Brainerd Dispatch: Kill: Gophers need to reflect state’s people

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It seems like everyone comes away from coach Kill with the same impression: he's the real deal.
 

Great article. Thanks for posting it.

I think the thing about Kill is that he's really straightforward. I further think he's the first guy in a long time who understands (or is taking the time to understand) the people of the state.

Mason seemed too corporate and Brewster seemed too "medicine show" for this state to fully accept.
 

I think Kill will prove to be good hire and will do a nice job @ Minnesota. But let's be honest, most everyone falls in love when a relationship is new & fresh & exciting, especially when the previous relationship (coach) had so many issues.

Unless I missed the criticism somewhere, even the media is cutting Kill a break (which I'm OK with). For example, if the recent juco recruit's past legal issues came to light while Brewster or Tubby (both under fire from the media last season) were the coach, would the media have made an issue out of it? I think we know the answer to that. Souhan, especially, would have been all over it.
 

Kill's comments

I love Kill, but why does he always say things to the press like "We're short on talent" ? I get it that we aren't tOSU or Auburn, but the constant degrading of the team starts to wear on me. He doesn't have to and shouldn't over-hype the team, but he could at least stay neutral on public declarations about the quality of the whole team. Why would a recruit want to come to a team which is self-professed as "short on talent"? How did we beat Illinois and Iowa last year (two bowl teams)? NIU lost to Illinois. I know for certain that we have more overall talent than NIU had/has.
 


Brainerd Dispatch: Kill: Gophers need to reflect state’s people...and win as well!!!

had to make the correction...
 

You have to understand Kill speak, short on talent means, we don't have the talent to compete at the highest level. Kill keeps saying that you don't know what you have until you go through two adays and get into game situations. I don't see him changing his tone until we get into game week preperations. It's nothing new Holtz did the same thing.
 

gopherfield said:
I love Kill, but why does he always say things to the press like "We're short on talent" ? I get it that we aren't tOSU or Auburn, but the constant degrading of the team starts to wear on me. He doesn't have to and shouldn't over-hype the team, but he could at least stay neutral on public declarations about the quality of the whole team. Why would a recruit want to come to a team which is self-professed as "short on talent"? How did we beat Illinois and Iowa last year (two bowl teams)? NIU lost to Illinois. I know for certain that we have more overall talent than NIU had/has.
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Kill's goal is not to go 7-5 and make the Sun Bowl. His goal is to win a Big Ten title and go to the Rose Bowl and be the best team in all of college football. While the team may currently have the talent to make the Sun Bowl, Kill will not be content with that. He wants to be an elite team and for that goal, the team is short on talent.
 

gopherfield said:
I love Kill, but why does he always say things to the press like "We're short on talent" ? I get it that we aren't tOSU or Auburn, but the constant degrading of the team starts to wear on me. He doesn't have to and shouldn't over-hype the team, but he could at least stay neutral on public declarations about the quality of the whole team. Why would a recruit want to come to a team which is self-professed as "short on talent"? How did we beat Illinois and Iowa last year (two bowl teams)? NIU lost to Illinois. I know for certain that we have more overall talent than NIU had/has.
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He says that because (1) it's true, and (2) he's protecting his backside for IF the Gophers fail to win many games this season. On the other hand, if he can somehow get these guys to overperform and win a lot of games, he'll then have surprised the people so much that he'll fast become a deity.

The problem is that yes, it definitely can wear on your players when they are considered to be talentless, and the team may underperform because of it. On the other hand, there's nothing like being told you're full of talent, then getting your butt kicked when it wasn't true (Brewster). It's obviously Kill's style and he's gambling on both his players' mindsets and those of the public's. If the mindset of the players is right, statements like this can fire them up to work harder, that they can't just rest on their laurels.

If he did the same things in years past, that would be an indication that Kill won't turn the program around immediately (lack of early success upon his transitions), but that it pays dividends in the future.
 



The players know they don't have the talent and depth of an Auburn, Texas, Florida, OSU, etc. But I think that down deep they are with Coach Kill when it comes to the realization that they need to work that much harder in order to compete. Coach Kill has a system in place that has been successful and will take time to get it going at MN.
 

Again as many that know him or have been around Coach Kill for years now, he is very much old school and a big time straight shooter. He is just a small town blue-collar type of guy. He prides himself in taking kids that most don't deem as talented and molding them into a tough as nails machine!

I think he is the perfect type of coach for Minnesota or any Great Plains/Midwestern State school. Nebraska perfected the art of smash mouth/blue collar football and it fit the people of Nebraska to a T. Bill Callahan/Steve Pederson came in and tried to change that with the West-Coast offense and it failed miserably!

In reality it is the same mentality that fits Minnesota. Wisconsin, Iowa and Kansas State have done the same already. I know Coach Gill at KU is trying to do that as well at Kansas. The spread is fine and dandy, but it doesn't fit the personnel recruit wise in this region and people wise in this part of the country imho.
 

(1) The whole "short on talent" thing plays pretty well in college sports (IMO). I think most coaches don't want their players comfortable in their abilities and they want them to play with a chip on their shoulder. I think it makes sense to always give the impression that we are the plucky team that needs to play a perfect game in order to play against the juggernauts of the Big 10.
It also works in the media as Brew is a built in scapegoat. He is seen as a joke and Kill could certainly be given more leverage by the media and potential recruits if it is seen as Kill recovering from a disaster (whether this is true or not). Perception means more than anything. I will say this as someone who fully acknowledges that Mason did a better job than Brew....the team that Brew took over was in considerably worse shape than the team Kill will be taking over. However, the perception is that it was the other way around (to the casual fan and media members).

(2) I also think that the whole "getting the state" thing gets overblown. It's sort of like the whole "schtick" debate a few months ago. I really like Coach Kill (I was on the bandwagon way before he was hired and got blasted for it). However, his manuerisms will also grow tired if we don't win. Brewster's optimism came off as a snake oil salesman because he didn't win. If he would have won, everyone would have been pumped about him being the anti-Mason and we needed a confident/optimist for a coach. But he lost and we turned on him (rightfully so). Mason would have came off like a calculated game planner (like Belicheck) if we had won. But we didn't win enough, and his act grew tired.

The idea that a coach needs to fit a state doesn't really make sense to me. I would think the people of St. Paul and Mpls are pretty different from the people of Brainerd and Bemidji. Furthermore, Bielema doesn't fit Wisconsin, Bobby Knight didn't fit Indiana, Saban doesn't really fit the SEC or Alabama model, etc.

It's about winning.
 

Bob_Loblaw said:
(1) The whole "short on talent" thing plays pretty well in college sports (IMO). I think most coaches don't want their players comfortable in their abilities and they want them to play with a chip on their shoulder. I think it makes sense to always give the impression that we are the plucky team that needs to play a perfect game in order to play against the juggernauts of the Big 10.
It also works in the media as Brew is a built in scapegoat. He is seen as a joke and Kill could certainly be given more leverage by the media and potential recruits if it is seen as Kill recovering from a disaster (whether this is true or not). Perception means more than anything. I will say this as someone who fully acknowledges that Mason did a better job than Brew....the team that Brew took over was in considerably worse shape than the team Kill will be taking over. However, the perception is that it was the other way around (to the casual fan and media members).

(2) I also think that the whole "getting the state" thing gets overblown. It's sort of like the whole "schtick" debate a few months ago. I really like Coach Kill (I was on the bandwagon way before he was hired and got blasted for it). However, his manuerisms will also grow tired if we don't win. Brewster's optimism came off as a snake oil salesman because he didn't win. If he would have won, everyone would have been pumped about him being the anti-Mason and we needed a confident/optimist for a coach. But he lost and we turned on him (rightfully so). Mason would have came off like a calculated game planner (like Belicheck) if we had won. But we didn't win enough, and his act grew tired.

The idea that a coach needs to fit a state doesn't really make sense to me. I would think the people of St. Paul and Mpls are pretty different from the people of Brainerd and Bemidji. Furthermore, Bielema doesn't fit Wisconsin, Bobby Knight didn't fit Indiana, Saban doesn't really fit the SEC or Alabama model, etc.

It's about winning.
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I agree 100 percent. It's not like this state is full of small-town farm boys. In fact, most of the talent comes from the surrounding large communities in the Minneapolis/St. Paul region. Fans are in the honeymoon stage with coach Kill right now, which is fine. He can do no wrong at this point. If he recruits a zero star athlete, he is "under the radar." If he says the team lacks talent, its OK because he is just keeping the troops motivated. This has been a long off-season. I am so ready to actually see how these guys will do on the field...players and coaches.
 



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