First Post
Hi all...first post here, but I wanted to interject, if only because people seem to have been having this argument for the past year plus, and it always seems to me like we're fighting over a subject we're mostly in agreement on.
A few points:
Mason inherited a HORRIBLE team.
He eventually did some good things with it, brought us back to regular bowls, and gave us a national profile for the first time in years. He picked one thing (the running game) and did it incredibly well. (And personally, there's never been a unit I've enjoyed watching more than our offense those 2+ really good years). Gopher football was stronger under him than it was before him. And it's safe to assume everyone here had great times watching Maroney and Barber run all over teams that had been kicking us around for years.
His teams had some absolutely historic collapses over the years. The likes of which I hope to never see again. You can blame it on a lot of different things, but a lot of people put that on coaching.
It seemed, to most observers, that the team wasn't likely to get much better than it was in his last few years. Whether or not that's true is debateable. But he wasn't firing people up around the state, bringing in the big prospects, or otherwise giving anyone reason to believe things were going to markedly improve any time soon.
Brewster is saying things we want to hear. He's telling people that the Gopher's can be regular contentenders, lock down our borders, and win Rose Bowls. He's telling people this will be a good program. Again, whether or not he's right is debateable. But some people are believing him, and that does nothing but good things for the program. Especially when the people he's talking to are our recruits.
He's bringing in higher-rated classes than Mason did. We all know talent is proven on the field. But the people who do this for a living, and our own observations, are telling us that the level of talent being brought in to this team is higher than it's been in the past.
He had one abysmally bad year. It was a year without his recruits, working in a system they didn't sign on for, but regardless of how it happened, it was bad. A great many people could have done better that year with that talent. No one was going to the Rose Bowl with it.
Most importantly, this last year, his team did nothing Mason's teams hadn't. Strong showing in a weak nonconference schedule, then getting decimated by the better parts of the Big 10 and topping it off with a slightly embarassing bowl loss. Deja vu.
Now, finally, we get to see if Brewster's promises have any foundation. In the next two years, the talent he's been bringing in will become the team we see on the field. They could fizzle, he could turn out to be a bad coach, and we could see more years like this one. Or they could become his promise of a strong team, every bit as good as Wisconsin and Iowa, competing with and beating OSU and Michigan regularly.
...For me, the possibility of that happening makes the losses this year much easier to stomach. Watching Iowa embarass us was easier because the entire time, I had hope that in a few years, we could be doing it to them with regularity. And the fact that we lost to Kansas while basically installing a new offense, in an effort to get better and bring us to that point faster, makes that loss ten times easier than Mason's last game. But, again, that's just me.
Hi all...first post here, but I wanted to interject, if only because people seem to have been having this argument for the past year plus, and it always seems to me like we're fighting over a subject we're mostly in agreement on.
A few points:
Mason inherited a HORRIBLE team.
He eventually did some good things with it, brought us back to regular bowls, and gave us a national profile for the first time in years. He picked one thing (the running game) and did it incredibly well. (And personally, there's never been a unit I've enjoyed watching more than our offense those 2+ really good years). Gopher football was stronger under him than it was before him. And it's safe to assume everyone here had great times watching Maroney and Barber run all over teams that had been kicking us around for years.
His teams had some absolutely historic collapses over the years. The likes of which I hope to never see again. You can blame it on a lot of different things, but a lot of people put that on coaching.
It seemed, to most observers, that the team wasn't likely to get much better than it was in his last few years. Whether or not that's true is debateable. But he wasn't firing people up around the state, bringing in the big prospects, or otherwise giving anyone reason to believe things were going to markedly improve any time soon.
Brewster is saying things we want to hear. He's telling people that the Gopher's can be regular contentenders, lock down our borders, and win Rose Bowls. He's telling people this will be a good program. Again, whether or not he's right is debateable. But some people are believing him, and that does nothing but good things for the program. Especially when the people he's talking to are our recruits.
He's bringing in higher-rated classes than Mason did. We all know talent is proven on the field. But the people who do this for a living, and our own observations, are telling us that the level of talent being brought in to this team is higher than it's been in the past.
He had one abysmally bad year. It was a year without his recruits, working in a system they didn't sign on for, but regardless of how it happened, it was bad. A great many people could have done better that year with that talent. No one was going to the Rose Bowl with it.
Most importantly, this last year, his team did nothing Mason's teams hadn't. Strong showing in a weak nonconference schedule, then getting decimated by the better parts of the Big 10 and topping it off with a slightly embarassing bowl loss. Deja vu.
Now, finally, we get to see if Brewster's promises have any foundation. In the next two years, the talent he's been bringing in will become the team we see on the field. They could fizzle, he could turn out to be a bad coach, and we could see more years like this one. Or they could become his promise of a strong team, every bit as good as Wisconsin and Iowa, competing with and beating OSU and Michigan regularly.
...For me, the possibility of that happening makes the losses this year much easier to stomach. Watching Iowa embarass us was easier because the entire time, I had hope that in a few years, we could be doing it to them with regularity. And the fact that we lost to Kansas while basically installing a new offense, in an effort to get better and bring us to that point faster, makes that loss ten times easier than Mason's last game. But, again, that's just me.
