DEEP ROOTED PROBLEM......

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CentralMNGopher said:
Boise St is pretty good.
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I respect Boise State and like Boise State. I think Chris Petersen is a phenomenal coach. But I think people who belive Boise State would have ever seen a 10-win season with a Big Ten schedule are painfully naive as to how the game works.

One of the reasons Petersen, Patterson, and Wittingham are reluctant to leave for only slightly more $ is that they know that the longer they play in the MWC and WAC the more easy wins they accumulate and the more their stock rises. They only get once chance to levergae that.
 

Gophers09 said:
Right and Iowa too. The high school issue is a real challenge but not one that can't be overcome...that's been proven.
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Iowa's football budget is $26m and UM is at $9m. Iowa has more recruiters than UM.
 

High Schools - nope UW and IA are good
Coaches - nope we've tried 8 since '67 and by now one would have worked
Stadium - nope, or if it was it's been corrected
Vikings - nope Miami, USC, UCLA, Ga. Tech, ... Have all proven you can win in a big league city
$ Committment - Bingo

The U sponsors more sports than the other programs in the big ten. We pay our head coach very little compared to Iowa and Wisconsin. People forget that when Pat Richter took over at UW he cut mens and womens fencing, mens and womens gymnastics, and mens baseball to clean up and simplify the budget. Have you ever heard the saying about a ham and egg breakfast that the chicken was involved but the pig was committed? Cancalling your baseball program is committment. Someday the U will ant to win that bad, I think that Bruinicks has brought us closer by committing to a stadium and upping the budget for assistant salaries.
 

It has to be a big-name, lots of experience guy.

We have been making moves towards a true commitment to football in the handful of years:

Finally getting a new stadium finalized and built
Firing a respectable, but "not quite good enough" coach in Mason

But then we hired a used car salesman, which sometimes is fine, but he didn't have the experience or credibility to back up his talk.

If ever, the time was right to make the big-name hire. Not a super risky hire with colossal backfire potential.

The time is now to pay whatever it costs to get the best possible man in here. No hometown discounts. No inexperienced guys who once recruited one or two guys before. The boosters, season-ticket holders, and fans around the country need to have something to get excited about. And not the empty, naive, shot-in-the-dark "excited" that Brewster was talking about.

We need to match our commitment to build an amazing stadium with a commitment to a winner of a coach on its field.
 

Boise State gets most of their players from California, not Idaho. But yeah, I'm not buying the lack of High School talent excuse either. We must have more talent than Wisconsin and Iowa. Maybe we don't have the depth of others states, but we seem to have a top 5 recruit year after year (Henderson, Floyd, Fitzgerald, Mauer, etc.)
 



ruralgopher said:
And that is just the MN kids who stayed home.
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Amen. Add Laurenitis, Lydon Murtha, Nate Swift, John Carlson, Trevor Laws, and Ryan Harris and you're getting somewhere.

Add in guys like Eubanks, Brinkhaus, and Shidell and other kids on the next tier, and you can put together the nucleus of a decent squad.

Sure, you still have to go get a lot of skilled position kids, but there's always more than a few of those to go around.

I think the bottom line is you have to recruit aggressively nationally, but somewhat closing off the borders and getting 75% to 80% of the FBS talent in Minnesota to stay home is important.

Edit: I see Fitzgerald, Floyd and Mauer mentioned, so there are some skilled position guys around.
 


gopherluv said:
Iowa's football budget is $26m and UM is at $9m. Iowa has more recruiters than UM.
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Head meet wall. The numbers are apples to oranges. We're in middle of the pack in Big Ten funding when you add in costs that the U doesn't group under the FB budget. Not Iowa level, but I'm tired of seeing that 9 million number tossed out like it means something.
 




gopherluv said:
Iowa's football budget is $26m and UM is at $9m. Iowa has more recruiters than UM.
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Iowa's football budget includes all the money it takes to run Kinnick Stadium. Minnesota's does not.

Minnesota's budget is 7th in the Big Ten.

Minnesota's recruiting ranking the last 3 years: 3, 6, 6
Iowa's recruiting ranking the last 3 years: 8, 10, 5

Ferentz can coach and has roughly the same staff for 10 years.
 

dpodoll68 said:
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.
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I still think all 3 points are valid, although some carry more weight than others.

You could probably put together a team of midwesterners (and primarily Minnesotans), but I don't even care to speculate how competitive they'd be.

But the third point about being in a "pro-sports market" carries a lot of weight in my mind. A couple of people in my office and I were talking about then big ten. I raised the question, how many big ten teams were located in a major metropolitan area? Really, only Minnesota and Northwestern were the only 2.

I think if you look across the board in College football, the top teams don't have to compete with a pro football team. When you're the only show in town, you're going to have a more passionate fan base. When your fan base is that passionate, they aren't going to stand for having a mediocre coach or program. How long would Brew have lasted at Bama before they said "f*ck this?"

So essentially, there's probably a correlation between points 1 and 3. The school doesn't invest money or brain power in quality coaches because I, the fan, will just direct my attention elsewhere when things get bad - in this case, YOUR MINNESOTA TWINS
 

KoolAid said:
I raised the question, how many big ten teams were located in a major metropolitan area? Really, only Minnesota and Northwestern were the only 2.
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Columbus, Ohio is not small. But there is minimal pro sports presence there, so your point still is right.
 



Art Vandelay said:
How much HS talent does Idaho have?
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Never mind the main flaws in your argument that 1) Boise State wouldn't have near the record they would have if they would have been in a bigger conference, and that 2) Boise State is the exception, and not the rule in the college football landscape. By your logic, there could easily be high powered teams from Montana, New Hampshire, New Mexico, and Rhode Island. You can't take the exception to the rule and use it as the standard for the Gophers.

Not even counting those points, they still get most of the skill position talent from nearby California, not Idaho. Sure, some of their lineman come from Idaho, and we can recruit those positions well in MN as we have proven in the last decade, but it sure helps to have an area like California nearby to get guys like TY and Pettis.
 

Title has Deep Rooted Problem and then "...."'s. I thought there was going to be a link. Hrm... (dots for emphasis).
 

JackiO said:
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
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This is absolutely the worst excuse I've ever heard. Especially when you have programs like Wisconsin, Iowa and at times Illinois experience sustained success. How about Boise St.? Where do they get their players? These programs are recruiting in the same regions of the country. So don't tell me that the area doesn't have the players to be a successful program. That is the biggest crock of you know what. Maybe it's worthless excuses like this that this program is in such a dreadful state. Unbelievable!!
 

badgergopher said:
High Schools - nope UW and IA are good
Coaches - nope we've tried 8 since '67 and by now one would have worked
Stadium - nope, or if it was it's been corrected
Vikings - nope Miami, USC, UCLA, Ga. Tech, ... Have all proven you can win in a big league city
$ Committment - Bingo

The U sponsors more sports than the other programs in the big ten. We pay our head coach very little compared to Iowa and Wisconsin. People forget that when Pat Richter took over at UW he cut mens and womens fencing, mens and womens gymnastics, and mens baseball to clean up and simplify the budget. Have you ever heard the saying about a ham and egg breakfast that the chicken was involved but the pig was committed? Cancalling your baseball program is committment. Someday the U will ant to win that bad, I think that Bruinicks has brought us closer by committing to a stadium and upping the budget for assistant salaries.
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Good luck getting baseball eliminated. Too much success, tradition/history and great alumni. Wisconsin's baseball program was horrific and needed to be cut anyway.
 

JackiO said:
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
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We do not have the students in the area that are capable of understanding or learning about Business Management. It's pretty simple. To have to go to Iowa and Illinois year after year and expect to pull talented students that will keep succeeding at being educated in Business Management is nearly impossible. We are just not a Business Management school or area. Plain and simple. :blah:

or

We do not have the students in the area that are capable of understanding or learning Medicine It's pretty simple. To have to go to Iowa and Illinois year after year and expect to pull talented students that will keep succeeding at being educated in Medicine is nearly impossible. We are just not a Medical School or area. Plain and simple. :blah:

[/sarcastic rewrites]
 

the deep rooted problem? not caring enough to invest in a high quality, high cost coach. tubby has worked miracles for the bball program. another problem is this very attitude, so numbed to losing that it doesnt even phase most people anymore. thats just sad.
 

RodentRampage said:
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.
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I think this is correct and says it all.

Pro sports rule the cities so the gophers don't get much coverage. It was different before pro sports came to town.
 

Art Vandelay said:
How much HS talent does Idaho have?
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living in ID, I can tell you there's not a lot of talent, but some occasionally, like Jake Locher (QB at Washington) and a few others. BSU recruits heavily in Ca and the northwest, Moore is from Washington. Other stars for BSU are out of state. They've had a lasting coaching staff that promotes from within. Local talent usually languishes on second and third string. Look at BSU's basketball team, virtually no local talent, and they suck at BB. Don't think BSU is winning on local talent, it's coaching and fitting a system to the talent you get.
 

Duluthguy said:
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.
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We need a big name, big dollar coach. The fans are not going to give enough patience to anything less. If things are as bad as people are saying - fixing this will take time. Any coach that comes here that is worth anything at all is going to demand a KING'S RANSOM for a deal. Pay it. This job is going to get a coach fired and his coaching career expired, unless he is incredible at what he does and even then he will have to get lucky early on with recruits.
 

Man, this thread is right in Wren's wheelhouse. He should be unbanned just for this thread, ha!
 

This thread is 0.025% of the threads currently on the front page of this forum.
 

to SUMMARIZE....

I believe that this school, no matter how much money you throw at a coach or this program, is just a difficult place to recruit geographically. Why would any 5 star recruit from any one of 50 states, including MN, play their college ball at the U? What is it about this school's location that could attract a young man to play football here? What can a new coach sell a recruit on the direction, history, tradition of MN football? How and what can the U sell to a top 10 head coach on working here at the U that he couldn't find elsewhere?

I know that a recruit can get one of the BEST educations here in the country but to play football and have to bundle up in the winter maybe too much to ask many of these talented young recruits to do.

Maybe its just this simple -- Duke/UCLA/Indiana/NC have its basketball.....Alabama/Florida/PSU/OKU have its football......and just maybe our U has its hockey...(maybe even its baseball). And maybe every 50+ years or so we will get lucky and have our football too! :rolleyes: I hope I'm wrong!
 

PREXY B will see that the remaining 99.975% of the threads will be successful. We can be sure that the University of MINNESOTA will rise again, just as it should. We just need an administration with the STRENGTH to see that the 99.975% of threads currently on the board are as useful and sucsessful.

HAIL! Minnesota!

(poor imitation I know.)
 

JackiO said:
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
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Yes, and Boise, ID is a haven for remarkable players. "Plain and simple." Simple is right.
 

Duluthguy said:
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.
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For at least the hundredth time on this sorry excuse for an informational forum: Jim Wacker was a former NCAA D1A Coach of the Year when hired by the U. I didn't say he did a good job here, but he was not stepping up a level. So, you're back to figuring out why no coach has been able to fully succeed here. The answer lies with the coach in some cases, but in others it is clear there is a systemic problem at the U that suppresses absolute success in terms of wins and losses.
 

IMO, starts with Administration - it has to want to have a good program & back it up with $$$$. The budget numbers recited earlier (Iowa vs. Minnesota) are shocking.

Facilities are far better than they used to be - TCF is a plus, etc.

Don't know how well the U pays assistants - I won't be surprised if the answer is "not well."

The choices for the Administration are (1) support the program; or (2) admit you're not interested.

If it's #2, then the Administration really ought to evaluate whether it should remain in the Big 10.

Yes, I know that sounds extreme - but that's the choice; is the U serious or not?
 

Minnesota does not have the most varsity teams in the Big 10

Illinois 21 teams
Indiana 24 teams
Iowa 24 teams
Michigan 25 teams
Michigan St. 25 teams
Minnesota 23 teams
Northwestern 19 teams
Ohio State 35 teams
Penn State 29 teams
Purdue 18 teams
Wisconsin 23 teams
Nebraska 21 teams

We are right in the middle of the pack. Cutting athletic programs is not the answer. If you are going to cut teams you shouldn't be in the Big Ten. Iowa State has 16 teams and Nebraska with 21 had the most in the Big 12 Conference.


Go Gophers!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
 

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