Other Gopher Sports
I created the Gopher Hole in 1996 as a Gopher Basketball fan site. The end of this season will mark my fourth year covering the basketball team. This past August, the Gopher Hole became a part of Rivals.com. At the same time, the Gopher Hole added coverage of Gopher Football by bringing Dave Christianson (creator of the Golden Gopher Gridiron football site) aboard. The Gopher Hole is in the process of expanding to cover all Gopher Sports, and we have recently featured articles on Gopher Hockey and Wrestling.
Enough of the history lesson. Now I’ll talk about some of the features of the Gopher Hole. The Gopher Hole’s front page gives you quick access to everything. Let’s start from the top. The “Just in” ticker at the top of the page gives you the latest updates on recruiting and other items. Next is the feature story. This is typically our most recent Gopher Sports story. The Latest Headlines below show our 7 most recent stories in chronological order. Remember to check these headlines even if the feature story hasn’t changed since your last visit. Depending on its importance and timing, not every article we write gets the feature spot. Continuing down the front page is the Fox Newsflash, the Question of the Week, and the Video Gallery. We actually change the Question of the Week a couple of times each week. It’s a great way to see how other Gopher fans feel about various subjects. The Video Gallery includes scouting videos of recruits and also has some audio such as Glen Mason’s weekly press conference during football season. Scrolling down, the Features section contains articles and other information we feel are especially important or contain information people will want to refer to throughout the year. The Rivals.com Extras contain recent information on Rivals.com and its sites. On the left pane of every page, you’ll find links to other areas of the Gopher Hole, links to other Rivals.com sites, and other links we feel are of interest to Gopher fans.
After the main page, the best place to get information is on the Gopher Hole’s message boards. We currently feature boards for Gopher Basketball, Gopher Football, Gopher Hockey, and Other Gopher Sports. We also add special boards from time to time, such as the one we had in December for the Sun Bowl. The message boards are a great place to have discussions with other Gopher fans as well as fans from other schools. News scoops are often broken on the message boards first, as some fans have access to a lot of good information. Out-of-state fans can also often give us updates on recruits that they have seen play first-hand. Finally, Dave and I post a lot of items on the message boards. We post minor news items (that aren’t worthy of a story) there, and we also participate in the discussions and answer questions from Gopher Hole users. Remember that even if there isn’t a new story on the front page, there can be a lot of new information on the message boards.
One of the biggest benefits of the new Gopher Hole is the Recruiting Page. It is maintained by Rivals.com’s recruiting experts (people such as Bobby Burton, Bob Gibbons, Chris Pool, etc.) and is constantly being updated. The Buzz features the recent updates for both Football and Basketball. The updates also give you a direct link to the Player Profile for that recruit. The profile contains stats on the player, the schools he is interested in and his visit dates, and all past updates on his recruitment. If you’re looking for information on a specific recruit, you can find it quickly with the Prospect Search for both Football and Basketball. The Prospect Search allows you to search Rivals.com’s recruiting database by position, name, or specific information such as school preference, home state, rating, etc. The Recruiting Page also features Player Videos for Football and Basketball, Commitment Lists for Football and Basketball, and Rankings of every school’s Football recruiting class.
Another feature of the Gopher Hole is the Chat Room. We’ll schedule some chats with ourselves and other guests from time-to-time that will hopefully be of interest to you. Also, feel free to schedule chats yourself (post it on the message boards) whenever there’s something you’d like to talk to other fans about. It’s also a great place to talk with fans before, during, and after games as well as during recruiting season.
A couple of other features of the Gopher Hole are schedules for Basketball and Football (with links to each box score), rosters for Basketball and Football with links to individual player profiles, and the current Big Ten standings for Basketball and Football. New features and content are always being added, so if we don’t have something you’re looking for, we may have it soon.
Well, that’s pretty much all there is to know about the Gopher Hole. If you have any questions or comments about the Gopher Hole or Gopher Sports, follow this link to see how you can contact us. Thanks for your continued support.
Talk about Minnesota Gopher topics on the GopherHole message board.