This jersey appears to be both a Mike Knoke 1980-81 jersey and a Steve Orth 1984-85 jersey. If it did not have the Galaxy Memorial Patch on the arm, it would be surprising to see this amount of use on the jersey, but the fact that it does means that it was worn for parts of two seasons by two different players. The 80 hem tag means that the jersey was created in the summer of 1980 and was the very first set of mesh jerseys that the team ever wore, following the durene Flyers'style jerseys of the 1970's. If you look at the photo of the wash tag, you can see where there have been two sets of nameplate stitching that have gone over it. I have looked at a lot of photos of players in the 1980-81 season and have concluded that I don't think they started using the mesh jerseys immediately at the beginning of the year. I have also never seen a 1980-tagged road maroon jersey, so I really think that there was some mixing an matching going on there. I've heard many times that teams in those days didn't care how their road jerseys looked at all and would recycle those for years, while getting new home whites every one or two years. It's impossible to know at this point if it was worn for all of two seasons or if it saw use in part of two seasons, but we do know that it has had two plates, has lots of repairs, lots of pilling, lots of pulled stitching, has a repair under the Galaxy patch, and has been washed extremely hard (look at the washed-out Steichens tag). Regardless, this should have been the set worn at Duluth in the loss of the 1981 National Championship, and then recycled for use at some point in the 1984-85 season. I'll elaborate on that season's Black Bar jerseys more below because it is a little bizarre.
The patch was worn at the end of the 1984-85 season after the crash of Galaxy Airlines Flight 203, which crashed on January 21, 1985. The patches were quickly put on the jerseys after this tragedy: see the above dated wire photo of Corey Millen (1/27/1985). Counted among the 70 victims was Gophers Associate Director of Men's Athletics Robert Geary. Not only that, but the flight, which was a return flight from Reno to Minneapolis after a Caesar's Palace Tahoe-sponsored Super Bowl Party trip, was said to be full of Minnesotans. It is not surprising that the Gophers would want to commemorate and show mourning not only for a member of their own administration, but also broadly, for all of the friends and families of the victims in the region.
It would be one thing if there were some distinguishing feature to that season's jerseys besides the memorial patch, but there is not. The confusing part about the jerseys that the Gophers wore that season is that the staff seems to have raided the closets and recycled whatever they could. Research shows us that there are 4 different, distinct, and easily differentiated sets of tagging that have been seen on Black Bar Gopher jerseys, 3 of them being jerseys thought previously to have been discarded by this time (the 4th being the Norcon-branded ones originally thought to be standard issue in this season):
1. One has a 1980 set/year flag tag and a Steichen's Sporting Goods Pre-83 neck tag; No hem tagging
2. This one has no set/year flag tag and a Steichen's Sporting Goods Pre-83 neck tag over a Good Sports neck tag; No hem tagging
3. Pederson's hem tagging
4. Norcon hem tagging
The patch was worn at the end of the 1984-85 season after the crash of Galaxy Airlines Flight 203, which crashed on January 21, 1985. The patches were quickly put on the jerseys after this tragedy: see the above dated wire photo of Corey Millen (1/27/1985). Counted among the 70 victims was Gophers Associate Director of Men's Athletics Robert Geary. Not only that, but the flight, which was a return flight from Reno to Minneapolis after a Caesar's Palace Tahoe-sponsored Super Bowl Party trip, was said to be full of Minnesotans. It is not surprising that the Gophers would want to commemorate and show mourning not only for a member of their own administration, but also broadly, for all of the friends and families of the victims in the region.
It would be one thing if there were some distinguishing feature to that season's jerseys besides the memorial patch, but there is not. The confusing part about the jerseys that the Gophers wore that season is that the staff seems to have raided the closets and recycled whatever they could. Research shows us that there are 4 different, distinct, and easily differentiated sets of tagging that have been seen on Black Bar Gopher jerseys, 3 of them being jerseys thought previously to have been discarded by this time (the 4th being the Norcon-branded ones originally thought to be standard issue in this season):
1. One has a 1980 set/year flag tag and a Steichen's Sporting Goods Pre-83 neck tag; No hem tagging
2. This one has no set/year flag tag and a Steichen's Sporting Goods Pre-83 neck tag over a Good Sports neck tag; No hem tagging
3. Pederson's hem tagging
4. Norcon hem tagging