Minnesota Gophers: Thursday Golden Nugz Checks in on Rickey Foggie Saga

I'll kick off the Nugz with this strange story surrounding former Gopher quarterback, Rickey Foggie.

Many of you probably had heard the strange situation where Foggie had been named Eagan's new head football coach and then 10 days later it was announced that he was no longer their head coach.  Well apparently it was about him "liking" an inappropriate picture that was posted on his Twitter account.

Foggie said he already had met with players and begun making plans for the football program when someone dug into his social media history and discovered that he once had "liked" a nude photo that showed up in his Twitter feed. The photo was called to the school administration's attention and he immediately "unliked" it, causing it to disappear from his history.

"What I was told after it was removed was that I had to go and talk to my players about it, explain to them the use of social media, that we could learn from this situation, and that would pretty much be it," Foggie said.

It is all very strange but now Foggie is fighting regain the position he briefly had.

"When I resigned, I thought I was backed into a corner and honestly I thought the only thing I had at that point was to protect my reputation," he said. "I take full responsibility for liking that page on Twitter … it happened and I did it and I own up to it, but it’s not right to take my job for doing it."

Foggie said he doesn’t know who dug up the social media gesture that sabotaged him. He said he’s more disappointed in the school administration that he said refused to stand up for him after it surfaced.

Moving on...

• Gopher Baseball lost their first round game in the Big Ten Tournament, dropping 8-2 to Iowa. Now they have to fight their way back through the loser's bracket. They face Michigan this afternoon at 1:00 in an elimination game.
• Gopher Women's Basketball also gets Florida State in the Big Ten / ACC Challenge.
• ESPN ranks the Gopher Men's game against FSU as 8th most interesting matchup of the B1G/ACC Challenge.
• Our friends at Corn Nation have a photographer at the Big Ten Tourney and you can see yesterday's gallery here.

Just 98 days till Gopher Football!