Yes, that’s a real headline.
Yesterday the Minnesota Golden Gopher football program released their 2019 Outback Bowl rings and included in the design is a commemoration of their Big Ten West victory last season–a co-victory which was actually a defeat as the Badgers defeated the Golden Gophers late in the season and won the division.
Here’s the outline of their design:
Bowl Rings: A Breakdown pic.twitter.com/rjCRBH7SMo
— Minnesota Football (@GopherFootball) July 22, 2020
Also included: ranking No. 10 in the end-of-season poll and hosting College Gameday for the first time.
In case the message above wasn’t clear: Minnesota and Wisconsin had the same conference record last season so they were (technically) co-champions of the Big Ten West. As Badger fans know, though, the tiebreaker is the head-to-head matchup which was won 38-17 by Jack Coan and the Wisconsin Badgers.
Championship rings are fun and are a great commemoration of success, I’ll give them that. They did win the Outback Bowl against Auburn, host College Gameday and finish the season 11-2, this all is true. But it’s hard to look at the Big Ten West champion part of the ring and not immediately go to the fact that it was the Badgers–not the Golden Gophers–that faced off with Ohio State in the conference championship last season.