DEEP ROOTED PROBLEM......

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TuffGuy47

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Can someone PLEASE tell me what the deep rooted problem with this football program is? This school, regardless of who has been coaching, has not won a Big Ten Championship in over 45 years (longer than any other school in the B10) not to mention a National Championship in 50+ years......This once proud program, again, no matter who is coaching, maintains a cancer that has lived throughout the years, constantly attacks this program in one way or another at the brim of limited success and it seems that no one is willing to admit or seriously address it. Why?

Until whatever this problem that clouds this program is fixed, until we get HONEST and get to the real root of the problem here, the coach(es), the AD(s), the players or anything else you want to "immediately" or consistantly blame will not make a difference in the W's of this struggling program.

As much as we beckon success, there is something that is pulling strongly in the direction of failure.....what is it and then who can fix it???? Once that is addressed, then we will see our derserved success again!!!! :confused: (IMO......the stadium is/was a good start in the right direction.....constantly firing coaches is NOT...)
 

Since when do we constantly fire coaches?

Mason had 10 seasons.

Wacker coached 5.

3 coaches in 19 years isn't constant flux.
 

Name all the above average coaches we've had in the recent past. I can name two: Mason and Holtz. Coincidentially, they were the only two that improved the program to slightly above average.

Bottom line: hire a decent coach - Might be easier said than done but certainly not impossible to do. Start with coaches that should get you to a bowl game almost every year (Mason-types, Leach-types) and see if anyone out there has even better potential.

[And no, I'm not saying we should hire Mason -- he should be the low end of the benchmark though since we obviously fired him thinking that we can do better].
 

Focus on investing in the program rather then spreading all the resources so thin in order to appease everyone and not leaving enough for the football program to successfully compete with other schools.
 

Perhaps it was a mistake to fire Cal Stoll. The dome hurt us. There have been some real mistaken hires, Joe Salem, Wacker, Brewster.
 


There are 3 main "roots of the problem."

1) Administration not committing financially to football, especially in the late 80'/early 90's when college football started to become more prominent in the media.
2) Lack of HS Talent in the area, especially in MN
3) Fickle media and fanbase due to being in a pro sports market
 

We do not have the players in the area that are capable of pulling off a winning program. It's pretty simple. To have to go into Texas and Florida year after year and expect to pull talent that will keep us chugging along is near impossible. We are just not a football school or area. Plain and simple
 

But does Wisconsin

have that much high school talent available? Much more than we do? I would say not really.
 

That is extremely debatable. However, they have Illinois which is a mere hour or two away from them which certainly has much, much more talent that they can recruit.
 



Doc1001 said:
have that much high school talent available? Much more than we do? I would say not really.
Click to expand...

Right and Iowa too. The high school issue is a real challenge but not one that can't be overcome...that's been proven.
 

Brewster is our seventh coach since the glory years of Warmath and the 1960 and 61 championship teams. Warmath was followed by Stoll, Salem, Holtz, Gutey, Wacker, Mason and Brewster. Except for Holtz, not one of these coaches went on to successful HC jobs after Minnesota. Except for Holtz, who IMO betrayed Minnesota fans, not one of these prior coaches was in great demand after Minnesota. Minnesota had many mediocre football teams (except the '68 team) and we have had very mediocre coaches. Could it be that part of our problem is in hiring very ordinary, mediocre head coaches and expect extraordinary results in recruiting, coaching and season W-L records?
 

If we were making mistakes in firing coaches, surely some other school would capitalize on our mistakes, and hire these coaches. That they haven't has indicated that the mistake wasn't in the firing.
 

Don't want to pick on a guy who is a really good guy and has done a lot for the program (and he can correct me if I'm wrong), but here's an example of what I think is wrong with the program.

When Holtz left, Bobby Ross was brought in as a possible candidate. I can't remember exactly how this all transpired, but I seem to recall that the Gopher players met and then-captain or captain-to-be Ray Hitchcock told Ross publicly that the team wanted to play for Gutekunst. Ross bowed out. (Ray, if you frequent here and want to correct me, you were far closer to the situation than I was from reading it in the paper.).

Gutey was a good guy. Fair-to-middling coach. His teams really lacked discipline and always made huge mistakes.

Next up Wacker. Good guy. Not a good coach.

Next up Mason. Decent offensive X-and-O guy. Lousy personality.

Now Brewster. See Wacker.

And through the years, the Big 10 has gotten better top-to-bottom. 1970s and 1980s doormats like Northwestern, Wisconsin, and Iowa have all improved and held onto that improvement. As the competition has gotten tougher week-to-week, the Gophers have seemed to really stall. But in this, I think it's important to point out that the Hawkeyes were miserable in the 1970s and the Badgers were all over the place until Alvarez hit town (some good years, but some bad ones as well). Northwestern was nowhere until Garry Barnett arrived.

The other problem we had in the 1970s was an M-Club that couldn't really coalesce and was impatient with Warmath, then Stoll, and then Salem.

What we need is a total package coach like Holtz, who truthfully fell into our laps (and out of it two years later). Mason is probably tied for being the second best on-field coach we've had during since Warmath (with Stoll), but his program had stalled. His recruiting was not improving. Buzz about the team was low. He worked hard behind the scenes for the new stadium, but he wasn't someone promoting the program outside the season. He had no real standing with the high school establishment in the state (Brewster has, but a fat lot of good it has done him, which maybe makes that argument somewhat moot).

What it boils down to is that we need a "total package" (but not Lex Lugar) in the next head coaching hire. Come in. Have some energy, but know who you are. Put a system in place and work the system. Recruit hard nationally and more effectively in the Upper Midwest.

The advantage for the next guy is that expectations are going to be at an all-time low. Brewster came into a low-expectation program, but Mason had never had the old "1-11, 2-10" season that brought about his demise. Because of that, Brewster had to jump on a moving--albeit slowly--train and I think he made a ton of bad decisions, the biggest of which was never developing a coaching philosophy and staying with it. It reminds me of the defensive coaching carousel under Wacker.

Anyway, the key is going to be to open the vault. Plainly and simply. Want to play with the big boys? Get a top drawer coach or a mid-level coach with a lot of unrealized potential. Elevate Minnesota Gopher football to being one of the "games in town." The potential is there. We've had 40 years of too many cooks on this issue and we either have to turn it over to people who know better or accept that it's hard to navigate in one direction when the wind is coming from every direction at once.

That's my take on our last 40 years of frustration.
 



I agree with Tubtastic. Hire a good coach. Holtz and Mason are the only hires I have agreed with since I started being a Gopher fan. The Gophers might not need a big name coach, but they need a proven coach on this level. Geez, I didn't want Charlie Strong because there was no proof he could be a good head coach, but he would have been a homerun hire in comparison to Brewster. The Gophers simply keep taking chances with coaches from lower divisions like Wacker or coordinators like Gutey - and now a guy with no experience at all. Holtz and Mason provided clues as to what is possible here, but it's not possible at all with a guy no MAC school would touch.
 


josh087 said:
There are 3 main "roots of the problem."

1) Administration not committing financially to football, especially in the late 80'/early 90's when college football started to become more prominent in the media.
2) Lack of HS Talent in the area, especially in MN
3) Fickle media and fanbase due to being in a pro sports market
Click to expand...

Right, it isn't just one thing. This is a good start to why Minnesota sucks at football.
 


KoolAid said:
Right, it isn't just one thing. This is a good start to why Minnesota sucks at football.
Click to expand...

I'm actually good friends with Josh, but #1 is the only valid point on his list.

There are other, lesser problems, but the overwhelmingly effectual one is simple: outside of Holtz, who ditched us after two years, we haven't hired a good coach in 56 years. Some of it can be attributed to just plain bad luck, but it seems a great amount can be placed on having ADs who simply don't recognize the difference between good and bad football coaches.
 



Gophers4Life said:
How good is the University of Idaho football team?
Click to expand...

Now I know you don't believe he meant the U of Idaho LOL.

But in reference to what I believe he's getting at, Boise gets a lot of Cali talent, a talent base that is huge enough to support a plethora of universities. I doubt they're working you'll see their team loaded with Idaho prospects all over, I'm just guessing though.
 

A good Big Ten football program is not built overnight. A lot of people in Minnesota just don't understand this.

That's all that happened here.
 

Frustrated like so many of us all these years made me think about something Westmoreland told our U of M class a long time ago. He said that there were five things necessary to being successful in battle/war. This IS NOT a debate on Viet Nam. It just echoed in my mind because of our attempts/failures at winning or winning big over the years. He said we needed:

The right troops
The right equipment
The right training
A clear cut, concise or obtainable mission
Support from home

So I asked myself, are we getting the right players, coaches or leadership? The right facilities and/or equipment? The right coaching or training to succeed? Do we have a clear vision, process and reasonably obtainable goal for our players and coaches, in year one, two or three? Do we have support (or even the financial wherewithal) from the University, the various clubs/Alumni, students, media, etc., to make it work?

We seem to be pointing the finger at almost all of these, except perhaps TCF stadium.

Are we really willing to give whatever it takes, or commit to whatever it takes, to make our team successful (definition needed)?The state helped build our stadium, but realistically it is hard to imagine that the U will get anywhere close to the funding that it has in the past especially in the next several years.

I have been a Gophers fan and will always be a Gophers fan, but right now Thorazine sounds rather appealing.
 


The thing I can't figure out though is why we can't hire a solid coach. Inept ADs? Too much administrative interference? The fact that we've been a pro market for 50 years?

One thing that gets overlooked is I believe that elements of the traditional Minnesota culture (and I'm in my 50s and a lifelong Minnesotan) is having a difficult time dealing with the more hyper-competitive world of big-time college sports in the 21st century. We want to win, but we want to be nice (they aren't mutually exclusive). We want to make sure everyone is heard in decisions (that's why we have elections and you don't elect football coaches). We always seem to settle for "good enough" as a state.

I'm for openness and participation and all of those good things in the areas of life where they are appropriate. College football probably isn't one of those places. We seem to lead the world in task forces up here.
 



Seems to me that the majority of the 1st team All Big Ten players we've had in the past 10 years were from Minnesota:

Eric Decker
Willie VanDeSteeg
Matt Spaeth
Mark Setterstrom
Rian Melander
Marion Barber III
Ben Utecht
Ben Hamilton

Greg Eslinger is from North Dakota, and we should recruit the Dakotas like it's our own state.

Not enough talent in Minnesota to put together a full team, but we definitely can make a lot of noise with Minnesota guys.
 

50PoundHead said:
What we need is a total package coach like Holtz, who truthfully fell into our laps (and out of it two years later).
Click to expand...

He fell into our laps because he wanted to stay one step ahead of the investigation going on at Arkansas. They faced probation, or sanctions or whatever (don't remember the details). And he left here to stay one step ahead of the 17 rules violation he saddled the U with.

Then he left Notre Dame and South Carolina in much the same manner. 4 programs in a row, 4 programs with sanctions the following year.

Sorry for the rant...my hate for this clown knows no depths.
 

NateDawgUM said:
Seems to me that the majority of the 1st team All Big Ten players we've had in the past 10 years were from Minnesota:

Eric Decker
Willie VanDeSteeg
Matt Spaeth
Mark Setterstrom
Rian Melander
Marion Barber III
Ben Utecht
Ben Hamilton

Greg Eslinger is from North Dakota, and we should recruit the Dakotas like it's our own state.

Not enough talent in Minnesota to put together a full team, but we definitely can make a lot of noise with Minnesota guys.
Click to expand...

And that is just the MN kids who stayed home.
 

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