BleedGopher
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Per Andrew:
The Treadmill of Mediocrity has become a popular phrase in modern sports. It refers to teams that are good enough to rise above the bottom of their league, but not good enough to compete for anything meaningful. It implies a sort of complacency or a glass ceiling that the current roster, coach, or administration can’t or won’t break through. In pro sports, it often derives from the draft structure: if you’re just good enough to sneak into the playoffs, you probably won’t draft high enough to get true impact players that can elevate you to the next level.
College football has its own stories of the Treadmill of Mediocrity. It feels like Nebraska has cycled through a new coach every nine months since Tom Osborne retired in search of someone who can bring them back to the promised land. On the other hand, Kirk Ferentz is the longest tenured coach in the country even though he has never won an outright Big 10 Championship, last won a share of one in 2004, and his disdain for modern offenses means Iowa will probably never do any better than that. Iowa has seemingly made the decision that winning about 9 games a year is the best they can reasonably hope for and they’re probably not wrong.
As I grew up in Big 10 country, the closest program to my hometown jogged multitudinous miles on its own Treadmill of Mediocrity. I grew up following the Glen Mason-era Minnesota Golden Gophers, which probably explains why I didn’t have a passionate attachment to any FBS team until I got to UW. Mason spent a decade at the head of Minnesota and went 32-48 in conference. How does a coach manage to stay that far under .500 against his peers and keep his job for 10 seasons? Let me explain.
More than anything, the thing that defined Mason’s tenure was his bullheaded aversion to scheduling anything vaguely resembling a competitive non-conference game. My dad and I joked when the schedule was released every year about when the rivalry game against Louisiana-Monroe would fall on the calendar. It was clear that Mason’s goal was to make a bowl game every season. To his credit, he accomplished that goal in seven of his ten seasons. To his even greater discredit, those bowls were the Sun, MicronPC, Music City, and Insight Bowls, and he still managed a losing record in them.
It’s not hard to do the math on how Mason walked this tight-rope. How do you make bowl games almost every year despite winning only two out of every five conference games? You win almost all of your non-conference games. The first time Minnesota made a bowl under Mason, the Gophers beat Ohio, Louisiana-Monroe, and Illinois State to open the year. The next season, it was Ohio (a loss!), Louisiana-Monroe, and a Baylor team in an even more pathetic era. It went on: Toledo, Louisiana-Lafayette, Murray State, Texas State, Toledo, Tulsa, Troy, Illinois State, Colorado State, Florida Atlantic, Kent State, Temple. Several of these teams more than once. These aren’t cherry-picked examples of the worst teams they played; it’s the whole list going into his final season. The only ranked non-conference opponent the Gophers played during the Mason era was #22 Cal in Mason’s last season of 2006. It was a 42-17 defeat.
That 2006 season was a perfect example of the Mason experience. The Gophers beat Kent State, Temple, and North Dakota State (only 10-9 while the Bison were on their way to becoming FCS royalty). They played four ranked opponents and lost all four by an average score of 41-11. They closed the conference schedule with wins over sub-.500 Indiana, Michigan State, and Illinois teams to sneak into the Insight Bowl, where they gave up 44 points in a loss to Graham Harrell’s Texas Tech.
Somewhat surprisingly, that was the last straw for Mason at Minnesota. He was fired and replaced by the even worse Tim Brewster. After Brewster, the Gophers have had Jerry Kill and PJ Fleck. Neither Kill nor Fleck has lit the world on fire, but they both at least built teams that could compete with ranked opponents. Fleck beat #5 Penn State and #9 Auburn in 2019. Kill’s list of signature wins is shorter, but he had a litany of one-score losses to top-10 opponents. Both coaches also have had more of a willingness to schedule “A” games in non-conference rather than trying to cram as many “C” opponents as possible on the docket.
For his career at Minnesota, Mason went 6-30 against ranked opponents. One of the six was against a top-10 opponent, and the 2000 win over Ohio State is probably the signature game of Mason’s tenure. The Buckeyes came into that game at 5-0 and #6 in the country. They went 3-4 the rest of the way and finished unranked. In the end, it was this sort of hopeless non-competitiveness against very good teams that doomed Mason. The final Insight Bowl loss to Texas Tech was a tenth straight season of eking out bowl eligibility without getting any better against good opponents. The Gophers were truly stuck on the Treadmill of Mediocrity.
In Mason’s defense, he took over a moribund program with little hope for success. The Gophers shared the off-campus Metrodome with the Vikings and Twins, which made it hard to build much of a home field atmosphere. His predecessor, Jim Wacker, failed to put up even a .500 record in his five seasons in charge. In fact, the team that had been a national powerhouse from the ‘30s-early ‘60s had been mostly terrible for 25 years before Mason took over. That probably helps explain how Mason got the job after going 47-59 at Kansas and coming off a 4-7 season.
I will also give Mason credit for developing a unique and fun playing style during his tenure. Under Mason, the Gophers routinely featured athletic offensive linemen who could zone block against anyone and multiple running backs who could pile up yards in that scheme. Mason inherited Thomas Hamner and turned him into a 1300-yard rusher in his senior year. Over the following seasons, Tellis Redmon, Marion Barber III, Terry Jackson II, Laurence Maroney, Gary Russell, and Amir Pinnix went over the 1,000-yard mark (Thomas Tapeh also went over 900 one year). As teammates, Barber and Maroney both topped 1,000 yard in consecutive seasons, earning the clumsy nickname “The 4000 Boys” from Mark May. The pair totaled over 2600 yards and 23 TDs in 2004, which is itself a great memory (the team went 7-5, alas). All told, Mason coached more 1,000-yard rushing seasons than he coached seasons at Minnesota.
Mason finished his coaching career 123-121-1. He has worked as an analyst for the Big 10 Network for several years and comes across as a thoughtful, nice person. I genuinely enjoy hearing his analysis amidst the sea of hot takes angling to go viral. If it feels like I’m unfairly dumping on him today, consider it repayment for the hours upon hours- likely well into the hundreds- I spent watching the Gophers lose by 30 to ranked teams just when it seemed like they were on the precipice of a breakthrough. Instead, they never made that progress. They remained on the Treadmill of Mediocrity.
www.uwdawgpound.com
Go Gophers!!
The Treadmill of Mediocrity has become a popular phrase in modern sports. It refers to teams that are good enough to rise above the bottom of their league, but not good enough to compete for anything meaningful. It implies a sort of complacency or a glass ceiling that the current roster, coach, or administration can’t or won’t break through. In pro sports, it often derives from the draft structure: if you’re just good enough to sneak into the playoffs, you probably won’t draft high enough to get true impact players that can elevate you to the next level.
College football has its own stories of the Treadmill of Mediocrity. It feels like Nebraska has cycled through a new coach every nine months since Tom Osborne retired in search of someone who can bring them back to the promised land. On the other hand, Kirk Ferentz is the longest tenured coach in the country even though he has never won an outright Big 10 Championship, last won a share of one in 2004, and his disdain for modern offenses means Iowa will probably never do any better than that. Iowa has seemingly made the decision that winning about 9 games a year is the best they can reasonably hope for and they’re probably not wrong.
As I grew up in Big 10 country, the closest program to my hometown jogged multitudinous miles on its own Treadmill of Mediocrity. I grew up following the Glen Mason-era Minnesota Golden Gophers, which probably explains why I didn’t have a passionate attachment to any FBS team until I got to UW. Mason spent a decade at the head of Minnesota and went 32-48 in conference. How does a coach manage to stay that far under .500 against his peers and keep his job for 10 seasons? Let me explain.
More than anything, the thing that defined Mason’s tenure was his bullheaded aversion to scheduling anything vaguely resembling a competitive non-conference game. My dad and I joked when the schedule was released every year about when the rivalry game against Louisiana-Monroe would fall on the calendar. It was clear that Mason’s goal was to make a bowl game every season. To his credit, he accomplished that goal in seven of his ten seasons. To his even greater discredit, those bowls were the Sun, MicronPC, Music City, and Insight Bowls, and he still managed a losing record in them.
It’s not hard to do the math on how Mason walked this tight-rope. How do you make bowl games almost every year despite winning only two out of every five conference games? You win almost all of your non-conference games. The first time Minnesota made a bowl under Mason, the Gophers beat Ohio, Louisiana-Monroe, and Illinois State to open the year. The next season, it was Ohio (a loss!), Louisiana-Monroe, and a Baylor team in an even more pathetic era. It went on: Toledo, Louisiana-Lafayette, Murray State, Texas State, Toledo, Tulsa, Troy, Illinois State, Colorado State, Florida Atlantic, Kent State, Temple. Several of these teams more than once. These aren’t cherry-picked examples of the worst teams they played; it’s the whole list going into his final season. The only ranked non-conference opponent the Gophers played during the Mason era was #22 Cal in Mason’s last season of 2006. It was a 42-17 defeat.
That 2006 season was a perfect example of the Mason experience. The Gophers beat Kent State, Temple, and North Dakota State (only 10-9 while the Bison were on their way to becoming FCS royalty). They played four ranked opponents and lost all four by an average score of 41-11. They closed the conference schedule with wins over sub-.500 Indiana, Michigan State, and Illinois teams to sneak into the Insight Bowl, where they gave up 44 points in a loss to Graham Harrell’s Texas Tech.
Somewhat surprisingly, that was the last straw for Mason at Minnesota. He was fired and replaced by the even worse Tim Brewster. After Brewster, the Gophers have had Jerry Kill and PJ Fleck. Neither Kill nor Fleck has lit the world on fire, but they both at least built teams that could compete with ranked opponents. Fleck beat #5 Penn State and #9 Auburn in 2019. Kill’s list of signature wins is shorter, but he had a litany of one-score losses to top-10 opponents. Both coaches also have had more of a willingness to schedule “A” games in non-conference rather than trying to cram as many “C” opponents as possible on the docket.
For his career at Minnesota, Mason went 6-30 against ranked opponents. One of the six was against a top-10 opponent, and the 2000 win over Ohio State is probably the signature game of Mason’s tenure. The Buckeyes came into that game at 5-0 and #6 in the country. They went 3-4 the rest of the way and finished unranked. In the end, it was this sort of hopeless non-competitiveness against very good teams that doomed Mason. The final Insight Bowl loss to Texas Tech was a tenth straight season of eking out bowl eligibility without getting any better against good opponents. The Gophers were truly stuck on the Treadmill of Mediocrity.
In Mason’s defense, he took over a moribund program with little hope for success. The Gophers shared the off-campus Metrodome with the Vikings and Twins, which made it hard to build much of a home field atmosphere. His predecessor, Jim Wacker, failed to put up even a .500 record in his five seasons in charge. In fact, the team that had been a national powerhouse from the ‘30s-early ‘60s had been mostly terrible for 25 years before Mason took over. That probably helps explain how Mason got the job after going 47-59 at Kansas and coming off a 4-7 season.
I will also give Mason credit for developing a unique and fun playing style during his tenure. Under Mason, the Gophers routinely featured athletic offensive linemen who could zone block against anyone and multiple running backs who could pile up yards in that scheme. Mason inherited Thomas Hamner and turned him into a 1300-yard rusher in his senior year. Over the following seasons, Tellis Redmon, Marion Barber III, Terry Jackson II, Laurence Maroney, Gary Russell, and Amir Pinnix went over the 1,000-yard mark (Thomas Tapeh also went over 900 one year). As teammates, Barber and Maroney both topped 1,000 yard in consecutive seasons, earning the clumsy nickname “The 4000 Boys” from Mark May. The pair totaled over 2600 yards and 23 TDs in 2004, which is itself a great memory (the team went 7-5, alas). All told, Mason coached more 1,000-yard rushing seasons than he coached seasons at Minnesota.
Mason finished his coaching career 123-121-1. He has worked as an analyst for the Big 10 Network for several years and comes across as a thoughtful, nice person. I genuinely enjoy hearing his analysis amidst the sea of hot takes angling to go viral. If it feels like I’m unfairly dumping on him today, consider it repayment for the hours upon hours- likely well into the hundreds- I spent watching the Gophers lose by 30 to ranked teams just when it seemed like they were on the precipice of a breakthrough. Instead, they never made that progress. They remained on the Treadmill of Mediocrity.
Better Know a B1G: The Glenmill of Masonocrity
How the Golden Gophers spent a decade running without making any progress
www.uwdawgpound.com
Go Gophers!!
