Come Saturday, the University of Minnesota football team will really put the gold into Golden Gophers.

In conjunction with the birthday of mascot Goldy Gopher, Coach P.J. Fleck in a video unveiled a new gold helmet featuring a large logo of Goldy Gopher’s face on one side, the traditional block ‘M’ on the other and a two-striped gopher tail down the back of the helmet.

The Gophers will wear the new helmets, along with gold jerseys and gold pants, for Saturday’s game against Middle Tennessee at TCF Bank Stadium (2:30 p.m., BTN).

In front of the team, Fleck presented Goldy a gift-wrapped box, and the mascot quickly tore it open and pulled out the helmet. The team than sang “Happy Birthday’’ to Goldy.

Saturday’s game will mark the third different uniform combination for the Gophers. In the season opener against Buffalo, they wore an all-maroon combo with gold accents. In their first road game, at Oregon State last week, they sported white helmets, white jerseys and white pants with maroon accents. With the all-maroon, all-white and all-gold ensembles being used, the Gophers seem to have options to mix and match later in the season.

The new gold helmets have been a hit on Twitter, with mainly positive comments.

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