• Blog Post by: Michael Rand
• December 3, 2012 - 5:46 PM

A good number of folks -- very much so including members of the Gophers athletic department -- were fired up Sunday over the announcement that Minnesota earned a spot in the Meineke Car Care Bowl of Texas against Texas Tech. It means a primetime bowl appearance on a Friday night (Dec. 28), on ESPN, with no other televised bowl competition. It means a chance for the Gophers to be seen by football recruits in Texas.

It was genuinely good news for the Gophers, who at 6-6 would have been bowl-eligible regardless of how the Big Ten played out but who moved up a couple of spots in the conference food chain thanks to sanctions against Ohio State and Penn State.

But we can see how, from the outside, a game between the non-elites from the Big Ten and Big 12 might not have so much appeal.

As such, we have noted that our pal Spencer Hall lists it DEAD LAST in his ranking of the 35 bowl games (link has some swears and hilarity, as you would expect). And after devoting a paragraph to almost every other game, all Spencer could say about Gophers/Tech was "no."

Ah, Spencer. You will see. A Gophers/Texas Tech bowl game is never dull.