Ohio State Football: Confidence level against Minnesota
By Eric Boggs
The Ohio State football team plays in their final home game of the 2023 season this Saturday when they host the 5-5 Minnesota Golden Gophers at 4 pm. The game is scheduled to be televised by the Big Ten Network and will be the first time Minnesota has visited Columbus since 2018.
Ohio State has an 11-game winning streak over the Gophers that started back in 2001 in Jim Tressel’s first season as head coach. The last time Minnesota defeated the Buckeyes was in 2000 when Glen Mason was able to outcoach John Cooper by a score of 29-17.
Minnesota’s current head coach P.J. Fleck is 0-3 all-time against Ohio State. Often forgotten, but Fleck received his coaching start at Ohio State under Jim Tressel in 2006 where he spent a year as a Grad Assistant. His first loss against the Buckeyes came in 2015 when he was the head coach at Western Michigan. The other two have come while being the head man at Minnesota.
Ryan Day’s lone victory over the Gophers came two seasons ago when the Buckeyes opened their 2021 campaign on the road and came away with a 45-31 win. Given Ohio State’s improved defense, don’t look for the score to be as high as that game was two seasons ago. With that being said, I am still very confident that Ohio State is going to come away with their 11th victory on the season.
Let’s break down my confidence level by category and discover what my total confidence level for this game against Minnesota is this week.