Dear Joel Maturi

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The intent of my original post was that my nerdy, ultra educated Uncle should not be able to talk smack to me about sports. I have nothing left to fall back on!

Now I'm curious what FOT posted.
 

He thought your post belonged on a$$holes.com and that, well, apparently, this was a really serious thread.

I have no idea why. I'm 93.1 percent certain he'll be back soon.
 

Rick Mons said:
-Allowed hockey team to decline to irrelevance less than 5 years after winning back-to-back national championships
Lots of factors to this "decline." Sounds like you think Maturi should have replaced Lucia by now -- is that what you're really saying?

-Extended Dan Monson only to fired him months later.
Huh? I suspect what you mean is that Monson wasn't fired when Maturi met with him spring of 2007 in Cincinnati? Monson's contract wasn't extended then.

-Extended Glen Mason only to fired him a year later.
Or, put another way, fired Glen Mason after he publicly insulted the student section, failed to advance the team and embarrassed the University at its post-season bowl game. The only criticism I'd make in Maturi's handling of the situation with Mason was that he waited a long time (too long in many minds at the time) to extend Mason.

-Zero improvements made to baseball "stadium" that is in great need of upgrading.
They're fund-raising for a new baseball park ... he'd be castigated (and rightly so) if he made substantial improvements to the existing park in light of this.

-Botched the Royce White situation.
I know it's in vogue to saddle Maturi for this situation but I don't recall Tubby Smith saying anything but that he'd made the decision to suspend White. And, there's a fair number of us who don't blame either Tubby or Maturi for what was ultimately White's bad decisions.

-Only 2 NCAA basketball Tournament appearances in 8 seasons.
Are you siggesting that Maturi should make a change in the program now? Maturi didn't pull the trigger on Monson early enough if we look at it in isolation; however, I still think the timing was wrong given where the politics of getting a football stadium were at.

-Zero Jan 1. bowl appearances for football team.
Fair enough. And, if there's no progress this next year, the onus will be on Maturi to both take action and be accountable for the hiring of Brewster. I think we're a year away from evaluating the decision to hire Brewster.

-Lacking parking/tailgating experience despite new stadium opening.
While there were bugs in the parking management, only part of that can be laid at Maturi's doorstep. He can jawbone but not direct the folks responsible for parking lots on and off-campus. And, I frankly thought there was pretty good service recovery after the first couple of games. Nothing was so bad as to deserve firing the A.D.

-Mismanageed Tim Brewster contract extension.
You'd have extended him faster? Longer? Not at all? I'm not sure what would have been ideal "extension management" in your mind.

-Horrible ticket office customer service.
This is an area that continues to need a lot of work. But validation for firing Maturi? Nah.
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Howeda did a good job of answering all these for me but I would like to emphasize that Maturi royally screwed up the Brewster contract extension. He should have offered a contract similar to the one Brewster ended up signing in late Jan. immmediately after the Iowa game and told Brewster to take it or leave it (and be fired). This is football program management 101. Never wait until after the bowl season to extend/fire a coach. The biggest reason this was a huge mistake is because Maturi has first hand experience in seeing what happens to a football program when you wait until after the bowl game to decide a coach's future. He learned nothing from his past mistakes.
 

Other than let the band play more, nobody is saying what they think he should do. It is the coaches job to win games and the way that the timing of our coaching hires have been, really the only one that could be fired is one of the most successful coaches in U history.
 


GopherFish said:
We are looking for someone who gets results. Maturi's been here since 2002 and Gopher Football and Basketball have never finished at or near the top in the Big Ten.
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And he has fired the football and basketball coches in that time. It is too soon to say that his subsequent hires are successes or failures.
 

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