I've given up Sid bashing - at 89 he's getting a pass from me.
I have to say that I am surprised to learn from this board that student/players hometowns have any kind of effect on scheduling. I never would have guessed that, but several posters have noted credible examples. At first I thought that this was odd and dumb. But, I guess really it's kind of quaint and old-school. Cool that coaches could really arrange that as a spiff to a kid that's earned it for whatever reason.
KU would be a great oppourtunity no matter why it comes about - I hope it still can. On a more strategic basis though, while I get that the gophers should play some lower division neighbors, they should also over the long haul establish some templates for around half a dozen higher quality games.
The ACC challenge is a good template, but I think the Gophers ought to also look south (easy to do from MN) and west to initiate some informal rivalries. As the westernmost team in the conference, we'd have some natural affinities with a couple of good peer schools. Prime examples being Kansas, Mizoo and Colorado, I think both the Big 12 and the PAC 10 are similarly struggling for quality non-conf games. Other likely "partners" could be Arizona, Iowa State, UNLV, Utah, Cal, and Washington.
I'm not sure, but I think that there are a lot of informal non-conf rivalries among eastern schools No point trying to break in to that mess. We should get some of our own going to our south and west
I know there are some potential "L"s out there. But, it's worth risking Tubby's 20 win streak to build a better team and watch some better games.