Gopher Football

 It has been a few years since I have attended a Gopher Football game, but the opportunity came along this month when the University of Minnesota Gophers football team was selected to play in the Guaranteed Rate Bowl in Phoenix.

If you are like me you are thinking Guaranteed Rate Bowl???? What happened to Sugar Bowl and Cotton Bowl and Orange Bowl or Rose Bowl? Those bowl games may still exist but with sponsors spending BIG BUCKS for naming rights, a college football team at the end of regular season might be chosen to play in a game you have never heard before.

We enjoyed dinner and a beverage at The Kettle Black Kitchen and Pub before the 8:15 PM game. There were many football fans in the downtown area enjoying food and drink before the game.

The Guaranteed Rate Bowl game took place on December 28th at Chase Field in downtown Phoenix where Hubby's beloved U of M Gophers took on the Mountaineers of West Virginia. Chase Field is home to the AZ Diamondbacks baseball team. The stadium has a retractable roof.

The roof was closed when we entered the stadium.

MN brought over 300 band members, the flag corp, full team of cheerleaders, and Goldie the Gopher mascot.

My cousin and her husband joined us for the game.

The roof opened and 4 parachutists from Luke Air Force Base came onto the field bringing the football, a flag for each of the two football teams and finally, the American flag.

Fireworks exploded at the "rockets red glare" line in the national anthem...

and boom fireworks for "bombs bursting in air" ~ I have to admit it was a goose-bumpy. teary-eyed moment while singing with the other fans. (I realize it was raining at this point in the opening ceremony.)

And a final burst of fireworks at the end of the song. 

And the rain began to fall. It rained enough to make the field wet and the grass slippery before the roof was once again closed. We were on the lower deck under the overhang, so we did not feel a drop of rain.

One of the things I really admire (and there are several things) about the coach of the Gopher team is he leads the players onto the field before each game. He is in the white circle in front of the players.

It was a good game; tense in the final quarter because the lead was never out of reach, and both teams had chances to score. The final score was Minnesota 18, West Virginia 6.

It was after 11:39 PM when we left the stadium. We got home about 12:45 AM. This was the fourth time Hubby has watched the MN Gophers play in a bowl game in AZ (my second) and their first win at this location. He was very pleased!

Now for a bit of Wikipedia history about the Guaranteed Rate Bowl:

The Guaranteed Rate Bowl is an annual college football bowl game that has been played in the state of Arizona since 1989.

Played as the Copper Bowl from inception through 1996, it was known as the Insight.com Bowl from 1997 through 2001, then the Insight Bowl from 2002 through 2011, the Buffalo Wild Wings Bowl for 2012 and 2013, and the Cactus Bowl for the 2014 through 2017 seasons. In 2018 and 2019, the game was known as the Cheez-It Bowl. In 2020, Guaranteed Rate signed on as the title sponsor of the game, renaming it as the Guaranteed Rate Bowl.

When the bowl was initially founded, it was played at Arizona Stadium in Tucson, on the campus of the University of Arizona. In 2000, the organizers moved the game from Tucson to Phoenix. There, it was played at what is now known as Chase Field, the home of the Arizona Diamondbacks of Major League Baseball. For the 2006 season, the bowl moved a second time. After the annual Fiesta Bowl left Sun Devil Stadium in Tempe in favor of playing in University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale, the bowl (then still known as the Insight Bowl) was relocated there as a permanent replacement. The bowl returned to its previous home of Chase Field in Phoenix for the January 2016 playing, due to renovation work at Sun Devil Stadium that was expected to last at least three off-seasons. The bowl has remained at Chase Field through the December 2021 season, making it one of four active bowl games staged in baseball-specific stadiums, the other three being the Pinstripe Bowl at Yankee Stadium, the Fenway Bowl at Fenway Park, and the Holiday Bowl at Petco Park.

The 2020 edition of the bowl was cancelled on December 20, 2020, due to an insufficient number of teams being available to fill all 2020–21 bowl games, following a season impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.