We will know in a matter of days whether most prognosticators are correct in guessing that the 5-7 Gophers are headed to the Quick Lane Bowl in Detroit on the day after Christmas as a reward (punishment?) for their season.
Other realistic options are still in play, but for now a reader thinks that we give this yet-to-be-determined bowl game an unofficial name. He suggested the "De-Flecktion Bowl," which you can parse as a pun on the name of Gophers head coach P.J. Fleck and perhaps a desire to have us look away from the four-game losing streak at the end of the season.
Here are five other options after a long Monday morning of pondering such things:
The Readjustment Bowl: Per Fleck's description of this season after Saturday's 28-14 loss to Wisconsin. "I named it the readjustment year," Fleck said of the 2023 season. "There are a lot of things to adjust moving forward."
Patrick Reusse and I had some fun with this, of course, on Monday's Daily Delivery podcast.
Star Tribune columnist Chip Scoggins says "readjustment year" is dangerously close to Fleck's "Year Zero" description of his first season at Minnesota. Indeed, Year 7 shouldn't be a mulligan.
But the Readjustment Bowl does have a nice ring to it, and there are plenty of things for the Gophers to think about this offseason. Hopefully these extra practices getting ready for the Readjustment Bowl will help.
College Knowledge Bowl: If you haven't been paying attention and are wondering how on earth a 5-7 team will even get a bowl game invite, Randy Johnson has a good recap.