebounded to 6-1-2 in 1956 but fell to 4-5 in 1957 despite starting the season with high expectations.

Following the 1957 season, Warmath started recruiting beyond Minnesota, looking for players in places like Pennsylvania, Delaware, North Carolina, and Illinois. This approach would pay dividends a few years later.

Warmath was a pioneer in advancing black high school players into college football, especially in recruiting players from the South. Southern football conferences did not start to tear down segregation barriers until about a decade after Warmath started the process.

My first sports thrill occurred in fall 1958 as a ten-year old when my parents took me to the Gopher homecoming game vs. Illinois at Memorial Stadium before 58,000 fans. My excitement was limited as the Illini won 20-8 behind 83 and 66-yard touchdown passes from quarterback Bob Hickey to end Rich Kreitling. I can still see Kreitling running open behind the Gopher defensive backs.

The Gophers fumbled seven times, losing four to Illinois. Minnesota ended the season 1-8. In 1959, the Gophers were 2-7. Many fans called for firing Warmath, but he persevered with a remarkable turnaround in 1960.

Everything changed as the Gophers were co-Big Ten champions with an 8-1 overall record, losing only to Purdue. It was their first title since 1941. The Gophers were voted national champions. Minnesota lost to Washington 17-7 in the Rose Bowl on January 2, 1961.

In the 1961 season, the Gophers finished second at 6-1, only losing to Wisconsin in the Big Ten  but were selected to return to the Rose Bowl after champion Ohio State’s faculty turned down an invitation. Minnesota defeated UCLA 21-3 on New Year’s Day 1962.

Gophers Fall Short of Expectations

Except for 1967, expectations for continued success have not been fulfilled. The Vikings and Twins arrived in 1961, and the Gophers were no longer the only team in town. Attendance declined.

I enrolled at the University in fall 1966 and began working at the Minnesota Daily student newspaper. I eagerly looked forward to the Saturday games at Memorial Stadium a couple blocks from my dormitory.  The Gophers were 4-5-1 my freshman year.

In 1967, the Gophers challenged for the Big Ten championship, ending in a three-way tie with Purdue and Indiana. The Gophers lost to Purdue 42-12 but beat Indiana 33-7. Indiana upset Purdue and was selected to play in the Rose Bowl.

In 1968, the Gophers opened the season hosting USC, 1967 national champion led by O.J. Simpson, the 1968 Heisman winner. Rushing for 375 all-purpose yards and scoring four touchdowns, Simpson led USC to a 29-20 comeback victory before 61,000 fans.

The game was tied 13-13 at halftime, and nobody scored in the third quarter. In the fourth quarter, George Kemp took a Trojan kick and headed up the middle of the field. At the 20-yard line, he turned and threw an overhand lateral to John Wintermute at the 17-yard line on the right side of the field. Wintermute ran up the sideline and scored.

The Gophers led 20-16 with 7:34 left. Simpson scored to put USC ahead 22-20 after the extra point was blocked. Simpson scored a fourth touchdown to secure the 29-20 win.

As assistant sports editor, I was assigned to cover the USC locker room, located in Cooke Hall by the west end of the stadium. I waited my turn among the crowd of reporters and interviewed both Simpson and coach John McKay while the rest of the Trojan team waited in the team bus parked on University Avenue.

The 1968 Gophers finished 6-4 (5-2 in the Big Ten). I covered victories over Michigan State in East Lansing and Indiana in Bloomington.

In fall 1969, as sports editor, I traveled to Tempe, Arizona, to see the Gophers 48-26 opening game loss to Arizona State. Minnesota started the season 0-5-1 and finished 4-5-1. I attended the game at Iowa and was invited to share a taxi ride with President Malcolm Moos from our hotel to the Friday night pre-game party. Minnesota won 35-7.

I was out of Minnesota from fall 1970 to mid-fall 1973, monitoring the Gophers from afar. I learned that after the 4-7 1971 season Warmath had been ousted as coach and assigned to be assistant athletic director. He was replaced by Call Stoll, who went 39-39 over seven years.

I became a season ticket holder from 1974 until about 1990. The Gophers moved off campus to the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome after the 1981 season. Tired of watching the Gophers get trounced before often sparse indoor crowds, I dropped my tickets.

Since Warmath’s departure, the Gophers have had 10 coaches—some moderately successful such as Glen Mason and others utter failures such as Joe Salem, Jim Wacker, and Tim Brewster.

Mason’s record was 64-57 from 1997 to 2006, but his tenure was marred by two horrifying defeats.

On October 10, 2003, I took my wife and three of my children (the fourth was at USC) to a showdown against Michigan at the Metrodome. Before 62, 374 fans, the Gophers led 14-0 at halftime and 28-7 after the third quarter. But the Wolverines outscored Minnesota 31-7 in the fourth quarter to win 38-35 despite 424 rushing yards, mostly by Marion Barber III and Laurence Maroney.

If this collapse wasn’t enough, in the 2006 Insight Bowl, the Gophers blew a 38-7 third quarter lead over Texas Tech, losing 44-41 in overtime, precipitating Mason’s firing.

Fleck Wins Games, Not Titles

In 2017, the Gophers hired P.J. Fleck, the young, successful Western Michigan coach. Fleck brought his Row the Boat culture to Minneapolis and in eight years has achieved five winning seasons. In 2019, the Gophers were 11-2; they tied for a Big Ten division title and beat Auburn in Outback Bowl. They finished tenth in the final AP poll.

Through his first eight years, Fleck achieved a 58-39 record and is 6-0 in bowl games. However, Star Tribune columnist Patrick Reusse recently provided a sarcastic perspective on Fleck’s work (“You can’t compare Gophers and Tommies football…right?” August 30, 2025).

“As part of their (Gopher fans) 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,” Reusse wrote. “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 even when the mediocre competition was sitting there a couple times ready to be carved up like Christmas geese.”

John McKay Leads USC to National Titles

Meanwhile, my interest in USC was casual. I watched rivalry games on TV, particularly against Notre Dame and UCLA.

USC’s football history dates to 1922. The university claims 39 conference championships, nine national titles, eight Heisman winners, and numerous all-Americans and professional football stars. The overall record is 798-333-40, 58-37 in bowls—37-21 in “major” bowls.

After earning my master’s degree in journalism from Northwestern in 1971, I began my career at the San Bernardino, California, Sun-Telegram. From 1972 to fall 1973, I was the night sports editor; our reporters covered the Trojan games at the Los Angeles Coliseum.

It was a great time to follow the Trojans as I featured USC in my Sunday sports-page layouts. The 1972 team is considered one of the greatest college football teams, the consensus national champion with a 12-0 record, including a 42-17 victory over Ohio State in the Rose Bowl. USC beat six ranked opponents by an average of 20.2 points per game.

The team had 13 all Americans, and 33 members eventually played in the National Football League. Anthony Davis, who began the year as third-team tailback, scored six touchdowns—four rushing and two on kickoff returns—in a 45-23 win over Notre Dame.

It was a time of great coaches and great teams in southern California. Besides USC’s McKay, there was John Wooden at UCLA, who coached unbeaten national champion basketball teams in 1972 and 1973; Bill Sharman, who coached the Lakers to their first NBA title in 1972 in Los Angeles; and Walter Alston of the Dodgers, one of the greatest baseball managers of all time.

In 1973, USC finished 9-2-1, ranked eighth in the AP poll. The Trojans were 7-0 in the conference but lost to Notre Dame in South Bend and to Ohio State in the Rose Bowl, also tying Oklahoma. In mid-season, I moved to Minnesota.

This success was part of the McKay era. He restored USC to its national prominence of the 1920s and 1930s, winning national championships in 1962, 1967, 1972, and 1974. McKay achieved an overall record of 127-40-8 between 1960 and 1975 before leaving to coach Tampa Bay in the NFL.

One of the greatest USC victories came in 1974 against Notre Dame. Down 24-6 at halftime, the Trojans dominated the second half to win 55-24.

USC had some success between 1976 and 2001, particularly under the late John Robinson who had two coaching tenures, from 1976 to 1982 and from 1993 to 1997. His record was 104-35-4. His 1978 Trojans shared the national championship with Alabama.

Pete Carroll Revitalizes Trojans

I renewed my interest in USC football when my oldest daughter enrolled in the school of architecture in 2001, coinciding with the hiring of Pete Carroll much to the dismay of many Trojan fans. My daughter earned two degrees in seven years while the Carroll era lasted until 2009, when he left to coach Seattle in the NFL.

Carroll revitalized the program, winning seven consecutive conference titles and national championships in 2003 and 2004. He won a school-record 34 straight games between 2003 and 2005, finally losing to Texas in the 2006 Rose Bowl. USC had a 35-game winning streak at the Coliseum, spanning six years from 2001 to 2007. Carroll’s overall record at USC was 97-19.

The Bowl Championship Series stripped USC of the 2004 title due to NCAA rules violations. The Associated Press recognizes USC as its national champion for 2004.

I attended two of the Trojan victories on parents’ day, marveling at the spirit of the crowds in cardinal and gold, saturating the campus before the games. I especially enjoyed the Trojan Marching Band, nicknamed “The Greatest Marching Band in the History of the Universe.”

After Carroll’s departure, USC had ups and downs with coaches Lane Kiffin, Steve Sarkisian, Ed Orgeron, and Clay Helton. In 2022, USC hired Lincoln Riley from Oklahoma, where he won four consecutive Big 12 championship games and mentored Heisman-winning quarterbacks Baker Mayfield and Kyler Murray as well as Jalen Hurts.

In Riley’s first season at USC, the Trojans finished 11-3, losing twice to Utah—during the regular season and in the Pacific 12 championship game. They lost to Tulane 46-45 in the 2023 Cotton Bowl, blowing a 45-30 lead with 4:30 left in the game. Quarterback Caleb Williams won the Heisman trophy. In 2023, the Trojans were 8-5.

USC had high expectations for Riley. In 2022, his salary was $19.6 million. Total compensation for then president Carol L. Folt was $3.7 million (2025-2026 Almanac, August 15, 2025, The Chronicle of Higher Education).

I End My Boycott of Gopher Football

These memories of the Gophers and Trojans lead to the new age of college football. One of the major changes has been conference realignments. In 2024, four PAC-12 teams—USC, UCLA, Oregon, and Washington—joined the Big Ten.

With USC coming to Minneapolis, at the urging of my son and daughter, I ended my 21-year moratorium on attending Gopher football games despite painful memories of the 2003 Michigan fiasco.

I was tormented trying to decide which team to support and stressed over what to wear from my wardrobe of Gopher and USC gear—caps, T shirts, sweatshirts, jackets.

On October 5, a beautiful 71-degree fall night, the warmest October Gopher game in 16 years, we went to Huntington Bank Stadium, the Gophers home since 2009. The teams were tied 10-10 at halftime, but 11^th-ranked USC went ahead 17-10 after three quarters. In the fourth quarter, the Gophers tied the game with 7:08 to play.

With 56 seconds left, on fourth down near the goal line, Gopher quarterback Max Brosmer snuck into the end zone; officials on the field ruled him short, but the call was reversed on a replay review. After a USC interception in the Gopher endzone, fans stormed the field. It was the first Gopher win over USC since 1955.

Minnesota finished the 2024 season 8-5, 5-4 in the Big Ten. The Gophers won the Duke’s Mayo Bowl 24-10 over Virginia Tech on January 3, 2025, in Charlotte, North Carolina. Per tradition, Fleck was doused with 4.5 gallons of mayonnaise—a consolation prize for not making a major bowl.

USC ended the season 7-6, winning the Las Vegas Bowl 35-31 over Texas A&M on December 27, 2024.

Frustration was percolating after Riley finished the 2023 and 2024 seasons 15-11. Ryan Kartje, the USC beat writer for the Los Angeles Times, analyzed another frustrating USC regular season after a 49-35 loss to Notre Dame (December 2, 2024).

“What does USC have to hang its hat on after a season spent trying to fit a square peg into a round hole?” Kartje asked, “Where do the Trojans look to for hope in the future? Riley didn’t want to build around the rushing attack this season, even with one of the best backs in the Big Ten at his disposal.

“He didn’t have a superstar quarterback such as Caleb Williams to count on, and Riley failed to adjust accordingly. And while USC’s defense improved this season, it’s nowhere near talented enough to expect it to become an elite unit any time soon.”

Despite the excitement of college football, watching Minnesota and USC has resulted in more pain than pleasure. Hopes are high, but titles are elusive.

Nevertheless, the Gophers and Trojans in 2025 continue to navigate the new world of college football with high expectations and strong starts. Whether these two historic programs can break through years of disappointment and make my family happy remains to be seen.

Note: Information about Murray Warmath comes largely from The Autumn Warrior by Mike Wilkinson (1992).