60% of the time, it works every time.

The history of the Dramatic Gopher, courtesy of @TheAthleticCFB ➡️ https://t.co/VLAXi0jp0H pic.twitter.com/DphJO9OntF

— Minnesota Football (@GopherFootball) October 10, 2019

It was the fall of 2013, and as a video producer for the University of Minnesota athletic department, he was working late one night early in the football season when he came up with an idea that would catch on as one of the most creative in-stadium distractions in the country: the “Dramatic Gopher.”

“I was just trying to think of different ways to spice our show up or do something different,” Claxton says. “That could also maybe impact the game and be entertaining at the same time. That clip is obviously a classic in the viral video world, so that one kind of just came to mind and resembles a gopher enough. I think it initially was labeled as ‘the dramatic chipmunk.’ But I figured that it could pass and the three-second video clip with the music that they put behind it, it just seemed perfect.”

Claxton pitched to the rest of his department, which was fairly small at the time. Everyone liked it.

And so, since late 2013, every Gophers opponent attempting a kick toward the west end of TCF Bank Stadium has been greeted by this video — and the freeze-frame of the furry animal’s raised-eyebrow stare — on the video board as he lines up to kick.

The “Dramatic Gopher” made his debut in Minnesota’s final home game of the 2013 season against Wisconsin. The video production team had been waiting, somewhat impatiently, all season for one of the Gophers’ opponents to line up to kick on that side of the field. It didn’t happen until Nov. 23.

A clip of the kick went viral almost immediately, thanks in part to the fact that ESPN happened to be using its SkyCam angle for that moment in the game. The broadcast got the Dramatic Gopher in the shot from the perspective of Badgers kicker Jack Russell, and the Internet took it from there.

“I was sitting up in the press box, which is where I was stationed for those games, and we always kept the window open,” Claxton says. “You could definitely hear crowd laughter, and it was very rewarding.”

And so it stuck.

“The clip is really, really short,” says Ryan Maus, who currently oversees Gopher Digital Productions. “And it’s super pixelated, too. You’ve seen the video online; it’s not high-definition or anything. That’s part of what makes it funner. 

It also … sort of works? At least anecdotally. Russell missed a 38-yarder in that very first game back in 2013. Against Illinois last Saturday, Maus says, the Illini kicker went 1-for-2 against the Dramatic Gopher. And by now, even though Claxton has moved on to a job with Minnesota United FC, have fans come to expect it.

“Why not keep on trying it?” says Nadine Babu, the co-owner of GopherHole.com, a site for Minnesota football fans. “It’s hilarious to see. It’s obviously part of our brand with it being a gopher. Even it even works one out of 100 times, why not keep doing it?”

As for the most hotly contested part of the whole thing — that it’s actually a clip of, gasp, a chipmunk — Babu doesn’t hesitate.

“I think it’s absolutely a gopher,” Babu says. “I have no doubt in my mind about that.”