MINNEAPOLIS — He’s a quiet man with a big head and big teeth, and you see him every day at the University of Minnesota.
In this week’s Finding Minnesota, John Lauritsen takes us through the long history and evolution of the Goldy Gopher mascot.
“My mom and dad met at the U. My dad’s old brother is Bob Dylan,” said best-selling author Ross Bernstein.
It’s pretty safe to say that Bernstein bleeds maroon and gold. He also met his wife at the University in the late 1980s, but that was not his only achievement.
After trying out and failing for the Gopher hockey team, coach Doug Woog encouraged Bernstein to be Goldy.
“And I said, ‘Great, I’ll take it.’ So I became a big, smelly rodent,” he said. “I was too fat for the costume, so I wore my hockey uniform.”
It was before T-shirt guns, big scoreboards and social media. Bernstein had the time of his life and learned to entertain during hockey games without making a sound – part of a universal mascot code.
“Everyone said, ‘Hey, turn your head!’ And that just became it, and now Goldys always have their heads turned,” he said.
But he also got into trouble, like when he threw slices of cheese at Wisconsin players. These pranks inspired him to write his first of the fifty best-selling books: “Gopher Hockey, by the Hockey Gopher.” Then he heard that Goldy was an oldie.
Nick Wosika/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images
“So it goes back to the 1850s when we started as a state. Originally it was a 13-banded ground squirrel,” he said. “There are a lot of Gophers in Minnesota, so the university has officially adopted them.”
WCCO sports announcer Halsey Hall would call the football team the “Golden Gophers” in the 1930s because of the color of their uniforms.
The cheerful Goldy Gopher fans see at Stadium Village on Saturdays in the fall is a far cry from the Goldy they saw nearly 100 years ago.
In Bernstein’s basement there is an evolution of Goldy. The Gopher was skinny during the Rose Bowl days of the early 1960s, and then he seemed to hit the weight room in the 1980s. After legendary football coach Lou Holtz left, the Gopher face changed from somewhat sinister to more family-friendly. That’s pretty much what you see today.
“He kind of looks like a really big chipmunk,” that’s the best way I could describe it to someone,” said U student Gwendolyn Williams. “You’ll see him around campus every now and then, which is pretty cool.”
Today, various Goldys appear more than a thousand times a year. Win or lose, Bernstein believes it is one of the most iconic and historic mascots in the entire country.
“If you can take your kid and see the mascot and [they say]“Hey, I want to go to another Gopher game, mission accomplished,” he said. “That’s what it’s all about.”
A man named George Grooms is actually credited with creating the first Goldy image, but as legend has it, he did the tracing based on a chipmunk and not a gopher.
Bernstein says it was the marching band that initially had the rights to Goldy, but that changed over the years.
Johannes Lauritsen
