doc,
prexy b has been calling the shots ever since the day he took over as the president of the U of M. He was the one who told maturi to finally extend Mason back in 2005. He was the one who told maturi to fire Mason at the end of the 2006 season. He was the one who loaned money from the University General Fund to the athletic department to fund the buy out of the Mason extension that he had ordered maturi to do. prexy b was the one who told maturi it was ok to hire brewster. prexy b. was the one who gave maturi the ok extend brewster at the end of the 2009 season. And it was prexy b who ordered maturi to give brewster the axe mid-way through the 2010 season. It has been prexy b who has been talking about extending maturi's contract to give maturi a "golden parachute" so that when maturi is let go by Prexy K that he will get a nice fat pay-off for having been the prexy b fall guy and yes man for all these horrible decisions with the football program that have been made in the past five or six years. And, now, during this search for a new coach, prexy b knew and understood that matrui's credibility had fallen so low and that the totally lame duck nature of this new search process made the outlook so bleak that Dave Mona, a p.r. guy was appointed as an associate athletic director or some such nonsense to try to keep maturi from "maturizing" the process and that the process could be "monaized".
I don't trust prexy b doc.
Prexy K is going to have a lot of problems in the near to mid-term future because of prexy b. Especially as he struggles to try to make the TCF BANK STADIUM investment a great success rather than an ongoing problem for the athletic department.
And Prexy K will need to start cutting some of the non-revenue sports. The sooner prexy b and maturi are gone, the sooner some of the damage from the poor start that the new stadium got off to under prexy b and maturi can be addressed and some more moves to at least make the stadium something the student body will want to go attend games at can be attempted by the new president of the University of Minnesota.
maturi never has been a relevent factor. That has been a large part of the problem with hockey and football.