The Gophers’ streak of six straight bowl wins under head coach P.J. Fleck will be challenged by a quality New Mexico team in the Rate Bowl in Phoenix on Dec. 26.
First-year head coach Jason Eck has turned around a once-moribund Lobos program, going 9-3 overall, 6-2 in the Mountain West Conference and producing the program’s first win over a Big Ten school, 35-10 over UCLA on Sept. 12. New Mexico lost its season opener at then-14th-ranked Michigan, 34-17, on Aug. 30, but ended two long losing streaks to Air Force (25 years on the road) and Colorado State (13 straight games) to finish with its first winning season since Bob Davie was the coach in 2016.
The first meeting between the Minnesota and New Mexico will kick off at 3:30 p.m. CT at Chase Field and will air on ESPN.
“Pretty familiar with Coach Eck,” Fleck said in a conference call Sunday. “… I love when people can turn around something really quickly; it kind of draws my attention and I’m a magnet toward those types of people because that is really hard to do and it takes a really strong culture.”
Rate Bowl projections for the Big Ten-Big XII conference matchup were penciled out to be Gophers (7-5) versus Iowa State (8-4) into Sunday morning, but the Cyclones opted out of the bowl due to “lack of healthy players to safely practice and play.”
Iowa State, which is also going through a coaching change from Matt Campbell to Jimmy Rogers, was fined $500,000 by the Big XII for declining a bowl invitation. With Kansas State also opting out, the Rate Bowl turned to a Mountain West Conference program.
“Maybe we thought one team from the Big XII might not (play), but to have two of them (Sunday) morning was news to us, said Fiesta Sports Foundation Executive Director Erik Moses, who runs the Rate Bowl. “We had to pivot pretty quickly, but we feel the pivot was a really good one.”
Meanwhile, Eck’s team was preparing to play against another Group of Five school in the New Mexico Bowl but jumped at the chance to play a Big Ten team when it was offered on Sunday morning.
Eck grew up in La Crosse, Wis., and played offensive line at Wisconsin in the 1990s, then served as graduate assistant for the Badgers before a handful of assistant coaching positions, including Winona State and Minnesota State-Mankato and South Dakota State. He was head coach at FCS-level Idaho for three years before going to Albuquerque.
Former Badgers coach Barry Alvarez was a big influence on Eck’s offensive philosophy and motivation tactics. “One thing (Alvarez) did a good job of was building confidence in his players, always having us well-prepared and we felt like when we were going into play an Ohio State or Michigan, who maybe was more talented than us, that we still had confidence we could compete and win those games,” Eck said.
“That is a challenge when you play as a Group of Five school playing a Big Ten team, I will probably have to put that to the test again to try to get our team confident and we can believe a very good Minnesota team that just kicked Wisconsin’s butt in the Axe game.”
This year’s Gophers team reached bowl eligibility with its sixth win in a 23-20 overtime win over Michigan State on Nov. 1, and after losses to Oregon and Northwestern, they improved their position with a seventh win in a 17-7 home victory over Wisconsin for Paul Bunyan’s Axe in the regular-season finale on Nov. 29.
The Gophers had a memorable experience in Phoenix in 2021, beating West Virginia in the then-named Guaranteed Rate Bowl at Chase Field. More than 4,000 Gophers fans attended the game at Arizona Diamondbacks’ home venue.
The Gophers also played in the Insight Bowl three times at Sun Devil Stadium in Tempe, Ariz., and lost all three games to Texas Tech (2006), Kansas (2008) and Iowa State (2009).
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