It’s Official; Gophers play New Mexico in Rate Bowl

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Texan Gopher said:
Everyone settle down....

We beat wisconsin AGAIN to end the season.

Yeah, New Mexico is not a big name.

Yeah, we have been in this bowl before.

Yeah, if we win national and local.media don't care. If we lose, they will write articles about how embarrassing it is to lose to a MW conference team.

All that said, these extra practices, this time together to build culture for the team, and the ability to get some new stuff put into the playbook is all going to payoff for next year's squad.

We will get to see a ton of new faces get snaps in the bowl game as it's essentially an early preview of next year's squad.

Wisconsin is sitting at home. Florida and Florida State are home. Mississippi State is at home.

Find the positive.
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In theory, the practices would help but did you find anything in this year‘s performance that would say last year‘s bowl game practices helped either our players or coaches? Probably not. I will say that if we get to see young players more, I’m all for that.
 

And PS, I have played quite a few courses in the Phoenix area. If you like to golf, there are some great courses to play. Also, for those that don't golf, make sure you spend one of your days there climbing camelback and taking pictures from the top of the mountain. Made the hike a few times. Phoenix is a great spot.
 

I actually did. Our QB was a redshirt freshman and he looked good. Why ? Extra practices for a month. We suffered very little transfer issues. Why? Team culture being built while other teams are off and players are "wondering if another place would be better for them".
 

Texan Gopher said:
I actually did. Our QB was a redshirt freshman and he looked good. Why ? Extra practices for a month. We suffered very little transfer issues. Why? Team culture being built while other teams are off and players are "wondering if another place would be better for them".
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Would be interested if anyone has numbers

Do bowl teams have fewer, more, or the same percentage of players transfer out
 




While NM has a decent resume they definitely are not a marquee matchup and there’ll be few outside of gopher or NM fans watching this game. Vegas would have been much better but can’t complain about the warm location.
 

Schnauzer said:
(Nearly) every F@&$ing year! The Gophers may never lose a bowl game again the way they get pushed down to the kid’s table every year.

And don’t tell me “they got what they deserved” or “if you don’t like it, win more games” because I’m exactly talking about the bowls and opponents the the Gophers get with the wins that they do have and the way so often other B1G teams that have worse records, worse conference records, and/or have lost to the Gophers head to head get more intriguing matchups.
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Agreed they beat Nebraska head to head and had a better conference record. Maybe they buy more Tix but Utah going to fuck Nebraska harder than Trump fucked a 13 year old in Jeffery Epstein's apartment
 

This reaction is hilarious and weird.

New Mexico is a decent opponent, 9-3 and smoked UCLA. Plus we've never played them before.

PHX around the holidays is a great spot.

Yea I wish we were in Vegas and it's annoying that Nebraska leaped us despite us crushing them and having a better B1G record. But it could've been way worse (cold game in NYC on a baseball field/bowl game we've played in more recently).
 




Zeppelin Gopher said:
This reaction is hilarious and weird.

New Mexico is a decent opponent, 9-3 and smoked UCLA. Plus we've never played them before.

PHX around the holidays is a great spot.

Yea I wish we were in Vegas and it's annoying that Nebraska leaped us despite us crushing them and having a better B1G record. But it could've been way worse (cold game in NYC on a baseball field/bowl game we've played in more recently).
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I love PHX and Arizona in the cold months, it's a great place to go and there are a ton of flights and flight competition to keep prices down.

Can easily see why people snowbird down there and folks even move down there.
 

upnorthkid said:
hopefully people still show up. going to really be annoying if this one doesn't get big travel and it gets held against us for future bowl selection
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Self fulfilling prophecy.

They give us crappy matchups, we don't travel to those, then they see "see! Gophers don't travel! Don't want em in my game!"
 

MaxyJR1 said:
9-3
6 game win streak
Lost to Michigan, Boise State and San Jose State
Beat UCLA
Tied for 1st in conference, lost on tiebreaker.

Quality opponent.
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From a lesser conference though.

Not even a good enough program (and market) to get invited to the new Pac 12. They're mired down with Wyoming, UNLV, and Air Force getting stuck in the Mountain West.
 



From the University of New Mexico web Site:

The University of New Mexico has played in 13 Bowl games in its history, going 4-8-1. The heyday of Bowl appearances came during an 11-season span from 1997 to 2007, when UNM made it to six Bowls. Even better, UNM qualified for three straight from 2002-04, and five in six years from 2002-07. The Lobos picked up a win in 2007, a 23-0 whitewashing of Nevada in the 2007 New Mexico Bowl. Overall, New Mexico played in the New Mexico Bowl four times: in 2006, 2007, 2015, and 2016.
The Lobos in 2025 were selected to play Minnesota in the Rate Bowl.

Screenshot 2025-12-07 153311.png
 

Yah-E said:
Just looked at the bowl ticket, hotel, and pregame packages offered by the U, man, substandard accommodations at a premium price!

First for the hotel, they’re offering bowl goers the Renaissance Downtown Phoenix hotel with the pregame tailgate package! It’s about 4-5 blocks of walk to Chase field and $599/person! They’re charging $349/child!

The tickets for the game itself, whether it’s “club seats, sideline seats or endzone seating, you’ll be at the New Mexico side and FAR from the actual
Field!? $85 for endzone seats and $155 for Club Level seats!

HOME2Home hotel is one block away from the field at $200/night

Tickets directly from Fiesta’s website, 50 yard line for $109 on Gophers’ side line! Albeit its bleachers but I rather be close to the actual field on our team’s sideline rather than paying more to sit in the baseball stadium seats far from the action.

U Athletic dept really suck at putting a package together! You wonder why MN fans travel weak to these games. You over charge for shitty seats and accommodations.

Highly recommend you get tickets directly from Fiesta’s Rate Bowl website if you want better seats!
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The only people who go through the U official travel package are either old people who don't want to plan their trip/do the logistics, or people who don't care about spending the $$/money isn't an object.

You can literally book your own flights, game tickets, and hotels for a quarter of the price the U is offering. Especially to PHX (tons of flights to Sky Harbor, tons of hotels in the area).
 

Yah-E said:
Just looked at the bowl ticket, hotel, and pregame packages offered by the U, man, substandard accommodations at a premium price!

First for the hotel, they’re offering bowl goers the Renaissance Downtown Phoenix hotel with the pregame tailgate package! It’s about 4-5 blocks of walk to Chase field and $599/person! They’re charging $349/child!

The tickets for the game itself, whether it’s “club seats, sideline seats or endzone seating, you’ll be at the New Mexico side and FAR from the actual
Field!? $85 for endzone seats and $155 for Club Level seats!

HOME2Home hotel is one block away from the field at $200/night

Tickets directly from Fiesta’s website, 50 yard line for $109 on Gophers’ side line! Albeit its bleachers but I rather be close to the actual field on our team’s sideline rather than paying more to sit in the baseball stadium seats far from the action.

U Athletic dept really suck at putting a package together! You wonder why MN fans travel weak to these games. You over charge for shitty seats and accommodations.

Highly recommend you get tickets directly from Fiesta’s Rate Bowl website if you want better seats!
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Yep, the standard double queen can be had for $153. The tailgate tickets cost ? to make that package make sense when it is $599 per person. How much are tailgate party tix?

I guess I don’t get it.
 

Some guy said:
Had they beaten northwestern, they’d have likely ended up in the same bowl
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Bold, and sadly perhaps not untrue, statement.

If we had beaten NW we'd be (6-3) 8-4, which would put us up with Iowa in the standings, ahead of all the 5-4 conference teams, though Illinois and Washington also finished 8-4 overall.

Would've been interesting to know if Music City still picks Illinois over us (and if the Big Ten "allows" them to).

Probably. Sad
 

Some guy said:
Somehow USAF thinks that the gophers wouldn’t get jumped if they beat northwestern
But when they lost to northwestern the only team that didn’t jump them was northwestern
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And Penn State :cool:

But in all honestly, it made way too much sense to send NW to Detroit and PSU to Pinstripe.
 


GopherGrit said:
And Penn State :cool:

But in all honestly, it made way too much sense to send NW to Detroit and PSU to Pinstripe.
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If the gophers had beaten northwestern would’ve they put MN in the rate and PSU in the pinstripe


Strangely enough, some people one here prefer the inferior bowl
 

I was a little disappointed at first glance seeing New Mexico but after looking at their schedule and performance, I'm more OK with it. If it's against a better G5 team, that's fine in my view. As for the destination, I think Las Vegas would have been better, but Rate > Pinstripe at least.

Fun fact, this will be the fifth time overall Minnesota has played in this bowl game. Three times when it was Insight, once as Rate. The fifth appearance ties Minnesota with Kansas State, which has gone 4-1 in the game.
 



howeda7 said:
Truly getting screwed would have been getting sent to Detroit. This was the middle result. Sure we probably deserved to go ahead of Nebraska, but they had the same record. It's not some huge reach to pick them instead.
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They did?

Coulda swore Gophers finished 5-4 in conference and Nebraska finished 4-5.
 

howeda7 said:
Preferable to playing an Iowa State team with half it's players at Penn State IMO.
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They would've played the bowl for ISU first, and should have been given the opportunity to do so.

Glad they're getting fined
 


Are ready for some football? A Friday afternoon party! We got Fleck, and Coyle, and a few other guys. They gonna get it kick-started!
 

highwayman said:
Nebraska will bring 40000 fans. Minnesota not as many.
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Based on how many Nebraska fans were in the stadium for us giving them a beatdown this year, I am forced to agree. Lot of these people do not live in Twin Cities. Granted that driving 5-6hrs up from Neb is very doable.
 


Gopher_In_NYC said:
Thank you for cutting through the morass of opponent whining with FACTS😃
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Yes facts ... but which of these facts is actually impressive?

Beating UCLA is not impressive.
Beat an FCS team and New Mexico State which is basically an FCS team. Nothing there.
Beat six Mountain West teams, but not Boise State. Meh
 

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