Hottest Ticket in Minnesota

[chitownBUB]

Season tickets for Gopher basketball are a hot item, and since Tubby was announced a couple days ago
as the new head coach, interest has skyrocketed.

600 new season tickets have been sold in the past 36 hours.

[MacabreMob]

No surprise - there's nothing to do in Minnesota during the 9 months of winter (unless you like ice-fishing, drinking bad beer, and telling Ollie and Sven jokes).

[tornado]

Here's a great story on Tubby, he is one of 17 children from a poor family.

"Tubby's is one (very) big happy Maryland family
When the Smiths get together in St. Marys County, there's oodles of relatives, a bountiful spread of food and a lot of memories about growing up.

Most of the Smith children spent their early years living in the home of Martha Wood Barnes, their maternal grandfather.
" 'Nana' was the calming influence when things would get tough," Guffrie Smith Jr. said. "She would tell my father, 'Oh, Guffrie, leave 'em alone. They're just being kids.' "

You couldn't blame Guffrie Sr. for occasional moments of agitation, since the number of children crowded into that four-bedroom house peaked at 15.

"My parents were able to build their own home next door in 1964," Guffrie Jr. "I'm the oldest, and '64 is the same year I left to attend Bowie [Md.] State."

Guffrie Sr. and his wife, Parthenia, would have 17 children. "Twelve girls, five boys," Guffrie Jr. said. "No twins. All singles."

Guffrie Sr., 86, is living in a nursing home. Parthenia, 81, is living in a house that Orlando, the sixth child and second son, had built for his parents a number of years ago.

Everyone in the Smith family and in Maryland's St. Marys County refers to Guffrie Jr. as "Smitty." Everyone in the family and in the world of college basketball refers to Orlando as "Tubby."

St. Marys is the county that's on the far south end of Maryland's western peninsula. It was so isolated that the Navy claimed a hunk of land or the Patuxent Naval Air Warfare Center.

"Scotland is the last little town before you get to the water," Smitty said. "We're 6 miles from Point Outlook, and that's where the Potomac River meets the Chesapeake Bay."

That is also where the Union decided to put a prison camp for Confederate soldiers after the Battle of Gettysburg. The camp was open from August 1863 to June 1865, and an estimated 3,000 inmates died there.

Much of the land was wiped away by tides and storms through the years, and the Confederate cemetery is now located in Scotland.

The Smiths use a park area near Point Lookout to hold their occasional reunions.

"Every two or three years we get everyone together," Smitty said. "It's more a community thing than a family reunion. We have a memorial service at our little church, for the people who have passed, and then we have the picnic. Oh, goodness, does the food get laid out then."

The second-oldest child, Mae, died a year ago. Among the 16 remaining siblings, only Tubby isn't located within a couple of hours' drive of the family homestead.

As of Friday, Tubby's new location will be the Twin Cities. He left Kentucky's basketball powerhouse after 10 years to become the coach of the woebegone Gophers.

"I feel strongly that Minnesota will be good for him," Smitty said. "I've been an educator my whole life, and I've always said, 'Every five to seven years, it's time to move, get a new challenge.' If you stay too long, people start taking you for granted, and you start taking yourself for granted."

The oldest Smith brother, Smitty, and Tubby had their share of challenges as kids. Guffrie Sr. started off raising corn and tobacco, and later tomatoes, on leased land.

"Dad did a little of everything, though -- farmer, barber, sold wood in the community -- but mostly, when Tubby and I were growing up, he was running buses," Smitty said.

"He had three, four school buses. And in the summer, we would use the buses to take groups to D.C., Baltimore, to tourist stops in the area.

"Another thing Dad always did -- without anyone ever asking -- was take a bus on Sunday morning, go around and pick up the old folks and take them to church.

"First me, then Tubby ... we were driving buses when we were 15, 16. Tubby tells the story about the time he had a chance to drive a group to New York.

"It was going to be his first chance to see the city. When he got there, a part went out, and he had to stay with the bus until it was fixed. He didn't get to see anything."

Memo to our guy Tubby: If you plan to lead Minnesota's hoopheads on a postseason trip to the New York area, please make the destination the Meadowlands and not Madison Square Garden."

http://www.startribune.com/508/story/1077701.html

[Fetz86]

They do have Minnesota hockey, which has to be a big draw.