College Football: Way-Too-Early Bowl Projections (Minnesota vs Vandy in Gasparilla Bowl)



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Clearly, Big Game Boomer (whoever the hell she, she or it may be) has/have never heard of the Greek Rifle.

But they are obviously quite familiar with miracle workers like Matt Rhule and Luke Fickell.
 

Way-Too-Uninformed Bowl Projections. Gaspirilla Bowl (at least it's in Tampa) shows 10 different conference affiliations on its website. The Big Ten is not one of them. So, kind of a weird pick.

My feeling is that we've done the Guaranteed Rate, Pinstripe and Quick Lane bowls recently. Time for us to climb the ladder a rung: This year we get Las Vegas or Reliaquest Bowl. Of course, if we get our ears boxed early by Nebraska (opener) and UNC (game 3), my confidence will be eroded.
 
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The lack of effort behind this is astounding. Gasperilla and Camellia Bowls? For Big Ten teams? Iowa in the Mayo Bowl is a fail. We have the Las Vegas Bowl this year instead. The Music City Bowl has the SEC playing the Big 12. And I guess the top G5 team no longer plays in the Cotton Bowl.
 


I had to look up what the bleep Gasperilla means. A Pirate Fest? Sounds fun.
A bowl game, pirate fest, and a music fest each happening over the course of a few months.

The bowl used to be played at the trop. It’s very sad for me that it no longer is.

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It will be a warm weather January bowl. We are rolling into Columbus undefeated!
 

A bowl game, pirate fest, and a music fest each happening over the course of a few months.

The bowl used to be played at the trop. It’s very sad for me that it no longer is.

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I wish it was still at the Trop too. I live in St Pete and it would bring back so many memories of my time at the U...walking to the Dome from my home and sitting inside a baseball stadium to watch the Gophers. Could probably get front row goal line seats just like old times.

If only the Rays were still playing in December, we could go really retro and do a 90s-style double-feature with the Gophers and a scrappy MLB club that punches above its weight only to crap out every year against the Yankees.

Also Gasparilla Bowl is playing it way too mainstream for the MagicJack Beef O'Brady's BitPay Bad Boy Mowers Bowl
 

I wish it was still at the Trop too. I live in St Pete and it would bring back so many memories of my time at the U...walking to the Dome from my home and sitting inside a baseball stadium to watch the Gophers. Could probably get front row goal line seats just like old times.

If only the Rays were still playing in December, we could go really retro and do a 90s-style double-feature with the Gophers and a scrappy MLB club that punches above its weight only to crap out every year against the Yankees.

Also Gasparilla Bowl is playing it way too mainstream for the MagicJack Beef O'Brady's BitPay Bad Boy Mowers Bowl
Those double-features were great sports memories growing up. I’m in St. Pete now too, but I’ve only gone to one Rays vs Twins games at the trop since moving down here. It was a bit nostalgic for me watching the Twins play in a sterile dome.
 


Has anyone in the history of college football media ever picked the Gophers to be better than the prior year? When they at least went to a bowl that season?

I don't remember what the national publications were saying about the Gophers heading into the 2019 season but a number of Big Ten fan pages were saying that the Gophers could be contenders in the West. Prognosticators on one of the biggest Nebraska sites were particularly high on the Gophers because ---

1) the Gophers were thought to have an easy schedule (they did);

2) the Gophers finished strong in 2018;

3) the Gophers returned the substantial majority of their important players.
 


Minnesota going 7-5 with losses to Ohio State, Michigan, North Carolina, and then losing 2 more between Wisconsin, Iowa, Purdue, Nebraska, and Michigan State isn't an extremely unreasonable prediction I don't think. And then getting passed up in bowl placement by just about every other Big Ten team with a 7-5 or 6-6 record seems quite reasonable at this point. Though as others have noted, they have the Big Ten playing in the Duke's Mayo Bowl instead of the Las Vegas Bowl this year, and no Big Ten team in the Music City Bowl, so it is a little tough to figure out where all the Big Ten teams actually slot in after the Reliaquest Bowl. Could just be that they think Iowa, Purdue, Michigan State, Maryland, Nebraska, and Minnesota are all between 6-6 and 8-4, with Minnesota going 7-5 against a tough schedule, and ending up near the bottom of the pile for bowl placement. Minnesota has also been to the Pinstripe, Guaranteed Rate, and Quick Lane all within the last 5 years, and this bowl selection allows for Michigan State to play a bowl game in the state of Michigan.
 



Clearly, Big Game Boomer (whoever the hell she, she or it may be) has/have never heard of the Greek Rifle.

But they are obviously quite familiar with miracle workers like Matt Rhule and Luke Fickell.
I think you are onto something with the "it"

BGB listicles seem like they came from an AI bot
 



Way-Too-Uninformed Bowl Projections. Gaspirilla Bowl (at least it's in Tampa) shows 10 different conference affiliations on its website. The Big Ten is not one of them. So, kind of a weird pick.

My feeling is that we've done the Guaranteed Rate, Pinstripe and Quick Lane bowls recently. Time for us to climb the ladder a rung: This year we get Las Vegas or Reliaquest Bowl. Of course, if we get our ears boxed early by Nebraska (opener) and UNC (game 3), my confidence will be eroded.
Yeah, I saw the tie-in thing as well...it is the Way too early pick so I guess we can give them a pass.
 


If I had the money, I'd start up a bowl and call it the "Way Too Early Bowl" and host it in August. Think of all the free publicity it would get.
 

The only 100% accurate projection that I see is that Boomer is going to continue to flood the internet with these worthless predictions
 

Why’s that?

Well, I guess you may have missed it at the time, but there was a lot of chaos that year. Games/seasons cancelled, then suddenly the season back on again with an altered, truncated slate. Players unexpectedly missing games due to positive tests... in some cases many of the players were unavailable for a given game and the depth chart had to be juggled and cobbled together. Our best receiver, Rashad Bateman, left the team for good on Nov. 25. The Wisconsin and Northwestern games were cancelled, and then the Wisconsin game was hastily re-scheduled for later. The games that were played were staged in the surreal environment of empty stadiums.

The Gopher record in the midst of all this upheaval and unpredictability was 3-4. Two of the four losses, on the road at Maryland and at Wisconsin, were in overtime.

To describe the team's and the staff's performance during all of this adversity as "shitting the bed" seems very harsh, highly critical and excessively judgmental, especially coming from someone who apparently styles himself a fan.

You could just as easily have said, "Well, in all fairness we were picked to finish pretty high coming into 2020, but we came up short in the midst of all the COVID chaos." That's really much more fair and even-handed, and it accurately describes the record.

Instead, you chose to make the statement that the team "shit the bed", with no mention at all of the unprecedented, exceptionally bizarre circumstances that year.

So... I said my piece. You're certainly entitled to your opinion, but I don't have to like it.
 




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