PJ Fleck, Minnesota carry bowl streak into Rate Bowl vs New Mexico

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When it comes to bowl games, Minnesota and head coach P.J. Fleck know how to win.

The Golden Gophers (7-5) have won six consecutive bowl games under Fleck, going back to 2018. One win was in the former Guaranteed Rate Bowl, now the Rate Bowl, in 2021 at Chase Field, when Minnesota defeated West Virginia 18-6.

The Gophers have played in versions of the Rate Bowl four times, and their bowl winning streak is the longest active streak in the country and tied for the fourth longest in FBS history.

On Friday, Dec. 26, Minnesota and Fleck aim for seven in a row when the Gophers face New Mexico in the 2025 Rate Bowl at Chase Field. A win would be their ninth straight bowl win overall, going back to 2015.

“We don’t talk much about a streak. We don’t talk about other teams,” Fleck said on Wednesday, Dec. 24. “This is the 2025 version and the 2025 chance to be 1-0 and a championship season and leave the field with our seniors as champions.

“It comes back to the players. Our players love playing in bowl games. … I think it’s the culture that we’ve created.”

Fleck said two teams that have never played each other makes this game more exciting. He’ll have to go with several players who haven’t seen much action this season due to players entering the transfer portal and opt-outs, but said his retention of players who’ve re-signed to return to Minnesota next season includes the majority of his team’s starters.

Quarterback Drake Lindsey is among those.

“These are technically 12-month contracts for the most part, guys are free agents after every single year,” Fleck said. “Not one of our guys that we signed back was only about money. These guys value the things that we value.”

Related: Minnesota vs New Mexico schedule, TV channel, how to watch Rate Bowl

Defensive lineman Anthony Smith has been with Minnesota since 2022. He said keeping the bowl win streak alive is really important to the team, and winning for the seniors is always the motivation.

“We practice our butts off during bowl prep,” Smith said. “We take it very seriously.”

Smith will make sure to watch the final five minutes of his favorite movie, “Speed Racer,” before the Gophers take the field. It’s his pregame ritual and good luck charm.

New Mexico (9-3) hasn’t been to a bowl game since 2016 and the Lobos have played in just 13 bowl games in program history, with a 4-8-1 record. But head coach Jason Eck is one win away from only the second 10-win season for a New Mexico team in program history.

The Lobos expect to have a lot of fans coming west from Albuquerque, about a six-hour drive. With their infrequent bowl history, they aren’t just happy to be invited to the Rate Bowl, even if they could have been as much as a fourth choice after Iowa State, Kansas State and Baylor decided to opt out of a bowl game.

Eck pledged that his team is “coming to win the ball game” and said he’d take some chances and be aggressive.

Eck and quarterback Jack Layne said the team’s 35-10 win at UCLA on Sept. 12 was the moment they knew this Lobos team could be special in 2025.

“I saw some signs early that guys were buying in,” Eck said. “In the spring we had the highest GPA in school history, which kind of got me saying, ‘You know what, the players are listening.’

“So if we do a good job of coaching them in the right direction and they listen to what we’re saying, we’ll have success.”

Layne said the Lobos have a little bit of a chip on their shoulder as a smaller conference team facing a Big Ten opponent.

“It was that UCLA game, just because we had to go through so much adversity in that game and we still found a way to win by 25 points,” Layne said. “We got inside the 5-yard line twice and came away with zero points, which is not a recipe for winning.

“And then we muffed a punt. I think that just showed our resilience and just really gave me belief in this team and what we could do.”

Eck’s son Jaxton is a Lobos linebacker who was this season’s Mountain West Conference Defensive Player of the Year. Jaxton Eck said he’s proud of how his father has turned the New Mexico program into a winner in his first season after three at Idaho.

“When he first took the job at New Mexico, I’m not gonna lie, I knew it hadn’t been a great program in the past,” Jaxton Eck said. “I knew it was maybe a daunting challenge.

“But I knew he would turn it around, and it’s just a testament to who he is as a coach and his ability to get a bunch of people to believe.”

José M. Romero can be reached at jose.romero@gannett.com. Follow him on X at @RomeroJoseM or Instagram at @romerojosem.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Rate Bowl pits Big Ten’s Minnesota vs Mountain West’s New Mexico

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