University of Minnesota - Athletics

Athletics

The University's intercollegiate sports teams are called the "Golden Gophers" and are members of the Big Ten Conference and the Western Collegiate Hockey Association in the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). Minnesota is one of only 13 universities in the country offering NCAA Division I-A college football, Division I men's and women's basketball, and Division I ice hockey. The current athletic director is Norwood Teague who was introduced on April 23, 2012 replacing Joel Maturi.

The Golden Gophers' most notable rivalry is the annual college-football game between them and the Wisconsin Badgers (University of Wisconsin–Madison, Madison, Wisconsin) for Paul Bunyan's Axe, the longest continuous rivalry in NCAA Division I football. The two universities also compete in the Border Battle, a year-long athletic competition in which each sport season is worth 40 points divided by the number of times the teams play each other (i.e. football is worth 40 points because they play each other only once, while women's ice hockey is worth 10 points per game because they play four times a year). Conference and post-season playoffs do not count in the point standings.

Goldy Gopher is the mascot for the Twin Cities campus and the associated sports teams. The gopher mascot is a tradition as old as the state which was tabbed the “Gopher State” in 1857 after a political cartoon ridiculing the US$5-million railroad loan which helped open up the West. The cartoon portrayed shifty railroad barons as striped gophers pulling a railroad car carrying the Territorial Legislature. Later, the University picked up the nickname with the first University yearbook bearing the name "Gopher Annual" appearing in 1887.