The Gophers football team will head to a familiar bowl game against a recognizable opponent that conjures a bad memory.

Minnesota (5-7) will play Bowling Green (7-5) in the Quick Lane Bowl at Ford Field in Detroit at 1 p.m. Dec. 26, according to the Action Network.

The U will be making their third overall appearance in the Quick Lane Bowl; they went to the Detroit Lions’ home stadium as a 5-7 team in 2015 and beat Central Michigan in 2015. Then as a 6-6 squad in 2018, they beat Georgia Tech.

This matchup will harken to Minnesota’s most-surprising loss under head coach P.J. Fleck; the Gophers were a 31-point favorite and lost at home to Bowling Green, 14-10, in 2021. It was the second-largest Big Ten upset in at least the last 40 years, following Minnesota being a 31.5-point favorite and losing to Northwestern in 1982.

The majority of national bowl projections earlier this week had the Gophers going to the Quick Lane Bowl, but that picture seemed to change Saturday night with Georgia losing the SEC championship game. The Bulldogs were then picked to go to the Orange Bowl.

The logic was Minnesota would climb a rung on the Big Ten’s ladder of bowl affiliations and might instead head to the Guaranteed Rate Bowl in Phoenix for the second time in three years.

But since the Gophers made a bowl with a 5-7 record, Minnesota was not bowl eligible, according to the Big Ten, and affiliated bowls have contract language that allows them to pick other teams ahead of Minnesota.

One of those bowls was the Guaranteed Rate Bowl, and the Pioneer Press understands their contract calls for them to take a team from the Mountain West Conference should the Big Ten not be able to fulfill it’s obligation without enough six-win teams.

The Gophers reached a bowl because there weren’t enough six-win teams and the bowl schedule needed one more team to full out its 82-team field. The U had the highest Academic Progress Rate (APR) among all five-win teams and got the spot.

Minnesota is 4-0 in bowl games under P.J. Fleck, with wins over West Virginia in the Guaranteed Rate Bowl in 2021 and over Syracuse in the Pinstripe Bowl in 2022.

Bowling Green and the Gophers had one common opponent in the 2023 season: current top-ranked team Michigan. The Falcons lost 31-6 to the Wolverines 31-6 on Sept. 16, while Minnesota fell to 52-10 on Oct. 7.

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