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The Secret of Minnesota’s Outback Rings

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Simple jewelry? Or coded message? You decide.

Photo by David Berding/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images. Banner Society Illustration.

Minnesota recently unveiled the rings the members of the 2019 team will receive to honor their accomplishments. The season certainly merits acknowledgment; the Gophers won 11 games for the first time since 1904 and finished with their highest ranking in the AP Poll since 1962.

But should we take these rings at face value? Should we assume, just because people in power want us to, that they don’t contain a hidden, coded meaning? I refuse to turn my mind away from the truth. Let me walk you through what these rings REALLY have to tell us.

THE TOP OF THE RING

1. The Co-Champs Trophy: A curious addition, given that Wisconsin broke this “tie” by beating Minnesota 38-17. The Gophers hadn’t won or shared a division title before 2019, and they last claimed a Big Ten championship in 1967, so it could be as simple as jumping on an opportunity that doesn’t come along all that often.

OR it could be a coded message, indicating that P.J. Fleck has a secret twin (not an identical twin, because that’s not what a co-champion is). Where is that twin?

2. The Outback Bowl Trophy: In Florida. This makes sense, given that Fleck spent a year as a position coach with the Buccaneers. It would have been easy to hide a secret Fleck brother in the state, given all the other Florida-ing going on to distract the media. But how did Fleck hide this brother for so long?

3. College GameDay Presented By The Home Depot: Your typical Home Depot is so cavernous and sprawling that the secret Fleck could have lived there for years without anyone noticing, especially in the hotter months when nobody has the energy to figure out who’s been leaving all these empty Gatorade bottles strewn about. Using the supplies on hand, this Fleck could have built quite a comfortable home in the ceiling. But who is this mystery man?

4. The Governor’s Victory Bell Trophy: So we know P.J. Fleck has a secret brother in Florida, who hid inside a Home Depot for years.

And this last clue tells us his identity: Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.

Think about it. Had you heard anything about DeSantis before he ran for Governor? Can you remember any fact about his background without looking at his easily falsifiable Wikipedia entry? Therefore, the top of the ring proves that P.J. Fleck and Governor Ron DeSantis are secret twin brothers.

THE RIGHT SIDE OF THE RING

1. 11 and 2: While this happens to be Minnesota’s final record in 2019, there were also eleven disciples (excluding Judas Iscariot) and the second of them listed in most scriptural accounts is Andrew. Ok, but what did the Andrew we’re looking for do?

2. RESTOAR: Masquerading as a team-building slogan, this is also the name of an apple cider vinegar-based toner. Apple cider vinegar was, as we all know, at the heart of United States v. Ninety-Five Barrels Alleged Apple Cider Vinegar, a case about product mislabeling decided by the Supreme Court in 1924. So the yet-to-be-identified Andrew has committed a fraud of some sort.

3. 116 and 82: Add the digits of these two numbers together and you get 18. So we’re looking for something with an Andrew, the number 18, that’s got some element of fraud. Now consider: it’s commonly understood that Cats, which ran on Broadway for 18 years, was written by Andrew Lloyd Webber.

But how do we know he actually did? Are we simply accepting what the media’s told us for years without asking the hard questions? What if, as this side of the ring clearly states, someone else wrote Cats and Andrew Lloyd Webber has defrauded us all?

4. Co-Champs (repeated): Whatever Sir Andrew’s crime, Ron DeSantis will be the one to expose it.

THE RING UNDERCARRIAGE

“Row The Boat” and “Ski U Mah” are clearly an anagram, and based on the decoded right side of the ring, we know the solution involves Cats. After reviewing several possibilities, I have determined this is the unscrambled answer.

Meow Skit? Bah, Our Hat!

In other words, the true author of Cats (the “Meow Skit”) is Les Miles (“Our Hat”). And that makes total sense! Miles would have been 28 when Cats opened and working at Michigan as a graduate assistant. The creative energy of Ann Arbor would have no doubt inspired Miles, and we know based on his later years that he’s got a fondness for the performing arts. Arguably, the very existence of Cats makes more sense if you believe Les Miles wrote it, not Andrew Lloyd Webber.

THE LEFT SIDE OF THE RING

From what we’ve learned so far, we know that Ron DeSantis, the secret twin brother of PJ Fleck, has been given an important task: reveal to the world that Les Miles, not Andrew Lloyd Webber, wrote Cats, the musical about magic alley cats and the afterlife, that won seven Tonys.

This side of the ring will tell us when and where DeSantis will reveal this shocking truth.

1. 10th in the Nation

North Carolina was the tenth state to ratify the Articles of Confederation and thereby join the United States of America. That’s where Les Miles will be given his long overdue theatrical credit.

2. The color of the ring

Given that the designer chose gold for this ring, we can infer that the announcement will take place in Goldsboro, North Carolina – which is even more obvious when you remember Fleck is the coach of the GOLDEN Gophers.

3. 31 to 24

Adjust these digits ever so slightly and you get 3/1/24. But! That’s not March 1, 2024. Whoever coded this ring aimed it at two audiences: the college football seers of truth and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s British compatriots. Using the date style of the United Kingdom, this date is actually January 3, 2024 - two days after the semifinals of the College Football Playoff that year and five days before the National Championship, the ideal time to strike.

4. 3.21

All is now revealed. At 3:21 in the afternoon on January 3, 2024, in Goldsboro, North Carolina, Governor Ron DeSantis will deliver proof that Andrew Lloyd Webber has been defrauding the theatergoing public for decades by claiming authorship over Cats and stealing the credit from the true genius behind the work, Les Miles.


Armed with this knowledge, you now have two choices. Go back to your blind days, believing what the Broadway-industrial complex chooses to spoon feed you. It’s a simpler life, sure. But it’s based on a lie. Or you can choose the nobler path. The honest path. Accept the secret truth behind Cats and take it where all facts belong: straight to Facebook.

And remember – anyone who says we’re wrong is probably being paid off by Andrew Lloyd Webber himself.