HOUSTON – The Gophers sold 3,375 tickets for Friday's Texas Bowl, according to associate athletics director Chris Werle.
That's well short of each team's 12,000-seat allotment, but it's up from 3,163 last year. The Gophers have three busloads of students making the trip from Minneapolis, and two fan charter planes coming down.
It's unclear how many tickets Syracuse sold, but if today's Texas Bowl luncheon was any indication, Gophers fans outnumbered the Orange fans by a wide margin.
The Houston Texans include tickets to this bowl game in their season ticket package. Last year, many of those fans turned out to see Texas Tech play the Gophers, but without a nearby college playing, the in-stadium attendance could fall well short of last year's 50,386 mark.
Sideline return?
Gophers coach Jerry Kill said he'll have a meeting Thursday night to determine whether he will return to the sideline for Friday's game. Kill has coached the past six games from the press box.
"I'll see how things go," Kill said. "I'm going to visit with somebody this evening who's in charge of that, and this is about the first time I've listened in all the time since I've been dealing with [epilepsy], so I'll listen.
"But you know, sometimes it's all overrated. I'm doing the same things if I'm up there as if I'm down on the field. And I'm a pretty emotional guy, so it's probably best I am in the box sometimes, so we'll see how it all works out."
