The Gophers’ bowl projections have coalesced around one main destination.

Minnesota will learn its official location and opponent on Sunday afternoon, but seven of 10 national forecasts observed by the Pioneer Press this week have the U playing in the Quick Lane Bowl at Ford Field in Detroit on Dec. 26.

The Gophers got into the 82-team bowl field this season because of a lack of six-win teams, and the schedule needed to be rounded out with one program with a 5-7 record. The U got in because it had the highest Academic Progress Rate (APR) among 5-7 teams.

Gophers are familiar with both the low-level Quick Lane Bowl and the circumstances in which they got into the field. They played in Detroit on two previous occasions, as a 5-7 team with strong academics in 2015 and at 6-6 in 2018. The U won both times: 21-14 over Central Michigan in 2015 and a 34-10 rout of Georgia Tech in 2018.

Six of the seven Quick Lane Bowl projections for the Gophers have a range of Mid-American Conference foes: Northern Illinois (twice), Ohio (twice), Eastern Michigan and Toledo. Those prognosticators include ESPN, the Athletic, CBS, USA Today, Athlon and Action Network.

The Gophers are unlikely to be paired with Eastern Michigan because they played each other in a nonconference game in September, while Northern Illinois would provide an angle as Gophers head coach P.J. Fleck’s alma mater and early stop in his coaching career.

One Quick Lane Bowl pick from FOX has the U playing Marshall of the Sun Belt Conference.

Among the other three picks, two had the U returning to the Guaranteed Rate Bowl in Phoenix. One ESPN pick had Minnesota facing Iowa State; College Football Network had the U versus Kansas.

Those Guaranteed Rate picks also don’t seem all that probable because bowls like to mix up the teams they host, and the U just went to Chase Field in Arizona and beat West Virginia 18-6 in 2021.

The last bowl pick is the most provocative. 247Sports has the Gophers playing Jerry Kill’s New Mexico State team in the New Mexico Bowl in Albuquerque on Dec. 16.

That matchup would stir up the past negative comments Kill made about Fleck — a storyline that seemingly had been put to rest after the Gophers beat Kill and New Mexico State 38-0 in the 2021 season opener.

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