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University of Minnesota Athletics
Blog: Gophers Garner Midseason Recognition
10/16/2008 12:00:00 AM | Football
Numerous on-line media outlets have begun awarding "Mid-Season" awards in college football. The Minnesota Golden Gophers are getting plenty of recognition as one of the surprise teams in the country. Minnesota head coach Tim Brewster is being mentioned as a mid-sesaon coach of the year on both the national and conference level. Numerous Gopher individuals are garnering a great deal of recognition as well.
Below, you'll find links to a number of these mid-season lists which feature the Gophers.
College Football News has a couple mid-season lists and Minnesota is prominent in both of them. On Tuesday, CFN.com had four different writers list their mid-season coach of the year, offensive and defensive players of the year and biggest mid-season surprises and disappointments. The Golden Gophers were mentioned three times in this article. On Thursday, College Football News released its Mid-season All-America Team and Gopher wide receiver Eric Decker was a First-Team All-America choice.
By the way, we've begun a full-fledged All-America and Biletnikoff Award campaign for Decker. Click on his name above to see some of the promotional material going out to voters. Speaking of Decker, the Gophers' top receiver is featured in a Q&A in the Sporting News Today.
ESPN.com's Adam Rittenberg has numerous mentions of the Gophers as of late in his Big Ten Blog. Here are Rittenberg's Big Ten Mid-season Report and Minnesota Mid-season Report.
ESPN.com national columnist Ivan Maisel lists the Gophers as his No. 1 Half-Season Surprise. Meanwhile Mark Schlabach, another ESPN.com national writer, also praises Minnesota as the "season's biggest surprise."
It is nice to see that people are recognizing Minnesota's impressive turnaround so far this season. I'll leave you with this little nugget, that I believe reinforces just how amazing it has been. Of the 119 Football Bowl Subdivision teams in the country, only eight have already improved on their win total from last season. Of those eight, seven have improved by either one or two games. Minnesota has already improved on its win total by five.
-AS
