With Max Brosmer at quarterback and Darius Taylor lining up behind him, this is the most balanced Minnesota offensive attack of PJ Fleck’s tenure, which includes the most prolific offensive season in University history, 2019. Their defense has been even better, ranking 9th in the country in yards allowed per game and 12th in points allowed.

Minnesota Gophers snubbed in top 25 polls

Unfortunately, neither NCAA coaches or media members believe in the 6-3 (4-2) Minnesota Golden Gophers. On Sunday afternoon, both Associated Press and USA Today updated their top 25 college football polls. PJ Fleck’s 2024 squad was on neither. But hey, at least they got some votes (14) in the coaches poll (USA Today). They didn’t even get one vote from media members (AP).

POLL ALERT: Oregon, Georgia, Ohio State, Miami and Texas top AP Top 25 ahead of first CFP rankings, unbeaten Indiana into top 10.

Full poll: https://t.co/7dTTUiSC1j pic.twitter.com/PIeopaPWDg

— AP Top 25 (@AP_Top25) November 3, 2024

Look, I was hopeful the Gophers would find their way into the top 25, but knew they might fall short. But how in the world do they not get any votes from the media voters, who hold votes in the Associated Press Top 25?

Has nobody been watching Big Ten football this season? If there are any AP voters that are located in Minnesota, they need to answer to why the Gophers were not in their top 25. How do you watch this team on a week-in, week-out basis, and still not vote them in?

Related: What We Learned About Bowl Bound Minnesota Gophers in Crucial Victory Over Illinois

Next, the Minnesota Gophers will travel to Piscataway, NJ, to play the Rutgers Scarlet Knights. Then, they’ll get their real test, when Penn State comes to town. No matter where they rank now, the only poll that matters in college football these days is the CFP Poll. That drops Tuesday. If the Gophers win out, they will be in the conversation for the first ever 12-team college football playoff.

1. Georgia
2. Alabama
3. Ohio State
4. Michigan
5. Clemson
6. USC
7. Kentucky
8. Tennessee
9. Oklahoma State
10. North Carolina State
11. Penn State
12. Utah
13. Oregon
14. Ole Miss
15. Washington
16. Baylor
17. Texas A&M
18. Oklahoma
19. BYU
20. Arkansas
21. Minnesota
22. Wake Forest
23. Florida State
24. Pittsburgh
25. Kansas State

It’s the first time the Gophers have been ranked in the AP Top-25 since the 2020 season. Next Saturday, Minnesota will welcome Purdue to Huntington Bank Stadium, when they’ll have a chance to climb even higher.

The USA Today Coaches Poll also released on Sunday. There, the Minnesota Gophers debuted at #23 in the country.

Eric Strack | Minnesota Sports Fan

So when they hung with #19 Michigan State last week at The Barn, ultimately losing 67-75, then followed that up on Saturday with a 75-65 victory over Michigan in Ann Arbor, many fans (myself included) thought the 9-1 Gophers had passed a pretty significant test.

But then the AP and USA Today top-25 polls came out on Monday and, outside of a few votes, Minnesota was nowhere to be found. Michigan State, on the other hand, jumped up seven spots in the AP and eight spots in the USA Today. Sparty now ranks #12 in both polls thanks to wins over the Gophers and 5-5 (0-2) Penn State.

For the third straight week, a new No. 1 sits atop the AP Poll ????

Do you agree with this week’s rankings? pic.twitter.com/l5rgJ3JiNT

— FOX College Hoops (@CBBonFOX) December 13, 2021

Which unranked team deserves to be ranked the most? ???? pic.twitter.com/ODWI7JCckz

— FOX College Hoops (@CBBonFOX) December 13, 2021

The Minnesota Gophers went from 0 AP Poll votes last week, to 3 votes on Monday. Michigan, the 6-4 Big Ten team that Minnesota defeated last week, got 8 votes. You need north of 150 votes to have any chance of cracking the top-25. The Gophers were already getting a little love last week (Dec. 6) in the USA Today Coaches Poll, receiving 7 votes. The problem? They got the same exact amount this week, as if those games vs the Spartans and Wolverines meant nothing.

Hurt by Victory

So the AP and Coaches Polls only come out once per week. Other ranking systems and polls that the college basketball world trusts update daily. Ben Johnson’s Gophers are seeing more of the same disrespect with those. In fact, all of the daily updated polls people care about actually dropped Minnesota down following their win on Tuesday night over Texas A&M Corpus Christi.

The 9-1 Islanders came to The Barn and the Gophers jumped on them right from the tip, taking a 20-point lead into halftime. It looked like a route in the making, even midway through the second half. But Minnesota committed 28 total turnovers, many of which came in the second half, allowing TAMU-CC to cut the lead to single digits at the finish line.

The maroon and gold had been one of the best offenses in the country in the turnover department, averaging just 7.8 per game through nine games. But coughing up the basketball was the obvious reason they couldn’t put the Islanders away last night. Still, the final score of 79-71 projected a game that was much closer than what actually unfolded in reality, which was a matchup that Minnesota mostly dominated.

.@lukeloewe23 on the assist to Payton Willis (@UnlimitedRange0) for anotha ❸.

CC: @GopherMBB pic.twitter.com/izJKf7J3vu

— Minnesota on BTN (@MinnesotaOnBTN) December 15, 2021

Dunk time with @battletime510 ????. @GopherMBB pic.twitter.com/Wednx9CHEp

— Minnesota on BTN (@MinnesotaOnBTN) December 15, 2021

A win is (not just) a win

So let’s get back to the daily updated polls and rankings mentioned above. They hated Tuesday’s win. The NET Rankings, the system recently created by the NCAA to help the Tournament Committee make their March selections, dropped Minnesota from #35 to #36 after the victory. If you feel slighted by that, the rest of this blog won’t make you any happier.

All three of the other most-widely used polls and ranking systems also dropped the Gophers after their win over Texas A&M-CC yesterday. The Massey rankings dropped them from at #30 to #33. KenPom and ESPN BPI must have forgotten that Minnesota has a basketball team, ranking them #69 and #66 respectively before the win and dropping them down to #74 and #70 after.

I know that other teams have played more difficult schedules than what the Gophers have, but this is no longer an untested team. The four games they played before Tuesday were against ACC, SEC and Big Ten competition. Three of them, Michigan St., Michigan and Mississippi St. are NCAA Tournament caliber. They beat two of them, both of which rank ahead of the Gophers in some of the polls above.

Today (12/15) after beating Texas A&M-CC, the Gophers dropped in the polls above that update daily:

NET: #36
KenPom: #74**
ESPN BPI: #70**
Massey: #33

**Michigan and Mississippi State rank higher

— Minnesota Sports Fan (@realmnsportsfan) December 15, 2021

It won’t matter.

At the end of the year, where the Minnesota Gophers ranked in the middle of December won’t matter. This team plays in the deepest conference in the nation. When Big Ten play resumes at the beginning of the new year, there will be plenty of good competition to go around.

If Ben Johnson and his new squad can win most of their games at Williams Arena and beat struggling teams on the road, they’ll set themselves up to dance when it’s all over. And dancing in March is something NOBODY would’ve tried selling you a month ago.

Eric Strack | Minnesota Sports Fan