UNLV, the Gophers first football opponent of the 2012 season wants to move up the date of the season opener. The game was originally scheduled for Saturday, September 1st and they are requested permission from the U to move the game up to Thursday, August 30th. This is an interesting decision to be made. Many Gopher fans were planning to take advantage of the Labor Day weekend and make a trip to Las Vegas for the game. Moving the game to Thursday night may prevent many from making the trip. On the other hand flying to Vegas on a Wednesday rather than Friday of Labor Day weekend may save fans some money. But taking an extra two days of vacation and adding an extra two or three days to the weekend does add significant cost to the trip.

For the team this may not be a terrible idea. The game would stand a better chance of being televised nationally and the team would actually get two extra days to prepare for their next opponent. But for Gopher fans who were looking forward to a 3-day weekend in Vegas this may not be the best solution. If you want the game to remain schedule for Saturday, I suggest you e-mail the athletic department, Joel Maturi and President Kaler.

• I answered some questions for Phil at Bucky's 5th Quarter. I'm really looking forward to tonight's game.
• Tubby will be ready to go with his bench and stick with his bench if they are the ones with the hot hands tonight.
• Tubby tweeted for the first time in nearly 2 years! Must be something significant!
• Patrick Reusse and Michael Rand debate if The Barn needs to be replaced or not.
• ESPN's B1G blog is looking back at the 2011 season and ranking the position groups. The Gopher offensive line was not treated too kindly.
• FootballStudyHall is taking a look at the 2012 Gophers.
• Gopher Hockey is getting ready for a trip to Denver and the stretch run to a WCHA title.

I'm going to lead with Jim Delaney announcing that he is not only open to, but might be proposing a four-team playoff that is separate from the BCS bowl system.

Sources told the Tribune that a Big Ten plan would remove the top four teams from the BCS bowl pool and have semifinal games played on the college campus of the higher seed. That would do away with the facade of "neutral" sites such as New Orleans, Miami and Pasadena, Calif., and ease travel concern for fans.

The championship game then could be bid out, like the Super Bowl.

This wouldn't be my favorite plan, but a four-team playoff is light years better than the current system.

Let's get some quick links in this morning...

• Congrats to the Gopher wrestling team for winning the Big Ten duals title.
• Wrestling coach, J Robinson had some nice things to say about Joel Maturi and how he saved a few Gopher sports.
• The Minnesota Daily interviewed Joel Maturi.
• Gopher baseball is getting ready for their season which begins soon. This past weekend they faced and defeated a Gopher alumni team 6-1.

Most bracket projections still have the Gophers in the tournament. But we are right on the line and we are facing Wisconsin and Ohio State over the next week.

• The Bracket Matrix - 11 seed
  
• ESPN's Joe Lunardi - 12 seed
  
• SBN's Bloggin the Bracket - 12 seed
• Stat Junkie

Well the big game yesterday is in the books and the Gophers came away with another Big Ten road win. A 69-61 win at Nebraska gets them back on the winning track as we now head into a tough stretch of the schedule.

Wisconsin and Ohio State (both at home) are what the Gophers have in store for them over the next eight days. Winning one of these games is the type of win we need to erase one of the Iowa losses. I'm not holding my breath (mostly because I'd die if I didn't breath between now and Thursday's game) but both games are at home and we just might catch lightening in a bottle.

• The Gopher basketball bench came up big again while contributing to the Gopher win on Sunday.
• The Lansing State Journal is already suggesting that Tubby Smith is your Big Ten Coach of the Year. (look under the midseason awards on the left hand side of the first page)
• Chip Scoggins has a nice profile on Oto Osenieks.
• A weekend WCHA wrap-up. The Gophers didn't play this weekend but considering we are fighting for a regular season title, everything is important.
• The staff at Gopher Illustrated gives out their 2012 recruiting awards. Always an interesting read if you are a subscriber.
• Unfortunately the Big Ten division names are here to stay.
• Finally, the Pioneer Press has a few names that could be candidates for the vacant Athletic Director job at Minnesota.

A quick hockey-centric Nugz before we go all Gopher football recruiting crazy tomorrow (I'm 99.9% sure Andre McDonald keeps his commitment this time but that .1% still scares the bejeezus out of me). Actually two quick football links. FIrst, per Sid, Moses Alipate is moving to TE. And he's apparently down to 250 pounds. He has to be the first QB ever to lose weight by moving to TE. With Tom Parish transferring and Alipate switching positions, the Gophers are suddenly VERY young at QB behind MarQueis Gray.

Good story in Sunday's Strib about Minnesota football recruits and how many the U grabbed in this year's class. Specifically the bond that's developed between Isaac Hayes and Jonah Persig since they committed to the Gophers. The two even went to see Philip Nelson play at State to show their support for their soon-to-be teammate. I know this class isn't rated highly at all by the experts, but I'm really excited for this group. So much potential, so much underrated talent, and so many Minnesota kids. We'll have more on the 2012 class starting tomorrow, but I'm excited already.

Also from that same piece is news that Hayes is going to play center instead of guard. GN had mentioned recently that center is the one position on the line he's a little worried about, and perhaps the coaches felt the same way? Or they just see Hayes' best position in college being center and that's where they want to play him. I really doubt we see either Hayes or Persig in 2012, but the position switch for Shaft is intriguing to say the least.

Ted Glover of OTE looks at Big Ten recruiting and what it all means- or doesn't mean.

The Gophers pulled off a much needed sweep of the St Cloud State Huskies over the weekend, and another pack of Huskies, these from Michigan Tech, gave Minnesota some help too by shocking UMD not once but twice in Duluth.The results of a most glorious weekend came out today as, per Roman, Minnesota moved up to second in the USCHO.com poll (Duluth received 28 of 60 first place votes, Minnesota grabbed 21 and the other one went to...6th ranked Ferris Bueller? My mistake, it's Ferris State. Still, even Ferris Bueller doesn't deserve a first place vote. Everyone knows that. Put down the Molson there Ferris State voter guy...and pick up some Kill-Aid!!) and in the USA Today/USA Hockey Magazine poll the Gophers leapt over the Bulldogs for the top spot, picking up 18 of 34 first place votes (UMD got the other 16. And Ferris State got zero. So there).

Of course, in the one poll that actually matters for making the NCAA tourney, the Gophs still have some work to do, as they're 9th this week in the Pairwise Rankings. The Gophers sit just ahead of Maine and Miami and just behind future B1G hockey conference mates Michigan and Ohio State, but still a ways to go to move into the top four with the likes of Duluth, BC, something called Mass-Lowell and... FERRIS?!?!?

Minnesota still has plenty of time, and plenty of opportunities to keep movin' on up in the Pairwise, starting with Denver (The sunshine state! Denver. GORGEOUS! Gorgeous) in two weeks. They'll get this weekend to rest up, and hopefully remember just how the hell they won a Friday night game for once, bottle it, rinse, repeat. Or whatever they did Friday night when they beat SCSU 2-1, just keeping doing that. Believe it or not- and I'm guessing you can- that was their first Friday night victory in a WCHA series since beating Minnesota State on December 2nd. Yep, almost two solid months without a WCHA Friday night victory (well ok not really. Probably a good time to point out they had almost a month off from the WCHA schedule with Christmas, Hanukkah, Fesitvus-for the rest of us- and New Years, and the Hall of Fame game debacle). And just when I thought they might trade their Friday night letdowns for Saturday, the Gophs beat St Cloud again (called, I believe, a "winning streak"), running their Saturday night record in WCHA games this season to 10-0. It's Minnesota's first three-game win streak since winning four in a row against UAA and UND back in early November. So yeah, this was definitely a much needed sweep.

Hopefully they can carry this momentum through the week off and into Denver next weekend. A couple of wins in the "I thought the Rockies would be a little rockier than this. That John Denver's full of..." would be huge for their Pairwise rankings, and we'll see what happens in the WCHA this weekend while the Gophs are idle.

Now that was a great weekend for Gopher fans. The big win by the men's basketball team was very nice but not as impressive as women beating #9-Ohio St. And the hockey team finally shook their Friday monkeys and earned a sweep over St. Cloud State.

My favorite takeaway from Saturday's win over Illinois was that Andre Hollins can actually play and will be a very good player for us. Amelia Rayno decided to write more about it.

"He was able to put the ball in his hand, because we recruited him as a point guard and I was impressed with the way he stepped up and made his free throws and just played like a very mature, senior player," coach Tubby Smith said. "And just being a freshman, just a special effort on his part."

I really was not expecting to see him playing that much down the stretch and in OT, but he played great and maybe this was his coming out party.

• The Illini HQ reacts to the how the Illini was unable to finish out the game on Saturday.
• Hail to the Orange thinks that the Illini loss kind of sucked.
• After Mbakwe went down I believe I said that if the Gophers were to make the NCAA Tournament it would be Tubby's best coaching job yet. Amelia is wondering if he'll be coach of the year? In the Big Ten maybe.
• Blogging the Bracket has us up to a 10 seed with eight at-large teams behind us!
• As mentioned the Gopher women beat #9-Ohio State yesterday. This was only OSU's second loss of the season and a fairly huge upset.
• Unfortunately the wrestlers couldn't quite beat Iowa.
• Is Gopher Hockey finally back as Minnesota's Pride on Ice?
• Pioneer Press has a quick interview with Nick Bjugstad.
• They got a huge Friday win (FINALLY) and then won an exciting game on Saturday to earn the sweep.
• And they now have a five point lead over Duluth in the standings! Still have four weekend's to go to earn a conference championship but this was a very nice weekend for the Gophers.

The Gopher news most talked about today is the appeal by Trevor Mbakwe and the Gophers with the NCAA for a sixth year of eligibility.

"It's going to be a tough waiver to kind of get through. The biggest question is going to be the year that I sat out when I first got here. That's probably going to be what the NCAA is going to look at as the determining factor if I'm able to get it or not. I'm just praying that I'm blessed with the ability to come back if I wanted to."

That last phrase, "if I wanted to." is the key one. Gaining a 6th year can be challenging but it did recently happen for Gopher athletics with Kim Royston receiving the extra season. Considering Mbakwe missed a year because of legal issues, his might be harder to get through the NCAA. But we will see.

• Today marks the 40th anniversary of the NCAA Basketb-Brawl between the Gophers and Ohio State. Hardball Times is a baseball site but because of the involvement of Dave Winfield he remembers the ugly incident (with link to youtube of the event). Not a proud moment for the Gophers.
  
• Dennis Brackin has a good article on the decline of football for the city schools in Minneapolis and St. Paul. "Gophers coach Tim Brewster got four players in a single recruiting class out of Dallas Skyline High School -- or one more than the Gophers have gotten out of Minneapolis the past 15 years."
• ESPN B1G Blog takes a look at the number of returning starters for each of the Big Ten teams. They also look at the remaining recruiting needs for the teams in the Legends Division.

Many of you have probably noticed that a number of sites around the interwebs are going black today. Small sites that many people have never heard of like Google and Wikipedia are leading the charge against SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act). SB Nation also opposes SOPA. I'm not required to say anything, but I thought this was worth linking and bringing up as it may end up affecting all of us.

Vox Media -- the parent company of SB Nation -- is officially opposed to SOPA. The bill as drafted is overly broad, vaguely worded, and gives rise to a number of significant concerns:

• Decreased effectiveness and questionable availability of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) safe harbor for sites that host user-contributed content;
• Higher compliance costs for all sites that host user-contributed content;
• Potentially overzealous compliance efforts by search engines and payment providers in their attempts to maintain the immunity offered by SOPA section 104;
• Serious constitutional issues in regards to due process and seizure of property.

Now back to your regularly scheduled programming...

And we have a winning streak folks!

First off, CONGRATULATIONS to Joe Coleman for earning Big Ten Freshman of the week honors. For most of the year it has been Cody Zeller and Trey Burke taking turns winning the weekly award, but Joe's impressive performances at Indiana and at Penn State earned him the award this week.

• GopherSports.com has a Get to Know Joe Coleman story.
• Gopher Hockey stunk again on Friday but they avenged the Friday loss and dominated with a 6-2 win on Saturday.
  
• Apparently there was a little post-game scrum on the ice after Saturday's game.
• Gopher Hoops avoided the big hangover.
• Black Shoe Diaries is not just a great PSU blog but one of the best college sports blogs. Check out their recap of the Gopher win.
• Interesting feature on Michigan State's Draymond Green. The nimble power forward was originally a Kentucky commit to Tubby. Were it not for a late MSU transfer he likely would have ended up a Golden Gopher, we sure could use him right now.
• And from the humor department, Alabama basketball fans are pretty funny. This video is the fan reaction when LSU crossed half-court just days after the BCS Title game.