Minnesota Football a College Football Playoff dark horse?

There are plenty of Gophers fans who are high on Minnesota’s chances this fall. Many folks look at the teams on the schedule and they see an Iowa 2015 run. But in general that outlook is held only by Minnesota fans (and even then, not by a majority). As a rule, national media types are not saying anything like that.

So you can imagine my surprise when I received the following email today:

Title: Dark Horse Teams For The College Football Playoff

Description: Most people will be looking at Alabama, Clemson and Oklahoma to return to the College Football Playoff, but we're looking for a team to crash the party. Campus Insiders' Managing Editor Pete Fiutak gives his top 3 dark horse candidates who can break in to the top 4 by season's end.

I just assumed TDG got the email by mistake because, I mean, c’mon. But no, there is video evidence of this being an actual thing Pete Fiutak said about Minnesota (his comments about the Gophers come at about the 45 second mark)...

Thankfully Pete added some serious qualifiers so that he wouldn’t have to undergo a random drug screen (love the use of "deep deep comatose sleeper"). Fiutak is using the "Iowa 2015" rationale to explain his selection, suggesting that if Minnesota manages to go 11-1 then an upset win in the B1G title game could be enough to vault them in.

We here at TDG salute you Pete. We’d offer you some tasty bourbon but we suspect you might already have taken a few sips prior to using the words "Minnesota" and "dark horse college football playoff contender" near each other. Not that there is anything wrong with that.