MEGAN DAVIS: Hello, Gopher fans. It’s Megan Davis and… 

ATTICUS MARSE: Atticus Marse. 

DAVIS: With the Minnesota Daily, and you’re listening to the Gold Standard, a podcast dedicated to the University of Minnesota Sports. Today, I’m basically just gonna be going over some of my previous articles and some of the articles that I have coming up.  

The first one that I’m very excited for is about Kelly Kinney and Jordan Taylor, who are both two new incoming freshmen to the volleyball team. They both actually recently played under head coach Keegan Cook in the U19 USA tournament in Croatia.

Unfortunately, the girls came and placed second, and they won the silver medal falling short to Bulgaria of all countries. This was actually Bulgaria’s first ever gold medal in women’s sports at all. So I guess it’s not that bad. The Bulgarians will enjoy that medal, I think a lot more than the U.S. will.

But basically, the volleyball’s upcoming season is going to start August 16 with an exhibition game. And then the first official start will be August 25 against number 16 Texas A&M. I have very high hopes for the upcoming volleyball season. 

They have a lot of good retaining players and then obviously incoming with these two new freshmen. I think they’re supposed to finish fourth in the Big Ten, but I think they could honestly do better than that even though the Big Ten is very competitive this year in volleyball. 

MARSE: Are they coming in ranked this year? Do they have a ranking? 

DAVIS: I don’t know if they have a ranking. My next story after the two that I published this week will probably also be about volleyball and the high expectations that they have for this season, just because they. We’re booted in the second round of the NCAA tournament last year, and obviously are looking to go further this year.

MARSE: As of December 23, 2024, the end of last year, the Gophers were not in the top 25. So, not ideal, but I’m sure they’ll get, I’m sure they’ll make their way up there.

DAVIS: This is Cook’s, I wanna say this is only his third year with the team. He’s still a relatively new coach and so adjusting to a different system. He used to coach the University of Washington’s team. And so, I think last year was still a little bit more adjustment, and I think this year everything’s fallen more into place. 

MARSE: Speaking of new coaches, what do you think about the new Gophers basketball coach? Do you think he’s gonna have success in his first year? 

DAVIS: No, not really. I think the Gophers will be better as a team. Yes. Do I think that we’re all of a sudden gonna be a school to watch in the Big Ten in terms of men’s basketball? No. 

Mainly just because with who they’ve been recruiting, they don’t really have any standout player. And when you are competing in the Big Ten, it’s an incredibly competitive league. 

MARSE: Yeah, he did take Colorado State to the tournament last year, Nico Medved. And he’s an alumni of the U of M. 

DAVIS: I actually didn’t know he was an alumni. 

MARSE: Yeah, he’s an alumni and he actually used to manage the Gopher basketball team way back when in the nineties. The main hope for the basketball team this year is transfers. He’s flipped a couple guys from his alma mater. Who we got transferred? 

DAVIS: We have Isaac Asuma. We have Cade Tyson, he’s a transfer from North Carolina. Didn’t get a lot of minutes there, but, there’s actually been a whole bunch of pieces of just getting to know the transfer students. 

We do have a few new transfers. I just don’t think that any of those transfers have the capabilities to really take us over the edge, especially after losing Dawson Garcia. Like it will, he was the staple of the team. 

MARSE: That’s why we’re a hockey school. 

DAVIS: Speaking of hockey, multiple Gophers are being sent to compete for a roster spot on USA hockey’s teams because we have the IIHF tournament coming in December. So they just actually got done. USA White and USA Blue just got done at Ridder Arena, just doing some tournament prep and picking out who’s gonna be on the final roster.

Along with multiple, I think it was a dozen, both current and former Gophers are going to upstate New York to compete for the women’s USA hockey team.

And then the World Juniors for men will be in St. Paul this December. So that’s super fun because I believe last year they were in Finland, so it’s nice to have it at home, especially when the USA loves to take home that gold medal and World Juniors. 

Oh, also speaking of other world championships, track and field, they have the 2025 World Athletics Championships being held in Tokyo this year. And multiple Gophers are competing for a spot to compete in Tokyo. So there will be multiple different national championships happening over the course of the next month. 

The USA, they’ll have theirs in Eugene, Oregon back, at Hayward Field. So any of the Gopher athletes who did that will be very familiar with that field because they’ve been there like four times in the past, like two months. 

My only upcoming story it’s gonna be about the McCauley sisters just teaching golf lessons. They did a program that basically helps let kids access golf courses for only about $5, which is much cheaper than the average green fee would be. They did it with former Minnesota Vikings tight end Kyle Rudolph. And it was just like a way to give back. Fun little charity thing. 

MARSE: Yeah, Gopher football preseason starting training camp started two days ago. And with preseason starting all these, all American watchlists are coming out. Koi Perich just seems to be on all of them from what I can see on Instagram. 

It looks like we got the Jim Thorpe, the Bronko Nagurski watch list. Darius Taylor’s on the Maxwell Award watch list for best offensive player. So that’s fun, meaningless, but. 

DAVIS: But fun nonetheless. 

MARSE: Fun nonetheless. And Koi Perich was first team, all Big Ten.

DAVIS: And then speaking of that, I think Regan will have, I don’t know how many stories in total, but she was in Vegas kind of covering the Big Ten media days, and so she got to see a lot of the different Gophers talk and guys just get more understanding about what’s happening in the Big Ten this year in terms of football.

So I would look out for those stories because they’ll be super interesting, because she was actually there, and she’s not just watching media recordings. 

MARSE: In a recent Gophers’ Media day, Koi Perich was asked about transferring and trying to play in the NFL. And he answered that his whole life, he just wanted to be a Viking, funnily enough, and that he was just trying to check off his years for the Gophers. 

Get his three years in college just so he can play in the National Football League. All those Vikings fans, I’m sure, are over the moon with that information that he’s hoping of landing there. But if he keeps playing like this. 

DAVIS: I was gonna say they gotta be able to draft him. 

MARSE: Yeah, he is gonna be too high up in the first round if there’s any chance at that. But it’s looking good for him, transferring away, then that he probably won’t leave the Gophers in his time in college. As of now, based on what he’s saying, I think he’ll be staying a Gopher.

Another thing I wanna touch on is the Gophers’ schedule and home and away games this year is quite unbalanced in terms of high-ranked Big Ten opponents. But then we do get the Badgers at home. That’s always a fun game, the Axe game. I was at the Axe game in Madison last year. I think there were more Gopher fans there than Badger fans. And I think the Axe is staying here. 

DAVIS: I hope the Axe is staying. We deserve that Axe. 

MARSE: We do deserve the Axe and the Pig. 

DAVIS: Regan posted a crystal ball kind of thing for the football season. 

MARSE: Yeah, I’ve read that story. 

DAVIS: If you like that, you should just go read this story, too. I did one for women’s basketball, which was so much fun to write. I did predict that we’re only gonna be slightly better than last year, but I said we’d finally make that March Madness tournament.

MARSE: We need a Gophers team in March Madness, that’s all I want before I graduate. 

DAVIS: I think that women’s team is close. 

MARSE: And I think one more thing, one of the biggest stories coming outta athletics right now that I wanna touch on is the athletics fee. So basically. This upcoming semester, with tuition hikes, each student will pay a hundred dollars a semester.

It goes directly towards Gopher sports in the athletic department. Hannah and Ash just did a story on this. But yeah, with NIL budgets to keep up competitively with other schools. It’s something the university felt they had to do, it looks like.

Because they chose to use the maximum 20 and a half million dollars that you’re allowed to pay athletes through NIL, because every other Big Ten school did the exact same thing. There seemed to be, from that story, there was mixed feelings from students. It’ll probably be more in the news in the coming weeks.

But most of that money’s going straight to football, too. It’s 15 million to football, 4 million to basketball, and then the rest of sports, they’re just getting pennies of the dollar there. It’s hockey, women’s basketball and volleyball. And then, I don’t know if any other athletes are getting any money. 

DAVIS: Let me, because I wrote a story right when the house versus NCAA settlement passed. And that was like literally the prediction. It was like, okay, 75% of the money is gonna go to football. You might get 10%; this isn’t gonna add up to a hundred, so I’m sorry.

But you might get like 10% to men’s basketball, and then it’ll be like 5% to whatever. The school’s good at, and so I guess it’s not shocking at all. I would like to see what the other Big Tens like; are they all making their students pay extra?

MARSE: I am not sure on that. Okay. There’s a, there’s other schools. Looks like University of Louisville has added a $200 student athletic fee. 

DAVIS: Okay. 

MARSE: I’m not seeing a lot of other ones, but with government money, budget cuts, I would not be surprised if we see this on a large majority of Division I schools.

DAVIS: Yeah. 

MARSE: And I think one of the big things is the fact that it’s not being evenly dispersed. Because that brings in Title IX disputes, and then there becomes, that’s definitely gonna happen. It was talked about in the story, too. There’s gonna be some ongoing legal battles. 

DAVIS: Oh, a hundred percent. 

MARSE: Around where this money goes. And at that point, it’s just the athletics department is operating as a professional sports team. 

DAVIS: Yeah. It’ll be interesting to see how it unravels more, just because it’s the argument that people have been making about women’s basketball for years, where it’s like, of course, they don’t deserve as much money. They’re not bringing in as much money. And so that’s the argument that they could put for the football team.

MARSE: Yeah. 

DAVIS: Because obviously, the football team is making the most money. 

But it’s easy to see all sides of it. Just, this is just how the cookie crumbles. 

MARSE: College sports will never be the same after this settlement. 

DAVIS: This episode is by Megan Davis and…

MARSE: Atticus Marse. 

DAVIS: And produced by Ceci Heinen. As always, we appreciate you listening in, and feel free to send a message to our email inbox at podcasting@mndaily.com with any questions, comments or concerns. 

I’m Megan Davis. 

MARSE: And I’m Atticus Marse. 

DAVIS: And this has been the Gold Standard.