Golden Gopher football: spring schedule released
By Tyler Haag
After a mediocre first season as head coach of the Minnesota Golden Gophers, P.J. Fleck and the school released the spring practice schedule to gear up for the 2018 campaign.
The Minnesota Golden Gopher football team recently announced its spring practice schedule. Included in the release was the announcement that in addition to the usual, open to the public spring game on April 14th, two of Coach Fleck’s practices will also be open to spectators.
March 27th will be the first opportunity for the maroon and gold diehards to see their 2018 team in action, and a week later on April 3rd, fans will again be permitted to attend. Although the sites for either public practice have not yet been announced, the gates will open to the masses at 4:45pm in both cases.
After finishing 5-7 last season, P.J. Fleck and the Gophers have an uphill battle to climb this season with inexperience and a distinct lack of depth as the team’s two most glaring deficiencies. Although Fleck continues to do very well on the recruiting trail, coming off of the schools highest ever recruiting class ranking, there are just too many holes on this squad to fill with one class, no matter how good.
In addition to the aforementioned depth and experience issues, the Gophers will also have to play Iowa, at Ohio State and at Camp Randall in Madison during the 2018 campaign. They also are missing the I-AA/directional school warm-up game at the beginning of the schedule, starting with New Mexico State, Fresno State and Miami (OH), respectively before diving in to the B1G schedule with Maryland, Iowa and Ohio State.
Spring Practices start Tuesday, March 6th and run most Tuesday, Thursday and Saturdays through April 16th.