I think Maturi has done an excellent job at Minnesota. Obviously you had the problems with Mason & Monson contract extensions and that is the one black mark on his record. However, when you look at the success of the athletic dept. as a whole, Maturi has clearly done a very good job. Everybody focuses on the revenue producing sports but he is just as accountable to every other team on campus. Did you realize that every single Gopher athletics team (spring excluded because they haven't started yet) has been ranked in the top 25 during the course of this year? Last I looked the Gophers were in the top 10 for the Sears cup. To me that is a pretty impressive job by the athletic director.
The academic acheivements definitely seem to have improved and it was a nice change of pace to see the Gopher football team tied with OSU & Northwestern for the lead in Academic All Conference (or whatever the title of the award was) and only one player having academic problems this season. Gopher basketball graduated 100% of it's seniors last year and I don't know the academic credentials of this year's seniors but I would expect that trend to continue.
Maturi made a great hire in Tubby and the Brewster hire still has to play out but I'm encouraged by the early progress. At the time I wanted Lane Kiffin but considering how much of an *ss Kiffin is making of himself at Tennessee my feelings on that subject have changed. If nothing else, Brewster has shown a coach can recruit to Minnesota and even if he doesn't work out we'll have a team full of talent which means the next coach can win right away.