What looked like a real shot at a marquee bowl a week ago has suddenly gotten a lot murkier for Minnesota.
The Gophers’ loss to Purdue knocked the temperature down in a hurry, and the bowl picture that once felt optimistic now has a much different feel. One bad Saturday in West Lafayette was enough to push the conversation back toward whether Minnesota can even stay safely on the right side of bowl eligibility.
Here’s where the major national projections stand after the reset:
ESPN’s Kyle Bonagura has Minnesota as Not bowl eligible.
ESPN’s Mark Schlabach projects the Pinstripe Bowl in New York, NY, against Virginia Tech.
CBS Sports has the Gophers in the Music City Bowl in Nashville, TN, against LSU.
Athlon slots Minnesota into the First Responder Bowl in Dallas, TX, against UTSA.
On3 sends the Gophers to the Armed Forces Bowl in Fort Worth, TX, against Army.
The CBS projection stands out for all the wrong reasons. The board appears to be missing an identified author, and the picks have been off enough that they’re hard to trust.
In the latest update, Minnesota actually moved up in the bowl pecking order after the Purdue loss, and not in a way that can be explained by another team simply falling apart. It was a jump that doesn’t make much sense given what happened on the field.
My own Big Ten bowl board has Minnesota in the Pinstripe Bowl against Louisville, while the rest of the league shape looks like this: Ohio State in the College Football Playoffs with a first-round bye; Indiana in the playoff against Texas Tech; UCLA in the playoff against BYU; Iowa in the Citrus Bowl against Missouri; Northwestern in the ReliaQuest Bowl against Florida; Nebraska in the Music City Bowl against LSU; Michigan in the Duke’s Mayo Bowl against Clemson; Wisconsin in the Cactus Bowl against Cincinnati; Penn State in the Birmingham Bowl against Florida State; Oregon in the Alamo Bowl against Houston; USC in the Sun Bowl against SMU; and Washington in the Holiday Bowl against Duke.
It’s a much different tone than last week, when the heading was “Minnesota's Rejuvenated Bowl Outlook.” Back then, wins over Washington and Michigan had opened a clear lane toward one of the Big Ten’s better postseason spots.
The logic was built around a simple assumption: Minnesota needed to beat Purdue. In a piece full of possibilities, that kind of baseline was necessary to keep things from turning into chaos.
Now the other side of the coin is front and center. The Gophers were blown out by Purdue, and that result is going to matter when bowl selections are made at the end of the year. Heading into the second half, I see Minnesota’s chances this way:
Citrus Bowl (Orlando, FL) - 2%
That number is a long shot for a reason. Iowa looks close to locked into the Orlando spot unless the Hawkeyes somehow reach the playoff or unravel badly in the second half.
For Minnesota to get into the Citrus picture, the Gophers would probably need to lose to Iowa, which would help Iowa’s playoff case. A road loss to Indiana the next week would still be manageable, but after that Minnesota would need to run the table.
Even that wouldn’t guarantee anything, but it would at least keep the Gophers in the mix with a few other teams. A win over Indiana, paired with a loss to Iowa, would give Minnesota a much better chance, though that still feels unlikely.
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