There are a lot of worthy links today so let us dive right in.
I'll lead with Phil Miller's latest entry where he covers the tour of the Gopher's new facilities and talks about improved academics.
"Our overall GPA for this semester was 2.87, and that's tremendously better than it was," Kill said. "But we still have issues and battles that we've got to take care of."
Academics were a serious problem when he was hired, Kill has said, because with no permanent coaching staff on board, grades slid during the fall semester. The transition to a new staff, and its hit-the-books emphasis, figured to lead to at least a minor exodus of players, not unusual for a coaching change.
But with preseason camp less than six weeks away, the Gophers have lost only four players, for various reasons: defensive end Jewhan Edwards, tight end Tiree Eure, running back DeLeon Eskridge and wide receiver Bryant Allen.
I am actually surprised that we have not had more players leave the program.
You should absolutely click on the link to see video of the new football practice facilities. I don't see the "Pound The Rock" sign anywhere. I wonder where it went?
- Ryan James at Gopher Illustrated has an article on 5-star forward, Perry Ellis. Ellis remains open and appears to have Minnesota on his radar.
- The ESPN Big Ten blog previews the Gopher's week 1.
- Rittenberg ranks the Big Ten's offensive lines. Minnesota doesn't come in last, but pretty close. I can't quibble with the rankings but this unit has the potential to be much better than the 11th best in the B1G.
- Joe Coleman is looking forward to being a Golden Gopher.
- Cowboy Attitude is doing their own reconfiguring of the Big 12 and they included Minnesota. He is just having fun with re-aligning the conferences based on geography alone and this is how he sees it playing out.
- Hammer and Rails previews the Gophers.
- Lastly this is an interesting read. This is a good example of a player who gets and inflated ego and gets out of touch with reality so quickly. Amazing and sad.
- UPDATE: FBT tells us that Nick Rallis, the Edina Safety, former Gopher commit and brother to Mike Rallis has re-committed to the Gophers. This is good news for Gopher fans.