STrib: Here's why a five-win Gophers team almost certainly won't go bowling

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BleedGopher

BleedGopher

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per Randy:

If you’re looking to follow the Gophers in a bowl game this season, the odds have become long you’ll be able to do so.

To earn a bowl the traditional way — with at least six victories — the Gophers must beat No. 5 Wisconsin on Saturday at TCF Bank Stadium. Minnesota (5-6, 2-6 Big Ten) is a 17-point underdog to the Badgers (11-0, 8-0), who are thick in the College Football Playoff hunt.

If the Gophers don’t beat the Badgers, they would need all kinds of help to qualify as a 5-7 team — to the point where it takes a lengthy explanation to describe the small amount of hope that would remain.

There are 17 other five-win teams across the country trying to get to six victories and eliminate the nation’s 5-7 teams hoping to get unclaimed bowl spots based on their strong academics. If there are not enough six-win teams to fill all the bowl game positions, the five-win teams with the highest multiyear Academic Progress Rate (APR) scores are selected. This season, however, there likely will be enough six-win teams to fill all games.

Essentially, several bowl-hopeful teams would have to fail this weekend — and more again on Dec. 2 — for a five-win Minnesota team to reach what would be a bowl for the sixth year in a row.

http://www.startribune.com/here-s-w...-almost-certainly-won-t-go-bowling/458943063/

Go Gophers!!
 

He's not wrong.

For details, so the thread on this forum about the 5-7 bowl chances.
 

Either pull-off the upset of the decade (century?), or the season ends in four days.
 

Goldmember said:
Either pull-off the upset of the decade (century?), or the season ends in four days.
Click to expand...

Nah, it wouldn't even be the most surprising outcome of a B1G game this season. The odds of Iowa (+20.5) pantsing OSU by 5 TD were far longer than this one.

17 points is a significant underdog and nothing we saw last week would indicate that the Gophers match up well with Wisconsin at all. Still, 17+ point dogs win outright every week.
 

fmlizard said:
Nah, it wouldn't even be the most surprising outcome of a B1G game this season. The odds of Iowa (+20.5) pantsing OSU by 5 TD were far longer than this one.

17 points is a significant underdog and nothing we saw last week would indicate that the Gophers match up well with Wisconsin at all. Still, 17+ point dogs win outright every week.
Click to expand...

How often do they happen when the underdog also has a 13 year head-to-head losing streak?
 


An upset like your talking has never happened in the history of sports. No way possible. Except for 1999 when we were on the road at Penn State who was #1 at the time.....
 

The 5-7 thread has these details.

Essentially, there are maybe 11 teams for about 4 spots. Of them only two are slightly favored this weekend.

It's hard to say they have a good chance, but it's not impossible. We need all the teams who should lose, to lose, and we'd probably make it.
Problem of course if, not all 9 (or whatever) will all lose necessarily.
 

But it's really 3 spots, because Duke is ahead of us no matter what happens. Either they lose this week and beat us in the APR tie-breaker, or they win and get to 6 wins.

And of the remaining 5 win teams who are playing this week, three are playing teams that have 9 losses (either 1-9 or 2-9). Now, I could certainly see Temple losing at Tulsa, which is a proud program in a down year with some close losses, UNLV losing at Nevada, which is also usually pretty good and it's a rivalry game, or even Louisiana-Lafayette losing to Georgia Southern at home, as GSU is a very strong program that is having a down year.

Definitely could happen. Odds don't favor it, but football is a game that often breaks the odds. So we'll just have to see!
 

And like I posted in the other thread, here's a quick guide of who we need to LOSE this week:

Thursday:
doesn't matter

Friday:
Buffalo
Texas Tech

Saturday:
Tulane
Georgia Tech
Florida St
Louisiana Monroe -- needs to win next week too, to get to 6 wins
UNLV
Vandy
Temple
New Mexico St -- needs to win next week too, to get to 6 wins
Louisiana-Lafayette -- could also win next week, to get to 6 wins
Louisiana Tech
Air Force


Note again that Duke isn't on here, because it doesn't matter if they win or lose this week, as far as the Gophers are concerned.
 



Are people really rooting for some crazy combination of losses so that we can sneak in to a crappy bowl game at 5-7?

I was fine with it 2 years ago and would be fine with is this year, if it comes to pass. Pretty pathetic to crunch the numbers and all these permutations though.
 

Ope3 said:
How often do they happen when the underdog also has a 13 year head-to-head losing streak?
Click to expand...

I'm expecting a loss, but how is that streak relevant? The outcome of next weeks game will be determined by this years teams, not teams from the past.
 

Zeppelin Gopher said:
Are people really rooting for some crazy combination of losses so that we can sneak in to a crappy bowl game at 5-7?

I was fine with it 2 years ago and would be fine with is this year, if it comes to pass. Pretty pathetic to crunch the numbers and all these permutations though.
Click to expand...

Take that number crunchers! No one likes numbers or crunching, anyway!
 

...because the Trib hates the U, that's why.
 



Considering there isn't anyone in the program that has more than a year of experience with this coaching staff and their methodology, a few extra weeks of practice would be very beneficial.
 

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