1. This game definitely mattered
At the end of the game, PJ Fleck said, “We want to be a blue blood some day, and to be a blue blood you have to beat blue bloods.”
It’s never easy to truly gauge whether bowl games really matter in the grand scheme of things, but for the Minnesota Golden Gophers, it definitely mattered. To the surprise of many, it also mattered to the Auburn Tigers. It showed in how well-played the game was by both teams.
Auburn head coach Gus Malzahn learned his lesson after their bowl loss to Central Florida in the 2018 Peach Bowl. It was his goal to treat bowl trips more like business trips. However, after coming up short against LSU, but beating Alabama in the Iron Bowl it stands to reason that Auburn felt their season was in the books. They weren’t in the New Year’s Six or the playoff. However, they played this game like they wanted it and they just came up short.
Rarely are bowl games must wins ,but this was as close to a must win as a bowl game can get for Minnesota. Despite their dismantling of Penn State, many attribute the Golden Gophers’ success to a favorable schedule on the front end.
Losses to Iowa and Wisconsin seemed to verify that. The Gophers came into this game with a lot to prove, and that they did. They out-coached and out-played the Tigers. These are the bowl games you win to set the standard for everything you want to do as a program.