ESPN: Brew's tumultuous tenure had many questioning why U ever got rid of Mason

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Good points corcoran. A little more budget and some support staff might have gone a long way for him. He certainly didn't get the support Ferentz gets in Iowa City or Fitzgerald gets in Evanston. This where I think Kill has an advantage over Mason. Most if not all of the obstacles (MACturi and his cronies) are gone. Thanks Norwood!
 

Eagan said:
Mason had two 5-3 Big 10 seasons (not one) and two 4-4 seasons. How many of those have we had since he was let go?
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I could rant all day about this. No matter what I write, nothing good will result. All I have to say is this:


MEDIOCRITY SUCKS!
 

Part of me wishes Mason would have stuck around for one more year. He may have won more than one game in '07 but there is no way we win more than 3 or 4 with that team.
 

Dean S said:
I could rant all day about this. No matter what I write, nothing good will result. All I have to say is this:


MEDIOCRITY SUCKS!
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Spoken by Mr. MEDIOCRITY himself!!! :)
 



So glad ESPN recapped this because we've never really talked about it here :)
 

It's time for a fresh take on the Mason firing situation

NM
 

I will never forget after the Wisconsin meltdown at the Dome when they blocked the punt to win it. All the punter needed to do with the bad snap was take a safety. Instead he tried to punt it. Mason was asked about talking to the punter beforehand about the safety option. His answer was, "I didn't want to put any negatives into his head." He should have been fired for that alone.
I'm glad we went thru all these bad coaches because it has brought us Jerry Kill. He is taking us to the promised land, boys.
 

Halsey Hall said:
I will never forget after the Wisconsin meltdown at the Dome when they blocked the punt to win it. All the punter needed to do with the bad snap was take a safety. Instead he tried to punt it. Mason was asked about talking to the punter beforehand about the safety option. His answer was, "I didn't want to put any negatives into his head." He should have been fired for that alone.
I'm glad we went thru all these bad coaches because it has brought us Jerry Kill. He is taking us to the promised land, boys.
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+1.
 



Halsey Hall said:
I will never forget after the Wisconsin meltdown at the Dome when they blocked the punt to win it. All the punter needed to do with the bad snap was take a safety. Instead he tried to punt it. Mason was asked about talking to the punter beforehand about the safety option. His answer was, "I didn't want to put any negatives into his head." He should have been fired for that alone.
I'm glad we went thru all these bad coaches because it has brought us Jerry Kill. He is taking us to the promised land, boys.
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Great story! I suspect Mason just neglected to think about that at the time and gave that answer so they hopefully would get off the subject. The reality is if he had told the punter that, the punter would have realized he had options and then should have been able to relax more. A human mistake by Mason but a costly one.
 

Killjoy said:
Great story! I suspect Mason just neglected to think about that at the time and gave that answer so they hopefully would get off the subject. The reality is if he had told the punter that, the punter would have realized he had options and then should have been able to relax more. A human mistake by Mason but a costly one.
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This can't be a singular event, but a game by game event.
 

GopherHomer said:
Enjoy this thread while you can, boys...Wren is probably composing his latest epic as we speak.
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Folks, I will take one for the team and sum up his thoughts in 20 words or less. This one should be easy: Mason is perfect, this Brewster ruined the program, MACturi is to blame. Big Ten wins count.

;0)
 

Halsey Hall said:
I will never forget after the Wisconsin meltdown at the Dome when they blocked the punt to win it. All the punter needed to do with the bad snap was take a safety. Instead he tried to punt it. Mason was asked about talking to the punter beforehand about the safety option. His answer was, "I didn't want to put any negatives into his head." He should have been fired for that alone.
I'm glad we went thru all these bad coaches because it has brought us Jerry Kill. He is taking us to the promised land, boys.
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It is horrendous that a coach wouldn't have said something to the punter. At the same time, it was shocking that a division one football player lacked the situational awareness to know that. I was a high school student who had never played organized football at the time, and as soon as the snap went bad I was screaming at the TV to kick it out the back and take the safety. (Good thing I did a proof read before I submitted, I almost wrote that "I was a high student who had never.....")
 



Dean S said:
I could rant all day about this. No matter what I write, nothing good will result. All I have to say is this:


MEDIOCRITY SUCKS!
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How do you feel about back to back 2-6 Big 10 seasons?
 





station19 said:
Was there ever more to the Brewster/Strong selection or was it just a plain stupid choice by Maturi? I don't seem to recall.
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The most depressing part of the Brewster hire is everyone else we could have had, Strong being at the top of the list. That being said, have you ever heard Charlie Strong speak? "We was trying to run the ball" probably doesn't go over well in an interview. He has cleaned it up, but people in Louisville use to cringe when he had to speak in public.
 

I find it hilarious that the author of that piece calls a 32-48 Big Ten record "middling". I also find it hilarious that he fails to mention the Gophers never even finished as high as 3rd in the conference under Mason or (unbelievably) defeated a team that finished in the top 3 of the conference.

I find it interesting how Brewster is treated in relation to both Mason and Kill. It's somewhat disheartening that Brewster is treated as some massive failure while Mason/Kill seem to get more of a free pass. Brewster took over a program in terrible shape, the Gophers were a pretty bad football team in Mason's final year with senior QB in his 3rd year as a starter AND the Mackey award winning Senior TE. The recruiting classes had been awful for 3 years and Daniels, Jones, Massey all were (rightly) kicked off the team. Brewster started two true freshmen in his defensive backfield and at least one true freshman at wide receiver...and these were guys that were available after he was hired...ex Curtis Thomas. His first season was a disaster record wise, but he was cleaning up someone elses mess (the theory everyone allows with Kill following Brewster) and the team was at least very competitive against Wisconsin and Iowa to end that season. His second season started out great, but he made a BRUTAL decision to try to get in FG range and took that horrible loss to Northwestern when Weber got picked. The Gophers could have been 8-2 at that point. Also in that game, Decker got hurt and that was a big loss. The next season the Gophers won 3 games again, despite their best offensive weapon (Decker) going down for the second year in a row. The team had a great shot to beat Wisconsin that year (again), but failed. Brewster was then on a SCORCHING hot seat going in to his 4th season, despite already reaching the typical Mason season twice (3-5 in the B1G, minor bowl appearance) and recruiting better in state and out of state than Minnesota had in years. I believe his final recruiting class was weaker than what he what was bringing in years earlier, and the momentum was clearly gone. The team took some terrible losses and Brewster was fired mid season, only for Horton to take the talent on that team to 2 B1G wins.

Brewster had plenty of flaws, chief among them going through essentially 3 different offensive schemes in just 3 full years as head coach. I think he would have lasted at least another year, if he came in talking like Kill instead of trying to build excitement within the fan base, but don't think the end result would have been much different. Once the recruiting momentum was gone and we were down to Cosgrove as our DC, there wasn't a lot of reason to believe things would turn around.

I don't have any issue with firing Brewster, but his tenure wasn't the disaster it was made out to be relative to what we've seen from Mason/Kill. This year, the Gopher return Rashede Hageman as a source of optimism and exactly the type of in state kid we had zero shot at pre-Brewster.

I agree with most in this thread who mention that the real issue wasn't hiring Charlie Strong in the first place. I remember a lot of the Mason fans claiming we had "no shot" to get a guy like Strong to come to Minnesota...and then Maturi hired Brewster over him. FWIW, Brewster wasn't a name that was completely out of nowhere, he had turned down Iowa State before campaigning for the Gophers job.
 

With the staff continuity Kill has enjoyed, Brewster would probably still be here, and have enjoyed some decent success. I don't know why so many people struggle with understanding the significance of staff/coordinator/scheme continuity. It's everything. Brewster wasn't nearly as incompetent as he's remembered and neither was Weber.

And that's precisely why I think Kill will be successful with the Gophers. He's not only done it before, but with the same staff, and more than once. He'll get the job done
 

TCF=UnitedWeStand said:
I wonder if this topic will ever, ever go away.
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It will but it will take Kill getting the team to the promised land to make it go away. It was said above but it is worth repeating. Firing Mason wasn't the problem, it was time for a change. They just hired the wrong guy.
 

Replacement Gopher said:
The most depressing part of the Brewster hire is everyone else we could have had, Strong being at the top of the list. That being said, have you ever heard Charlie Strong speak? "We was trying to run the ball" probably doesn't go over well in an interview. He has cleaned it up, but people in Louisville use to cringe when he had to speak in public.
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I wasn't aware of that. Like you say that won't go over well. He could easily get a job with ESPN with that grammar though.
 

Ogee Oglethorpe said:
With the staff continuity Kill has enjoyed, Brewster would probably still be here, and have enjoyed some decent success. I don't know why so many people struggle with understanding the significance of staff/coordinator/scheme continuity. It's everything. Brewster wasn't nearly as incompetent as he's remembered and neither was Weber.

And that's precisely why I think Kill will be successful with the Gophers. He's not only done it before, but with the same staff, and more than once. He'll get the job done
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They just might go hand in hand.
 

We will know much better where we are headed at the end of this third season under...

bleedsmaroonandgold said:
I think the best way to say it was that the problem was not firing Mason, it was hiring Brewster. One thing I do want us to keep in mind as we move forward, last year Kill went 6-6 in the regular season then lost the bowl game. We fired Mason after going 6-6 in the regular season then losing the bowl game (albeit in a much more depressing fashion). While I recognize that Kill doing that was a big step forward from the crap pile that Brewster left him with, and Mason doing it was a step backwards from some of his slightly better mediocre teams, this is not the end. I expect continued improvement going forward.
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Coach Kill. You can spin it any way you want, but the conference record will tell us all we need to know and the only thing we need to know about how the Program is competing within the conference. The numbers NEVER lie. The numbers ALWAYS tell the truth. Less is NOT more...never has been and never will be. But, you people got exactly what you wanted and that is exactly what you deserve...

; 0 )
 

The "new administration" has not proved a darn thing. Look at the Student Section...or...the lack of the student section under this new administration.

No, you people got exactly what you wanted...and now you spin at your dizzying speeds. And I count the number of Conference wins vs the number of conference losses. I hope that Coach Kill wins at least one more conference game this season than he did the last two. He needs to be more competitive in Conference play or you people will be calling for his head and wanting to throw him out on his ear. I know you will. I have seen you folks at work. Once the boosters...the puppet masters decide the time is right...you will be calling for the head of the coach.

Personally, I hope Coach Kill IS able to get this program more competitive. In fact, I'm pretty sure that I would defend Coach Kill longer than most of you if push comes to shove. I hope he gets the wins he will need...to keep you folks at bay. But, I have seen this happen time...and time again. As for me...I want to see Coach Kill succeed. That would mean that he has the program more competitive within the conference. That is as good as it gets folks. With the Ohio State, Michigan, Nebraska, and a few other interchangeable teams in the conference...that is as good as it gets. We hope and wait for that magical season when it all comes together. We are fools when we fire a coach who is making enough progress to come closer than we have been in 10...15...20 years. We are fools when we fire a coach who brings us All-American and All-conference players.

And that is why we deserve EXACTLY what we have gotten...; 0 )
 

RodentRampage said:
The Brewster years don't say anything about whether firing Mason was a good or bad idea. Gutekunst went 5-3 in the Big Ten twice. Does the Wacker hire mean that firing Gutekunst was a bad idea? It's risky to hire head coaches who only have position coaching experience (Brewster). It's risky idea to hire coaches who had only had D-II head coaching experience experience (Joe Salem). It's risky to hire coaches who have losing records as a D-I head coach. The Brewster years tell us more about hiring decisions than firing decisions. If we had hired an experienced, well-regarded coach, and we still got the results we had during the Brewster era, that might have told us something.
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Right...you THINK you will fire your way into prosperity. It ain't happening. You people get what you want. And...in the process you bring us all EXACTLY what we deserve. End of story. Read the record. You see, it is a process. When you FIRE someone, you have to HIRE someone. Firing someone is risky business. It produces years of wasted efforts. Hiring someone is risky business. It produces years of wasted efforts...and then...after five years, you most likely repeat the process again. The process of hiring and firing and hiring and once again firing really sucks. That is where our football program has been. That is why our football program is the way it is. That is why I am certain that without some more conference wins in a hurry, you people will be calling for the head of another coach. That's the way you people are. That is the way Gopher Fans are. That is why we deserve exactly what we have created for ourselves.

IF Coach Kill can't break the cycle, the next decade will pretty much be shot. I'm really pulling for Coach Kill to succeed. It IS a tough job though kids...

; 0 )
 

Gopherprof said:
Not firing Mason would have been an open acknowledgement that Minnesota will never achieve greatness and shouldn't even bother trying. Perhaps there's a legitimate argument to be made for that, but if you're in charge of the athletic department dependent upon alumni and fan enthusiasm, I don't think that really flies.

10 years is an exceptionally long time. If Kill is still here in 8 more seasons I'll consider that a success.
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Kill is getting credit for building depth & bettering the program overall, even if not visible in terms of W/L. Conversely Mason deserved firing for letting the depth go to hell, the types of players he was bringing in & the program regressing overall.

By the time Mason left there were no more Eslingers, Setterstroms, MB3's, Gary Russell's or Lawrence Maroney's. That amazing running game was fading fast.

Worse yet the Defense was in shambles. Mason recruited 7 (?) Juco's on Defense because he knew the cup board was bare. It's been a while but I recall most of them being expected to start or at least be rotation guys.

Then there's the players he'd been bringing in. DJ, Massey, Daniels & the RB from Mo. were all charged in a rape scandal & dismissed. Then there was Robert McField who was hiding out of sorts at the U from bank robbery charges against him back in Mo.

I like Mason, but it was time.
 

GopherHomer said:
Enjoy this thread while you can, boys...Wren is probably composing his latest epic as we speak.
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Hey there homer: I didn't start this thread. However, in the spirit of good contrast, I will have to provide a little bit of life to this thread. There are just too many of you people pig-piling all over each other trying to say the most mean, nasty and totally biased things about the subject. All of you "lock-step" typing spin doctors need to have a bit of contrast added to your one-sided point of view to spice up this thread. Or, do you NEED to have everyone all thinking, saying and trying to believe the same thing? Are you all tolerant of only the "company" line all of the time?

Remember: in the REAL world, not everyone has to say, think and do the same thing everyone else says, thinks and does.

I'd be willing to wager that BleedGopher probably posted this piece to stir the board on to greater discussions and lively, spirited interchanges of DIFFERING points of view. How about THAT for an entertaining discussion board topic?

Now, I'd like to hear what YOU have to say homer...

; 0 )
 

Kill is definitely an improvement over Brewster, who was a wannabe fraud. The only issue I have with Jerry, is his tip-toe approach to out of conference scheduling. Getting to bowl games because most of the wins came against weak non-conference opponents, is not where you folks want to be. For the good of the B1G, I hope that gets rectified quickly.
 

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