The Origin of The Minnesota Gophers Victory Cry

I LOVE college football. There’s something about being on campus hearing the band, seeing the team colors in the parking lots and around campus.  

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College football has a tie to its fans that is hard for the NFL to replicate, the fact that a good amount of the fans went to school there, so they can say “WE” where most professional fans can’t say that.  

Saturday was a wild day in college football, several highly ranked teams lost to teams they were not expected to, including the eleventh ranked Southern Cal Trojans.  

USC was favored to beat the Minnesota Golden Gophers on their home field and when I turned the game on coming out of the halftime break, the game was tied at 10, which might have been a surprise to some folks. 

Heading into the fourth quarter, the Gophers trailed 17-10, but over the final fifteen minutes, Minnesota put up 14 unanswered points, including a really gutsy call on fourth and goal from the one. The Gophers came up with a dramatic interception in the endzone to end the game.  

Gopher fans rushed the field to celebrate. Coach PJ Fleck showed his excitement during a postgame television interview. It was a classic college football game.  

While watching the game, I noticed something on the back of the Gophers helmets that I didn’t know what it meant; “SKI-U-MAH" which is pronounced “SKY-YOU-MAH".  

I’m not from Minnesota, so I was curious what the origin of the saying was. In 1884, “SKI-U-MAH" was adopted as the team cheer or rally cry of the Gophers rugby team after two players heard Princeton players and fans shouting “Siss-Boom-Ah Princeton” after a Tigers score.  

Gopher Captains John W. Adams and Win Sargent put their heads together and used a rally cry Native Americans used after canoe races; “Ski-oo”. 

Adams and Sargent thought “Ski-oo” meant victory but it doesn’t. Sargent added “MAH” to the “SKI-U” because it rhymed with the “AH” that Princeton used, and the “M” was for Minnesota.  

Native American language experts have been contacted in the past to see if these words mean anything in their language, and the answer was no. 

The phrase has been used in various ways over the years surrounding the Gophers athletic programs. “SKI-U-MAH" may not really mean victory in any language, but on Saturday night in Minnesota, it did.