MINNEAPOLIS -- For the first time in more than 50 years, the Gophers are playing football in January.
Minnesota will face Missouri in the Citrus Bowl on Jan. 1 in Orlando, Fla. It's the first time since the 1962 Rose Bowl that the Gophers will play in a January bowl game.
Under fourth-year head coach Jerry Kill, the Gophers finished the regular season with an 8-4 record and a 5-3 mark in the Big Ten. Minnesota missed a chance to play in the Big Ten championship game but still finds itself in a respectable bowl game. After losing to Wisconsin two weeks ago, the Citrus Bowl was about the best-case scenario for Kill and the Gophers.
"I think everybody's excited," Kill said Sunday after the announcement was made. "I think we talked about taking steps, and this is another step forward. Then we need to take advantage of that step."
Though things have changed in recent years with the bowl system, there's still an allure to play on New Year's Day. The Gophers' last 14 bowl games were all played in late December, which doesn't have the same appeal as a January game.
There were several possible scenarios in which Minnesota would be playing in January this season. As it turns out, the Gophers got their wish.
"The spectrum's changed. You've got the playoffs and all those kinds of things," Kill said. "I still think when you play on Jan. 1 -- and again, any time you're playing a bowl game, it's good -- but when you're playing on Jan. 1, those traditional things throughout the years, there's a lot of tradition that's out there."
Missouri finished 10-3 overall and won the SEC East with a 7-1 conference record, but lost to Alabama in the SEC championship game. The Citrus Bowl will be the first meeting between the Gophers and Tigers since 1970 and just the ninth ever matchup in the schools' history.
Minnesota hasn't yet watched film of Missouri yet, but some Gophers players watched on TV as the Tigers played Alabama on Saturday in the SEC championship game.
"Just watching Missouri play (Saturday), watching them play Alabama, they're a very competitive team," said Gophers defensive end Theiren Cockran, one of several Florida natives on the team. "It's also a good thing for the Big Ten for us to be able to go out there and play an SEC team. To get that win, that would be huge for the Big Ten."
A win would also mean a lot for Minnesota as a program. It's the third straight bowl game for the Gophers, who lost to Texas Tech in the Meineke Car Care Bowl in a 2012 and fell to Syracuse last year in the Texas Bowl. Minnesota's last win in a bowl game was back in 2004 when the Gophers beat Alabama 20-16 in the Music City Bowl in Nashville.
Though Minnesota's program has improved each year under Kill, a victory in a bowl game would validate the progress.
"It's terrific that we've been selected and we're going to a meaningful bowl game," said Gophers senior defensive tackle Cameron Botticelli. "But we're not going there to lose. . . . It'd be very easy to kind of forget the past two bowl games. We fell short. I can guarantee that coach Kill won't let us fall short this time."
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