Let’s begin by recapping the history of the Twin Cities as “big league” towns as Minnesota entered into the 21st century.
• The Minnesota Twins had won four of seven playoff series in 40 seasons, two each in the world championship seasons of 1987 and 1991, though you would have to say that their best decade was the 1960s. Since 1991, it is much easier to get into a playoff series, but no easier to win one. In the 21st century, the Twins are 1-8 in the playoffs, with eight straight playoff series losses as of 2019.
• The Minnesota Vikings were 16-22 in playoff games over the first 40 years, and were of course 0-4 in the Super Bowl. In the 21st century, the Vikings are 5-8 in the playoffs with no Super Bowls. In the regular season, they were 323-250-9 (.563) in the 20th century. In the 21st century, they are 165-153-2 (.519). Their best decade was the 1970s.
• The Minnesota Timberwolves were 262-526 (.332) in their first eleven years, and 3-9 in playoff games and 0-3 in playoff series. In the 21st century (through 2019), they are 699-925 (.430). They are 15-25 in playoff games and 2-6 in playoff series in the 21st century. They have actually won a playoff series in only one of their 30 seasons. Their best decade was the decade of Kevin Garnett.
• The 20th century Minnesota North Stars were 758-970 with 334 ties (.449) in 26 seasons. They were 78-87 (.473) in playoff games and 15-17 (.452) in playoff series. The 21st century Wild are 689-556-55 (.551) but just 26-47 (.356) in playoff games and 4-9 (.308) in playoff series in almost 20 seasons. The North Stars played in two Stanley Cup finals, winning three playoff series, in 1981 and 1991. The Wild won two playoff series only once, in 2003, and never three. The best decade was the 1980s, when the North Stars won nine playoff series (five of the first six) and, as a bonus, they didn’t leave town.
• The Minnesota Strikers soccer were 107-97 (.525) with five playoff series wins in four seasons; in 1986, they won two series and led the San Diego Sockers in the finals three games to one, then lost the last three games and the Major Indoor Soccer League (MISL) title. The Kicks won 104 games and lost 70 (.598) and won four playoff series in six years. The 21st century Minnesota United is trying to find success where the Kicks and Strikers were both unable to do so, despite a few victories on the pitch. United is now 36-49-17 (.436) with one playoff series win in three seasons.
• The Minnesota Lynx were of course brand new in the year 2000. Since then, they are 383-329 (.538) in their first 21 seasons, and 41-21 (.661) in playoff games and 15-7 (.682) in playoff series with four WNBA titles, all during the decade of the 2010s.
• The Minnesota Whitecaps played professional, major league hockey from 2004 to 2011 and again in 2018-2019. In their first seven years, they won 92 games while losing 32 and tying nine (.726). They won the Western Women’s Hockey League (WWHL) three times, and won one Clarkson Cup against the Canadian champions while losing twice. In 2019, they won the NWHL regular season title and defeated the Buffalo Beauts 2-1 in overtime for the playoff title. Their overall record is now (heading into 2020) 104-36-9 (.729).
#9 (tie) Athlete
Joe Mauer
Minnesota’s best athlete of the 21st century so far is Joe Mauer. He is the heir to Bobby Marshall, Bronko Nagurski, Paul Giel and Dave Winfield—a star in multiple sports who first gained notoriety as a fresh-faced high school kid from the Minnesota sandlots. Mauer grew up in St. Paul, and played his high school sports at Cretin-Derham Hall. He is the only boy ever selected as national player of the year in two sports, baseball and football. As a football quarterback (QB), he threw for 5,528 yards and 73 touchdowns. Cretin won the state title in 1999. Mauer was a good basketball player, too, who scored 20 points per game (ppg) as a senior, and almost 30 in the state tournament.
But, baseball was his best sport. He hit over .500 every year on the Cretin varsity, and hit .605 as a senior. He struck out once in his high school career. He tied a national record by hitting a home run in seven straight games. He helped the Raiders to 66 straight wins in 1997-1999, two short of the national record. They won the state title in 1996, 1997, 1998 and 2001, his seventh through twelfth grade seasons.
Mauer committed to play football at Florida State, following in the footsteps of Cretin quarterbacks Steve Walsh (1984) who played for Miami (Fla.) and Chris Weinke (1989) who played at Florida State. Both went on to play in the NFL. But, Mauer changed his mind and decided to forego football to sign with the Minnesota Twins. He made his major league debut in 2003 but only became a full-time starting catcher in 2005. He batted .294.
In 2006, Mauer became the first catcher ever to win an American League batting title at .347. He hit. 452 in June and .528 for the first ten days of the month. In 2008, he became the first major league catchers to win two batting titles at .328. He won a Gold Glove and finished fourth in the MVP voting. In 2009, Mauer led the league in batting, on-base percentage and slugging. He was the first player to lead in all three since George Brett in 1980. His .365 average was the highest since Rod Carew’s .388 in 1977. He won a second Gold Glove, and won 27 of 28 votes for AL MVP.
Mauer moved to first base in 2013 because of several concussions he had suffered as a catcher. From 2014 to 2018, he hit .300 only once, .305 in 2017, and he finished with a career average of .306. He struck out more than 100 times for the only time in his career in 2015. He recorded his 2,000th major league hit in 2018 and finished with 2,123. He caught 901 major leagues and went on to play 603 games at first base. His total of 1,585 major league games, all with the Twins, is the second most in franchise history after Harmon Killebrew. The Twins made the playoffs five times during Mauer’s career, but they never won a playoff series.
College Sports Explode
Joel Maturi was hired as Minnesota Gophers athletic director (AD) in 2002, and went on to become one of the most consequential athletic directors in Minnesota Gophers history. Part of this was the fact that he was hired to consolidate the men’s and women’s athletic departments which previously had operated separately and independently. There were of course hard feelings over the elimination of the women’s athletic department and the women’s AD, but it was done and the results speak for themselves. On the women’s side, it’s hard not to give a lot of the credit to Chris Voelz, the highly respected women’s AD from 1988 to 2002. On the men’s side, Paul Giel had retired after 18 years at the helm in 1988. He was succeeded, and Maturi preceded, by a series of short-timers, six different men who served an average of just over two years apiece. So, on the men’s side, it’s hard not to give Giel and Maturi, along with their coaches, of course, most of the credit.
The rubber meets the road where the Gophers have won almost three times as many Big 10 championships per season and per sport in the 21st century than they did in the 20th.
Meanwhile, as we have seen, Minnesota’s small colleges have experienced an even greater increase in their success ratio, at least as it relates to national championships and runners-up. Part of the national success of the Northern Sun Intercollegiate Conference (the Northern Sun or NSIC) schools in D2 is the demise of the North Central Conference (NCC) as most of its members—especially North Dakota, North Dakota State, South Dakota and South Dakota State—moved up to D1. By the 1990s it might have been accurate to say that the North Central Conference was “high D2,” analogous to, say, the Big 10, while the Northern Sun was more of a “mid-major.” As recently as 2004 to 2008, Mankato State and the University of Minnesota-Duluth (UMD) left the NSIC to join the NCC in search of tougher competition. Evidence of the NCC’s superiority includes six D2 (national) football champions, four wrestling champions and eight runners-up, and nine women’s basketball champions and five runners-up from the mid-1980s until the mid-1990s. In several sports, the NSIC and the NCC competed for regional championships and the right to move on in the national tournament. With the demise of the NCC in 2008, the NSIC became much less likely to get booted out of national D2 tournaments at the regional level.
The Northern Sun now consists of 16 schools—the six original members plus Concordia (St. Paul), Minnesota-Crookston and Southwest Minnesota State in Minnesota; plus three schools in South Dakota, two in North Dakota, and one each in Iowa and Nebraska. Most of the non-Minnesota schools were members of the National Association for Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) until their shift to the NSIC and NCAA D2, all since 1999. But, the demise of the NCC is not the whole story because it had no impact at all on the success of Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (MIAC) schools at the D3 level, and they too have had more than ever before. To some degree, this is simply the incredible story of St. Thomas as it has become a national sporting powerhouse, a story we won’t get into right now. On the other hand, Augsburg is synonymous with wrestling excellence, Gustavus Adolphus with outstanding golf and tennis, and St. John’s with great football.
“The Invisible Hand”
Meanwhile, high school sports continued to grow. The Minnesota State High School League (MSHSL) added adapted sports for students with disabilities in 1993 and the adapted program now extends to four different sports—bowling, floor hockey, soccer and softball. Boys and girls lacrosse were added in 2007, and clay target shooting in 2014. The MSHSL now sponsors competition in 40 different events, including non-sports events such as debate, drama, speech, music and visual arts.
More to the point, two of the three most important events ever in Minnesota high school sports happened in the 1980s, but they did not really bear fruit until the late 1990s and into the 21st century. The first of the three most important events ever in Minnesota high school sports was the creation of the state basketball tournament and of the MSHSL itself in the years from 1913 to 1916. The second and third most important events were the approval of youth sports outside of the schools in 1985, and the adoption of “open enrollment” by the Minnesota legislature in 1988.
High school sports had been a regulated market from 1913 to 1985. MSHSL rules prohibited high school athletes from playing for other teams on pain of losing their high school eligibility. Well, little league baseball in the summer was OK, and there were a few other exceptions. But, the rules further prohibited the schools from playing or practicing a sport outside of its traditional season. Boys were expected to play football in the fall, basketball or hockey in the winter, and baseball or track & field in the spring. This regime presented formidable obstacles to athletes who wanted to maximize their skills toward the goals of playing college or professional sports. In the 1960s, just one or two Minnesota boys would win college basketball scholarships in a typical year.
This orthodoxy was shattered by junior hockey. Boys would willingly forego their high school eligibility in order to play more hockey against better competition in the so-called junior leagues. Enough boys opted out of the high schools and into junior hockey to put the fear of God into the MSHSL. There was nothing to prevent the same kind of system from emerging in basketball or baseball or any other sport. So, in 1985, the MSHSL relaxed its rules against play outside of the school. In other words, kids could play for summer teams, club teams, almost any kind of team they wanted outside of their sport’s prescribed high school season. They could play their chosen sport all year round. Clubs quickly sprang up to give athletes in various sports exactly that opportunity, and increasing numbers of kids took advantage. Specialization exploded, the two- and three-sport athlete became an endangered species. By the late 1990s, Minnesota athletes had gotten better, and began in fairly large numbers to win those college scholarships that had been so hard to come by in previous decades.
Then, in 1988, the state of Minnesota passed a law saying that any student could attend high school almost anywhere and almost any time and for almost any reason. The idea was the foster competition among the schools. The result would be better schools. But, MSHSL tried to put the genie back in the bottle, at least where athletics was concerned, decreeing that high school transfers would lose a year of athletic eligibility. But, there were loopholes galore, and most high school student-athletes who transfer for athletic reasons—and, there are lots of them—maintain their eligibility.
Combining the two phenomenon of club sports and open enrollment, the best athletes are no longer simply wondering, Where shall I go to high school? They’re asking their club teammates, Where shall we go to high school? They are now creating all-star teams in certain high schools. Apple Valley is the wrestling school. Eden Prairie is the football school. Edina is the hockey school and the tennis school. Hopkins is the basketball school.
So, with the better athletes flocking from weaker sports programs to strong ones, the gap between them has become a chasm, and competitive balance has become a thing of the past. Red Wing won its fourth state basketball title in 1933, in the 21st high school basketball tournament. This stood as the state record until Duluth Central won a fourth title in 1979. Bloomington Jefferson won a fourth title in 1987. Minneapolis North won a fourth title in 1997. DeLaSalle won a fourth title in 1999. But, though it had been tied three times, the record was still four titles after 86 years of state tournament play, and even then Red Wing’s record had only been tied after the advent of multiple classes and multiple champions in 1970. Now, just 20 years later, two teams have won four straight titles—Southwest Minnesota Christian from 1999 to 2002, and Minneapolis Patrick Henry from 2000 to 2003. DeLaSalle won six in a row from 2012 to 2017, and now has won twelve MSHSL championships. The Hopkins has won eight boys titles in the 21st century and a total of ten overall, while its girls have won seven. The Rochester Lourdes girls have won eight. Competitive balance is a thing of the past.
So, in summary, high school sports now feature the highest quality of play ever, but at the expense of competitive balance. Minnesota’s colleges have thrived. Our professional teams have been above average in the 21st century, but far from “the best.” The 21st century has been an interesting time for Minnesota sports if you’re prepared to jump on whichever bandwagon presents itself.
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