The
Minnesota Gophers college football team played its first game on September 29, 1882, a 4–0 victory over
Hamline University. Eight years later in 1890, the Gophers played host to
Wisconsin in a 63–0 victory. With the exception of 1906, the Gophers and Badgers have played each other every year since then. The 132 games played against each other is the most played rivalry in
Division I-A college football.
Early years The sport's beginnings were humble. Students began gathering to play the game recreationally and its popularity grew. Once the sport had taken off, it was only a matter of time before a team was formed to play against other schools. Early teams were very loosely organized, not requiring all of the players to be students and not having designated coaches. The players on the team started to recruit faculty members who had played football at schools in the East to help organize the team. The team gained their first coach in 1883:
Thomas Peebles, a philosophy professor who also recruited a cheer team for the football players, which later established him as the father of American
cheerleading. Like many of the early coaches, his term lasted just one year. Some years, the football team played without a coach. Other years, they played with multiple coaches. In total, from 1882 through 1899, the team played 16 seasons of football and had 15 different coaches. As the years went by, the leadership structure started to become more formal. In 1900, the hiring of
Dr. Henry L. Williams, the school's first full-time salaried coach, signaled the end of the early, chaotic days.
Glory years , end coach;
Bernie Bierman, head coach; and
George Hauser, line coach. The fourth varsity tutor,
Lowek (Red) Dawson, who coached the backfield, was absent when the photograph was taken The Gophers enjoyed quite a bit of success in the early 20th century, posting winning records from 1900 to 1919. Head coach
Henry L. Williams developed the "
Minnesota shift", a predecessor to later quick line shifts, which was adopted widely. Also
Henry L. Williams led Minnesota to one of the NCAA's longest unbeaten streaks of 35 games, from 1903 to 1905 with 34 wins and 1 tie. In 1932,
Bernie Bierman became the Gophers'
head coach and led the Gophers to their first dynasty. From 1934 to 1936 the Gophers went on a run of winning three straight
National Championships, the last
Division I team to accomplish this feat. During the run, Minnesota went unbeaten in 28 straight games, 21 of which were consecutive victories. The school record for consecutive victories is 24, which spanned 3 seasons from 1903 to 1905. Led by halfback
Bruce Smith, the Gophers also won two more national championships in 1940 and 1941, with Smith winning the
Heisman Trophy in 1941. Those two seasons comprised most of an 18-game winning streak that stretched from 1939 to 1942.
Fall from power In the seasons immediately following the end of World War II, Bernie Bierman did not adopt the 2 most important innovations in on-field strategy: substituting the 60-minute player for
two-platoon of offensive-only and defensive-only players, and the
split-T offensive formation. Instead, Bierman continued to use two-way players and the
single-wing formation. Off the field, Bierman had to contend with the most conservative administration in the Big Ten. President
James Morrill's public and private advocacy for the less-professional rules of the pre-World War II era led Minnesota to become the only Big Ten school to vote against the 3 most consequential conference decisions in the immediate post-war years: the legalization of
athletic scholarships in 1949, and the 1946 and 1950 Rose Bowl deals. Their 10–3 record in
2003 gave the Gophers their first 10 win season since 1905. The
2006 team had the dubious distinction of blowing a 38–7 third-quarter lead in the
Insight Bowl against
Texas Tech, losing 44–41 in overtime. The collapse, which was the biggest in the history of
Division I-A postseason football, directly led to the firing of head coach
Glen Mason. On January 17, 2007,
Tim Brewster was officially announced as the next head coach of the Minnesota
Golden Gophers. In
1981, the Gophers played their last game in
Memorial Stadium and played their home games in the
Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome until 2008. The Gophers moved back to campus with a 20–13 win against Air Force on September 12, 2009, when their new home,
TCF Bank Stadium, opened. In 2010, after a 1–6 record to start the season, the Gophers football head coach
Tim Brewster was fired.
Jeff Horton served as the interim head coach going 2–3. On December 6, 2010, Jerry Kill, former Northern Illinois University head coach, was hired to take over the University of Minnesota football program. In 2014, The Gophers reached an 8–4 record while going 5–3 in Big Ten games, falling just short of making the Big Ten Championship Game by losing to The Wisconsin Badgers in the season finale. After being revitalized in the Big Ten contention, The Gophers were awarded an appearance in the Citrus Bowl on January 1 against Missouri. In 2017, former
Western Michigan Broncos coach
P. J. Fleck was hired to take over from
Tracy Claeys, who coached the Gophers from 2015-16. Fleck led the Broncos to a 13–1 season in 2016 that resulted in a Cotton Bowl appearance against Wisconsin In 2018, the Gophers defeated the Badgers to reclaim
Paul Bunyan's Axe and end a 14-season losing streak. In 2019, the Gophers turned in a historic season, going 11–2 (7–2 in conference play) including a home victory against
No. 4 Penn State 31-26, their first victory over a top 5 team in 20 years. The win also marked the first time since 1904 that the Gophers started out a season 9-0. ==Conference affiliations==