Despite a season that failed to truly inspire, the Gophers managed to get bowl eligible.  Their reward is a return trip to Tempe.  Kind of funny how two schools who are about 215 miles apart in the Midwest will travel to Arizona.  If you have to return to the same bowl in consecutive years, there are worse locations than Arizona in December.  The silver lining here is that this is a winable game for the Gophers and the Big Ten.  More to come in the coming weeks. 

• U of Minnesota's announcement.
• This game is a battle of SBN's best college blog in the state of Iowa vs. SBN's best college blog in the state of Minnesota.  Check out Clone Chronicles for some delusion on how they'll manage to beat the mighty Golden Gophers.
• Des Moines Register announcement of the bowl match-up.  They point out this is ISU's first bowl appearance since 2005 and 10th in school history.

That's all for now.