Reusse column: Fill small shoes and you can be a hero

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BleedGopher

BleedGopher

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Reusse:

"At the U of M, new coach Jerry Kill has inherited the same low standard to be considered a success as Ponder faces with the Vikings.

If we were judging Kill as a replacement for Jeff Horton, a coach who won 40 percent of his Big Ten games and finished with upset victories at Illinois and against Iowa, Minnesotans might be unhappy to see Kill putting one of the most non-competitive teams in Gophers history on the field this season.

Fortunately for Kill, he's the replacement for Tim Brewster, the coach for 3 ½ seasons, and not Horton, the interim coach for the final five games of 2011.

Brewster's over-the-top optimism played well with Gophers followers when he started in 2007. Then, his '08 team collapsed after a 7-1 start, his '09 team was dreary, and he was fired after the 1-6 start in 2010.

Kill might sound like a Kansas hayseed, but he's clearly an intuitive fellow. He read the situation and decided that bad-mouthing the situation he had inherited from Brewster (without noting Brewster other than by implication) was the way to go.

His message since before spring practice was, "It's going to take years to fix this mess.'' And when ridiculing the talent and work ethic of the players became old news, he tossed in the idea that academics were also a mess - that Brewster (again by implication) had left him with 63 players that he had to make sure would get out of bed in the morning to make it to class.

Kill's team has been awful ... worse even than the '07 team that Brewster coached to a 1-11 record. But by making Brewster even more of a boogeyman than he was previously, Kill managed to make himself a martyr to the fans and, more importantly, to the administration.

More importantly, because with one victory, president Eric Kaler decided to add two years to Kill's original verbal agreement with the U of M and sign him to a contract through 2017 - a contract that includes a sizable buyout if Kill were to be fired.

And the way it sounds, if Country Jer actually wins a Big Ten game some day, Kaler might rip up the deal and give his favorite martyr more years and more millions.

What we've learned again is that, in football, a quarterback doesn't want to replace Peyton Manning and a coach doesn't want to replace Bear Bryant. They want to replace a washed-up Donovan McNabb and an overmatched Tim Brewster."

http://www.1500espn.com/blogs/fill_small_shoes_and_you_can_be_a_hero

Go Gophers!!
 

One more attack on football and Gopher football in particular. This guy drives me nuts. I'm afraid he will turn me into Wren someday except it will be about Fat Pat instead of Prexy B. and badger Joel.
 

If we had hired Jeff Horton and had a 1-6 record, Reusse would be singing a different tune. He'd harp on the pure idiocy of hiring somebody associated with the previous regime whose last head coaching job was running Nevada into the ground. Then he'd say we should have hired a proven program builder like Jerry Kill who has done a solid job at Northern Illinois.

Getting paid to write about sports must be a tough life. Everybody stuck in that career seems to be bitter.
 

today's challenge (i know it is hard for some, but just try): don't reply to this thread and don't read or click on the link to the story. problem solved. just ignore this supposed journalist. this disgusting excuse for a man. just ignore him and he will eventually go away. just ignore him.

that is all.
 

NateDawgUM said:
If we had hired Jeff Horton and were 1-6 Reusse would be singing a different tune. He'd harp on the pure idiocy of hiring somebody associated with the previous regime whose last head coaching job was running Nevada into the ground. Then he'd say we should have hired a proven program builder like Jerry Kill who has a solid program at Northern Illinois.

Getting paid to write about sports must be a tough life. Everybody stuck in that career seems to be bitter.
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Hilarious that he changed his tone immediately after the new sports station started up and immediately back after KFAN got gophers football.
What a fraud.
 


Kill hasn't "ridiculed" the players ability or work ethic. That's a fantasy. There's what Kill actually says, and there's the fantasy version of what Kill says. The 2011 Gophers could be worse than the 2007 Gophers, but don't forget, Brewster inherited a team that won 6 games, Kill inherited a team that won 3 games. Reusse gives the impression that this is the first time Kill has talked about academics, but this is false. He noted academics as an issue from the beginning.

Now Reusse is gushing all over Brewster in his efforts to attack the Gophers. Is what Kill is saying true or false? Are there problems with getting players do go to class? Do the Gophers need to recruit more talent? Reusse seems to imply that they are false, because if they are true, it negates his message.
 

Reusse's column is pretty much right on the mark but that is beside the point. Reusse wants to make it perfectly clear to everyone that he was the only member of the local sports media who never jumped on the Jerry Kill bandwagon. After he was hired we were all inundated with commentary about how Kill is the Anti-Brewster because of his honesty about the players and state of the program and for that reason he must be a good coach. Reusse is betting that Kill is not going to be able to turn the program around. I don't think he is going to lose any sleep about it whether he is right or wrong.
 

another pointless thread about a poorly written and researched article from a disgusting turd named reusse. just ignore his inane ramblings and he will go away. ignore him........please! stop giving him what he wants.....which is a reaction.

:)
 

supadupafly said:
another pointless thread about a poorly written and researched article from a disgusting turd named reusse. just ignore his inane ramblings and he will go away. ignore him........please! stop giving him what he wants.....which is a reaction.

:)
Click to expand...


You account for 25 percent of the responses
 



Maximus said:
You account for 25 percent of the responses
Click to expand...

but you purposely ignore one important thing here. my responses are not responses to fatrick reusse or the crap he has regurgitated this time. they are responses merely reminding people that it is better to just ignore that fat arse and he will go away.
 

Now 30 percent.

I doubt the editor at the strib is going to jump on Gopherhole...."what no thread about Pat's column?....Pat, can I see you in my office?"

Minnesotans love reading Reusse columns and after 40 years nothing is going to change that until he retires.
 

Maximus said:
Now 30 percent.

I doubt the editor at the strib is going to jump on Gopherhole...."what no thread about Pat's column?....Pat, can I see you in my office?"
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Correct, even if we ignore him, he's not going away. He already has the big soapbox, any comments we make are a drop in the bucket. "Ignore him and he will go away" only works if we were the only source of media he had access to.
 

Go4Broke said:
Reusse's column is pretty much right on the mark but that is beside the point. Reusse wants to make it perfectly clear to everyone that he was the only member of the local sports media who never jumped on the Jerry Kill bandwagon. After he was hired we were all inundated with commentary about how Kill is the Anti-Brewster because of his honesty about the players and state of the program and for that reason he must be a good coach. Reusse's is betting that Kill is not going to be able to turn the program around. I don't think he is going to lose any sleep about it whether he is right or wrong.[/QUOTE]

That's the difference between Reusse and many GHers.
Click to expand...
 



supadupafly said:
today's challenge (i know it is hard for some, but just try): don't reply to this thread and don't read or click on the link to the story. problem solved. just ignore this supposed journalist. this disgusting excuse for a man. just ignore him and he will eventually go away. just ignore him.

that is all.
Click to expand...

I tend to think nothing written on this thread will make a difference. But if it were, I'd say we're better off speaking our minds and promoting our opinion that Reusse is off his rocker and should be relegated to a secondary-hack role in all of this. If no one speaks, then he can go on promoting himself as some sort of knowledgeable source and might actually be taken seriously by someone. Go ahead and speak up if you want to. IMO, at the worst it won't make any difference.
 

Go4Broke said:
Reusse's column is pretty much right on the mark but that is beside the point. Reusse wants to make it perfectly clear to everyone that he was the only member of the local sports media who never jumped on the Jerry Kill bandwagon. After he was hired we were all inundated with commentary about how Kill is the Anti-Brewster because of his honesty about the players and state of the program and for that reason he must be a good coach. Reusse is betting that Kill is not going to be able to turn the program around. I don't think he is going to lose any sleep about it whether he is right or wrong.
Click to expand...

He caters to the ignorant and his column is far from being spot on.
 



Only in the GH circle can his opinion be discredited by fiat. Thank you for confirming my opinion that this isn't a forum of reason or discourse. It is a board full of fanatics and ad hominem attacks over and over again. The problem with this is you can't prove the negative. This is particularly true of matters of judgement and hard to measure intangibles. Yet, we hear about this fool or that fool simply because they are critical of the path of the program. And, so it is with Reusse and the reaction to his subjective criticism of the program.

There are a few of us in the vocal minority that expect standards to be a bit higher than how this staff suggests. They say the team is so unfocused that 63 guys are in academic trouble, even though last spring they had these guys under their control. Wow, they are saying that Brewster caused this problem when they were here when the last semester report was available to them and the report said the team was fine. Now, after the fall semester is upon us and not even half way complete, they sing a tune that 63 guys are in academic trouble. So, either the coaches and academic office lied to the public last spring about the academic standing of the team, or these guys are blowing a smokescreen 63 team members wide. Based on the progress report of last spring, the 63 number has to be BS. The semester is not over and they are already condemning the outcome. BS. The coaching staff is spewing conjecture and BS. If there is an academic problem right now, the coaching staff that is here right now is to blame. They put the pressure on the team to be at the S&C program and have more captains practices than before. If there is a tie in to how the team is doing academically, it is not that they are not attending classes for the sake of just skipping out, it is because they are expected to be at the practice facility morning, noon and night. It is a rediculous amount of time, micromanaged and more football than academic. Where is the collegial and collaborative approach of just being a student and working independently toward the degree and succeeding on ones own merit? Apparently, with all the mandatory aspects of football, the over top structure of the NCAA and the U's compliance to this arbitrary body, we have 63 kids that even with all that support can't perform with a whole tutoring staff and mandatory study halls. Not only would that be so amazingly bad, it would be a titanic academic failure, which discredits the U as a competent academic institution. So, I can't believe the BS that this many team members are in academic difficulty. It is so much nonesense and handwringing over nothing. It runs against the progress the team has experienced for many years. I don't think the academic culture of the team was flaundering under Brewster. The academic support unit isn't failing these students. The coaches apparently just love to be critical of the University in general. What else could it be but conjecture on their part that half the team is a bunch of academic casualties or nitwits. And you all believe the BS hook line and sinker that it is a systemic problem and a failure of the Brewster recruits. The system has shown progress in each of the Brewster years. And, now Jerry Kill has decided that it is broken during the second semester under his control.

Although we know that all of the graduating students during the Brewster regime were Mason recruits, and each year graduated more than the year before, this doesn't sound like the team was failing en masse. Besides, only a handfull were released for academic reasons during the Brewster era. Since the admission standards were not lowered during the Brewster era, these kids came in academically qualified to enter school.

If control was lost, it had to be under the first semester under Coach Kill's control, last spring.

I hope Reusse follows up with Kill and the academic unit to see if Kill truly is a fraud or if there was a mass failure of the admissions process to screen out ineligle applicants. Something is clearly wrong about the 63 number. We just don't know what the problem is and who is to blame for this catastrophic number.

More questions need to be asked about this situation since it begs to be asked why 63 team members would be in academic trouble with Kill. It is so much BS.
 

I'll say it again, Fat Pat doesn't write for the people who follow college football. He is writing for the large percentage of sports fans in the Twin Cities that are completely ignorant about college sports (especially football).

Unfortantely, that group of people far out number the amount of college sports fans in town. So I really don't think our clicking or not clicking on his content is going to make a difference. I will say that I am pretty sure that Bleed posted the article as to not generate clicks for Reusse, so I don't think us commenting on it will really matter.

The miserable ball of goo that is Reusse is also doing it to get under our skin a little bit, think of him as an old/morbidly obese internet troll.
 

Reusse makes a good point, if you write 1,000's of columns a few of them will be pretty solid and this was one of those few.
 

IMO, Reusse rarely writes anything that is technically completely wrong, thereby maintaining his deniability when he pisses people off. The problem is:

-he writes depressing articles about the gophs over, and over, and over, and over. To the point that you know he's just enjoying himself rubbing it in. Any shot that can be taken, he will take.

-he's arrogant, condescending and rude.

To me, that's the definition of a punk hack. But he's only stating the truth, so what's the problem?
 

Oneoldgopher said:
Only in the GH circle can his opinion be discredited by fiat. Thank you for confirming my opinion that this isn't a forum of reason or discourse. It is a board full of fanatics and ad hominem attacks over and over again. The problem with this is you can't prove the negative. This is particularly true of matters of judgement and hard to measure intangibles. Yet, we hear about this fool or that fool simply because they are critical of the path of the program. And, so it is with Reusse and the reaction to his subjective criticism of the program.

There are a few of us in the vocal minority that expect standards to be a bit higher than how this staff suggests. They say the team is so unfocused that 63 guys are in academic trouble, even though last spring they had these guys under their control. Wow, they are saying that Brewster caused this problem when they were here when the last semester report was available to them and the report said the team was fine. Now, after the fall semester is upon us and not even half way complete, they sing a tune that 63 guys are in academic trouble. So, either the coaches and academic office lied to the public last spring about the academic standing of the team, or these guys are blowing a smokescreen 63 team members wide. Based on the progress report of last spring, the 63 number has to be BS. The semester is not over and they are already condemning the outcome. BS. The coaching staff is spewing conjecture and BS. If there is an academic problem right now, the coaching staff that is here right now is to blame. They put the pressure on the team to be at the S&C program and have more captains practices than before. If there is a tie in to how the team is doing academically, it is not that they are not attending classes for the sake of just skipping out, it is because they are expected to be at the practice facility morning, noon and night. It is a rediculous amount of time, micromanaged and more football than academic. Where is the collegial and collaborative approach of just being a student and working independently toward the degree and succeeding on ones own merit? Apparently, with all the mandatory aspects of football, the over top structure of the NCAA and the U's compliance to this arbitrary body, we have 63 kids that even with all that support can't perform with a whole tutoring staff and mandatory study halls. Not only would that be so amazingly bad, it would be a titanic academic failure, which discredits the U as a competent academic institution. So, I can't believe the BS that this many team members are in academic difficulty. It is so much nonesense and handwringing over nothing. It runs against the progress the team has experienced for many years. I don't think the academic culture of the team was flaundering under Brewster. The academic support unit isn't failing these students. The coaches apparently just love to be critical of the University in general. What else could it be but conjecture on their part that half the team is a bunch of academic casualties or nitwits. And you all believe the BS hook line and sinker that it is a systemic problem and a failure of the Brewster recruits. The system has shown progress in each of the Brewster years. And, now Jerry Kill has decided that it is broken during the second semester under his control.

Although we know that all of the graduating students during the Brewster regime were Mason recruits, and each year graduated more than the year before, this doesn't sound like the team was failing en masse. Besides, only a handfull were released for academic reasons during the Brewster era. Since the admission standards were not lowered during the Brewster era, these kids came in academically qualified to enter school.

If control was lost, it had to be under the first semester under Coach Kill's control, last spring.

I hope Reusse follows up with Kill and the academic unit to see if Kill truly is a fraud or if there was a mass failure of the admissions process to screen out ineligle applicants. Something is clearly wrong about the 63 number. We just don't know what the problem is and who is to blame for this catastrophic number.

More questions need to be asked about this situation since it begs to be asked why 63 team members would be in academic trouble with Kill. It is so much BS.
Click to expand...

I nominate this post as most bizarre.
 

The only thing I've observed so far in Jerry Kill's tenure is this: if you don't win, nothing you say will satisfy the media. If you try and stick up for your team or focus on the positives you're accused of being delusional and a salesman. If the team stinks and you tell everyone the team stinks you're accused of lowering expectations and trying to extend your contract.

Maybe, just maybe, the team doesn't have much talent or discipline and is struggling in the classroom? Since Jerry Kill has arrived I've not read, seen or heard of one occaision where he's said one thing but meant another. Not one occaision where he's tried to cover up something or skirt an issue.

Still, that being said, if you don't win there's nothing you can say.
 



It's obvious that OOG is Reusse. Let the sleeping dog lie, who cares...

When I first read the title, I was hoping Reusse was announcing his departure, so I'm disappointed.
 

Ruesse is a broken record. His schtick has become boring.
 

Unregistered User said:
Please cite where you found this statistic.

Don't worry...I'll wait.
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He's likely referring to this: http://www.startribune.com/sports/gophers/131676828.html

"Jerry Kill provided a sobering assessment of the Gophers football program Wednesday, saying it might take four recruiting classes "to really evaluate who we are and what we're doing," and that his staff is monitoring 63 of the team's players to make sure they're attending class."

I don't know if that qualifies as "academic trouble," however you wish to define that.
 

He comes off a little brash, but how could anyone disagree with the theme? This extension has been mocked across the B10.
 

Well, the thing that I like is that prexy k is on the hook for this. IF it doesn't work out it won't be on the head of a peon ad like bjm. It will come down really hard on this prexy k. IF prexy k has to give Kill a buy out, it will be a killer of a buy out for prexy k to have to make. This will pretty much make or break prexy k with the general public of the state of Minnesota.

On the other hand, IF Coach K can return the Gopher Program to a competetive level in the Big Ten, it will have been a slick move by prexy k.

Don't underestimate the power of having a smoking gun and an admission from the prexy himself that he called this one. He now OWNS this hire...and this 2 year extension for better or for worse...Don't you just LOVE it! If it works out we have a hero for a prexy...if it doesn't work out, our prexy is a bum who will have a lot of explaining to do...

; 0 )
 

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