Saturday during Minnesota's dominant 48-23 win over Maryland in Minneapolis, the team's mascot, Goldy Gopher, had multiple ...

Goldy Gopher was born a chipmunk. That’s because when George Grooms originally drafted the design in the 1940s that would become the University’s mascot, he lived in Iowa, where there were no gophers.

After trying out but not making the Gopher hockey team, coach Doug Woog encouraged Bernstein to be Goldy. "And I said, 'Great, I'll take it.' So, I became a large, smelly rodent," he said.