I really, really hate Pat Reusse!!!

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I was interviewed by Pat Ruesse for an article about sixteen years ago and also found him to be very friendly, thorough, and wrote a very good article about the story that I was involved in. I see his place at the Star Tribune as important because he balances Mr. hartman and his homer tendencies very well. A good newspaper covers the good and bad. I find it amusing that so many get offended by his writing. The program has been stuck in neutral for 50 years, with little sign of coming up for air. Not sure he would be doing his job if he just wrote fluffy pieces and told us every year that Gopher football was on the rise; like Sid does.

xyz1 said:
I'm a longtime lurker (I remember Wren and kept expecting to read of his civil commitment) but new poster. As these Reusse threads seem to appear bi-weekly, and as I had some dealings with him quite a while back in a different professional life of mine, I thought I might offer a few insights that might keep these from reoccuring so often. Take this for what you want; I'm not him or related to him, haven't spoken to him in 15 years, and wasn't ever what you'd call close to him; I highly doubt he'd recognize me today.

First of all, were most of you to deal with in person, you'd probably like him. He's friendly, irreverent, and hilarious, and doesn't seem to take himself too seriously (unlike a former Strib columnist who also works in radio now at a different sports station, initials DB); the sense that I got was that his rather interesting life story - adopted by a funeral director in very rural Minnesota, dropping out of college yet still having a successful newspaper career, and overcoming a severe drinking problem that had a huge impact on his family life - led to him keeping things in perspective.

Second, there is nothing he likes more in life than needling people. If he gets the response he gets from some of the people on here, that's exactly what he wants because he knows he's hit a nerve. I honestly think he takes it too far; everybody knows he hates and doesn't understand or care about hockey, and that he thinks Gopher football has been pathetic for four decades, and I don't really see what the point is in continuing to jab people like he does, but that's how he operates. Quite honestly, starting threads on here complaining about him, when we know he checks out this board, will only lead to more of the same.

Another thing to keep in mind about him is that he divides the world into "characters", and all others. Basically if you're good or at least competent at your job, strike him as a good guy, and are colorful and eccentric, you're pretty much golden. If he ever wrote a negative word about Tom Kelly I don't remember seeing it; Harvey Mackay, Mike Lynn, Clem Haskins, and Lou Nanne are others who he never treated as harshly as he might have because they were "characters". If you're not a character, though, it's open season; he's currently staging a frontal assault on Kevin Love, whose worst sin appears to be saying publicly what everybody thinks - that David Kahn is clueless - but talked this week about how much he misses Clem and doesn't care what others think. For me, I'll take Kevin Love over that slimeball Clem every day of the week and twice on Sunday. For whatever reason, nobody involved with Gopher football ever seems to get promoted to "character" status, and thus the program never gets kid glove treatment from him; you could tell early on he wanted to like Kill, but for whatever reason he's soured on him somewhat.


As to his writing ability, you can take issue with his cynicism or other aspects of how he does his job - and I have at times - but there is no question he is an artful writer. As to whether he "couldn't make it in a bigger market", as I've read on occasion on here, I was told by an impeccable source that earlier in his career he had numerous lucrative opportunities to move to bigger markets but chose to stay in Minnesota.
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Patrick Reusse ‏@1500ESPN_Reusse
I'm bored w/ stories about Jerry Kill's seizures.
 


Fatrick had this on his editor's desk by 11:30. Too bad it got rejected. "Before the myriad of Country Jer's Rubes get ahead of themselves and starting booking tickets to Pasadena for New Year's Day in 2014, they might want to consider that they only beat a team that didn't have a head coach, because he left for the football powerhouse of Cincinnati (Not the Bungles, The Bearcats. Yes, the University of Huggins has a football team.) The Techsters fired a head coach because he locked a kid in a shed and they play worse defense than Kim Kardashian after a night on the red carpet. We'll see how well this vaunted running game holds up when they're up against the cornfed farmboys from Nebraska and Wisconsin."
 


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