Minnesota Football: The Gophers Take over the Minnesota State Fair

In case you either don’t live in the State of Minnesota or have been under a rock for the last few months, you know that Thursday is the first day of the 2018 run of the Minnesota State Fair. The Great Minnesota Get Together is always a mass of humanity, where you can find literally just about anything you could ever want to consume—whether that be media or food. While the full contingent of the Gopher athletics staff will make their appearances during the twelve-day run, on Thursday it was Gopher Football making their yearly appearance.

PJ Fleck kicked off his media appearance portion of the fair with an interview with Paul Allen over at the KFAN tent. It was actually a very good interview about how Fleck views his program as the Gophers enter his second season at the helm. The whole interview is linked below, and I encourage you to give it a listen because Fleck really does have a lot to say about how he is reshaping the culture at the U, and the roster. But I’ll pull out a couple of quick bullet points

• Fleck stresses that the Gophers will be young, but is happy with the way his freshmen are “Mahturing”
• Fleck gave unprovoked praise to several true freshmen who will definitely see playing time this fall in Zack Annexstad, Bryce Williams, Rashod Bateman, and Terell Smith.
• He also talked about some players who he would love to redshirt but is not sure of their depth will allow him to in Daniel Faaele and Curtis Dunlap.
• Fleck talked about being willing to take risks and not settling for safe and average

You can listen to the full interview below:

The rest of the team is out at the fair as well. If you follow the Gophers on instagram, that is where of their best content has been through Thursday morning including arguming between whether Tyler Johnson or Kamal Martin is the Gopher most likely to get lost in the fair grounds (both Twin Cities natives by the way), members of the Gopher Specialists asking random fairgrounds about themselves, and more.

For those that do not have instagram, the Gophers have been putting some of their day on their twitter feed as well.

PJ Fleck will continue his media tour with the taping of the PJ Fleck Show at the Fox 9 booth at Noon. The show will air later Thursday evening.

Like we said below, the visit from Gopher Football is just the first of many if not all of the various Gopher Sports teams making an appearance at the fair. Monday August 27th and Wednesday August 29th are the days you will want to head out to the fair if you want to see your favorite coach. The full schedule is below:

In addition, the Gophers are offering some great ticket specials, but only at their booth in the Gopher Building at the Fair.

So stop out, grab a corn dog or a pronto pup, and enjoy some Gopher sports at the fair!