Is Maturi the worst Gopher AD?

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GopherFish

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As a lifelong Gopher fan, I've never disliked an AD more than Maturi. Perhaps, other ADs were equally incompetent, but he has been my least favorite AD.

His record in football and basketball are bad, and about the worst for any AD that has been around as long as Maturi. I've already done another thread on this. But while there may be a few other ADs who have fared as bad or worse, what I can't stand is his arrogance, meddlesome ways, and faux (fake) folksy manner.

I know there are some Maturi lovers out there who will say that the football stadium was a great accomplishment (a shiny unfilled stadium on campus doesnt impress me, but hey I preferred the Dome), or that he has turned around finances (ok hire him in financial dept or as a fundraiser, but he's partially responsible for the Williams fiasco and the cheesy helicopter waste of money) or other sports have done well (not the ones I follow).

Maybe its that Maturi is more visible as an AD, but he seems to ruin Gopher sports for me. Please retire Joel, you are old and over your head and you are too clueless to notice.
 

Wile I don't agree with everything Maturi has done, I don't agree with your post. First of all, you think Maturi is arrogant? You might not like his actions as AD, but I would hardly call him arrogant. Second, he DOES deserve a lot of credit for getting the stadium built and for getting the athletic department in good financial shape. To deny those two accomplishments is to deny him the credit he deserves. And, by the way, the stadium is not half empty. I also give Maturi credit for firing Glen Mason and taking a chance on Brewster. Will that gamble work? Maybe...maybe not. But at least he was willing to say that the mediocre years we saw under Mason weren't good enough. I'm not sure how old you are or how many ADs you have seen at MN, but to me, Maturi is not at all one of the worst.
 

GopherFish said:
As a lifelong Gopher fan, I've never disliked an AD more than Maturi. Perhaps, other ADs were equally incompetent, but he has been my least favorite AD.

His record in football and basketball are bad, and about the worst for any AD that has been around as long as Maturi. I've already done another thread on this. But while there may be a few other ADs who have fared as bad or worse, what I can't stand is his arrogance, meddlesome ways, and faux (fake) folksy manner.

I know there are some Maturi lovers out there who will say that the football stadium was a great accomplishment (a shiny half empty stadium on campus doesnt impress me, but I liked the Dome), or that he has turned around finances (ok hire him in financial dept or as a fundraiser, but he's partially responsible for the Williams fiasco and the cheesy helicopter recruiting that bombed) or other sports have done well (not the ones I follow).

Maybe its that Maturi is more visible as an AD, but he seems to ruin Gopher sports for me. Please retire Joel, you are old and over your head and you are too clueless to notice.
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Wow, half empty? A brand new state of the art stadium doesn't impress you? What will, Maturi suiting up and rushing for 1,200 yards next year?

If he is ruining gopher sports for you, then you're obviously not paying enough attention to what really matters: the team(s) and games. I'm not saying he's the best AD and that he hasn't made his mistakes, but not everything is his fault.
 

Joel is by far the BEST Gophers AD since the 1960's. He makes every other AD since that time look like they weren't even trying. Given what he has had to work with Joel has done an amazing job. Until he took over the athletics department was a complete disaster and it had been that way for several decades. The person who follows him as AD will have a considerably easier time because of Joel's groundwork.
 

is this the worst post ever about maturi? the worst AD ever? Are you kidding me? Mark Dinehart was the AD during the worst academic fraud scandal in college basketball history. that takes the cake. I don't care if Dinehart says he didn't know it was going on. if he didn't know then he is more incompetent than if he did know. you think that is better than Maturi? wow you must have been drunk when you wrote your post.
 


Directors Cup 2010 Results (Best Overall Athletic Performance In Div I)

1. Stanford
2. Florida
3. Virginia
4. UCLA
5. Florida State
6. Texas A & M
7. North Carolina
8. Ohio State
9. Cal
10. Duke
11. Penn State
12. Oklahoma
13. USC
14. Oregon
15. Texas
16. Tennessee
17. Nebraska
18. Minnesota
19. LSU
20. Georgia
21. Wisconsin
22. Arizona State
23. Alabama
24. Washington
25. Michigan
 

You preferred the Dome? Really?

Even if I agreed with you about Maturi I don't think I'd admit it after that little tidbit.
 





GopherFish said:
As a lifelong Gopher fan, I've never disliked an AD more than Maturi. Perhaps, other ADs were equally incompetent, but he has been my least favorite AD.

His record in football and basketball are bad, and about the worst for any AD that has been around as long as Maturi. I've already done another thread on this. But while there may be a few other ADs who have fared as bad or worse, what I can't stand is his arrogance, meddlesome ways, and faux (fake) folksy manner.
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Understatement of the year?

Ever notice how some people continue to bang the same drum relentlessly?...
 


I am guessing that GopherFish won't be showing his sorry a$$ around here for a while after the verbal abuse (and rightly so) that he is taking on this one. Joel has done a fine job with what limited resources he has had. Not his fault the FB budget is worst in the B10. Tuby saved the BB program from Iowa-like status and that is all because Joel got him.
 

All in all Maturi has been decent. Hiring Tubby was a great hire. Agreed that the BB program was turning into what Iowa's is now. Tubby turned it around quickly. Of course the FB stadium. He also had every right to fire Mason. It was time for him to go. But he has made mistakes along the way. Hiring Brewster is A #1. He flatout cannot coach. I don't care how much you upgrade the talent, if you can't get them to perform it's a wash. Not to mention changing O-Coordinators on a yearly basis. He got Brewster on the cheap. Time to step up and pay a real coach. The Williams case is his fault. You don't bring in someone like Tubby and then micro-manage him. If he wanted Williams he chould've let him have him. He was a working assistant when Tubby hired him. His mistakes were in the 70's. There was no outcry against bringing Williams back, especially with Tubby co-signing him. His decision cost the U a million +, not icluding there own legal fees.

BTW- I do agree with sitting Mbakwe and Royce. Glad Royce is gone. He's been playing the same games since HS. He'll never learn. Mbakwe has to be cleared. Next: New practice facility. It's a must for big-time basketball.
 



SoMpls said:
All in all Maturi has been decent. Hiring Tubby was a great hire. Agreed that the BB program was turning into what Iowa's is now. Tubby turned it around quickly. Of course the FB stadium. He also had every right to fire Mason. It was time for him to go. But he has made mistakes along the way. Hiring Brewster is A #1. He flatout cannot coach. I don't care how much you upgrade the talent, if you can't get them to perform it's a wash. Not to mention changing O-Coordinators on a yearly basis. He got Brewster on the cheap. Time to step up and pay a real coach. The Williams case is his fault. You don't bring in someone like Tubby and then micro-manage him. If he wanted Williams he chould've let him have him. He was a working assistant when Tubby hired him. His mistakes were in the 70's. There was no outcry against bringing Williams back, especially with Tubby co-signing him. His decision cost the U a million +, not icluding there own legal fees.

BTW- I do agree with sitting Mbakwe and Royce. Glad Royce is gone. He's been playing the same games since HS. He'll never learn. Mbakwe has to be cleared. Next: New practice facility. It's a must for big-time basketball.
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Wow. So many things wrong with this post.
 

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Friend Of Tubby said:
1. Stanford
2. Florida
3. Virginia
4. UCLA
5. Florida State
6. Texas A & M
7. North Carolina
8. Ohio State
9. Cal
10. Duke
11. Penn State
12. Oklahoma
13. USC
14. Oregon
15. Texas
16. Tennessee
17. Nebraska
18. Minnesota
19. LSU
20. Georgia
21. Wisconsin
22. Arizona State
23. Alabama
24. Washington
25. Michigan
Click to expand...

The only sports that matter is how you do in football, basketball, and in the east and Midwest hockey. NO ONE CARES HOW GOOD OUR WOMENS SOCCER TEAM IS, TRACK AND FIELD! GET OVER IT!!!!!!!
 

Hiring Tim Brewster is a major black mark on his record. The way that fire/hire went down was weak at best. Maturi's legacy is Brewster and that is not a good thing.
 

Brew_recruit said:
The only sports that matter is how you do in football, basketball, and in the east and Midwest hockey. NO ONE CARES HOW GOOD OUR WOMENS SOCCER TEAM IS, TRACK AND FIELD! GET OVER IT!!!!!!!
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This.
Honestly, its great that more kidscan compete in sports and such, but ffs youre worried about keeping all those sports due to funding, yet you wont dedicate any time to dealing with problems in your revenue sports.

no one cares about those sports except those kids and their parents (hardly even their own friends)

the only important things in the college world are football, basketball, and in minn's case hockey. If those men's sports arent AT THE VERY LEAST up to par, people will be upset with the job youre doing no matter how many stadiums you build (which doesnt seem to have helped the on field product at all). Then, raising expectations and then failing to meet them by a long shot, and mishandling of high profile player incidents does nothing to help the cause (Royce dug his own grave, but Maturi horribly botched mbakwe) He has tried to win over the most people by taking the political route and not taking sides on ANYTHING and just making everyone Feel Good, and im pretty sure its just upset more people than it has appeassed (I for one want an AD that can actually make a decision and stick by it, and one whos not afraid of how the decision will appear in public)
 

Brew_recruit said:
The only sports that matter is how you do in football, basketball, and in the east and Midwest hockey. NO ONE CARES HOW GOOD OUR WOMENS SOCCER TEAM IS, TRACK AND FIELD! GET OVER IT!!!!!!!
Click to expand...

And yet, Maturi was finalist (Top 4) for AD Of The Year in 2009. Hmm.
 

If anyone in GopherHole thinks that the AD who replaces Maturi is going to be able turn things around in the revenue sports at the U you are sadly ignorant about the U's history. You are failing to understand that many of the decision makers in the Administration and on the Board of Regents are people who couldn't care less about big time college sports. This has been demonstrated time and time again over the last 40 years. They are the type of people who put as much value on a good women's rowing team as they do a good football team.

When it comes time to select a new AD to replace Maturi there is a better than even chance that you won't like him any better than you like Joel. I have lived with a less than mediocre Gopher football program for most of my life and now that Nebraska is in the Big 10 I never expect to live to see them win another Big 10 Championship or Rose Bowl. It is extremely depressing for me to think about that. You guys better prepare yourself because the chances are very good that you will never see either one happen in your ENTIRE lifetimes. And it won't matter in the least to the large majority of people in Minnesota because they just don't care all that much about sports at the U.
 

Wasn't going to get sucked into another Maturi thread but some irrational and even ignorant posts are hard to ignore. First, if you feel the need to pick the worst Gopher A.D. ever, you don't have to look any further than Paul Giel. He might be a Gopher icon, but he also was involved in all sorts of disasters as athletic director.

IMO, the biggest was the move to the Metrodome. At best, Giel was naive in thinking that this move would result in a return to Gopher glory. At worst, he was the point man in a cynical campaign in duping the public and betraying the U in favor of downtown money interests. Regardless, this decision might have been the single worse thing to happen to Gopher football. If that wasn't enough, how about the twin hirings of Joe Salem and John Gutekunst? It was those coaches that really established and cemented the mediocrity that has been so hard to rise above. In between was the hiring of Lou Holtz. It was applauded at the time, but the guy conned Giel into being used while the little SOB bided his time waiting for a better opportunity. A lot of Gopher fans first got their cynicism because of Holtz. Brewster might end up being a mistake also, but the jury is still out, and it's possible he still will pull it off. Anyway, it's a hiring that pales to Giel's screw-ups in football.

Giel also has his moments in basketball. He hired Bill Musselman who was the coach of a team that participated in one of the ugliest incidents in college basketball history. The same coach also had well over a 100 NCAA violations when he fled the U before the sanctions came down. As much of a slimeball as Calipari is, the U had one way before him. There was also a hell of a basketball team in the late 70's that had a season wiped out due to violations involving Mychal Thompson. Giel was A.D. then and, if my memory is right, he fought the original ruling which caused us to lose the season. Giel was also A.D. when Dutcher brought in Mitch Lee which led to the incident in Madison. This was the same Mitch Lee Giel let back on the team after a sexual assault trial. Mitch was found innocent but maybe showing up at a game afterward with a champagne glass shaved into his hair was a warning sign that shouldn't have been ignored. As one of Giel's last major acts, he also hired Clem. Again, good move at the time, but who knows when Clem actually started cheating? It was some time under Giel's watch. Giel's moves in basketball weren't as outright dumb as the football moves in that they did result in some fun years. However, all three coaches he hired left the U after a major scandal. It makes waffling on Munson and then getting Tubby look pretty good. It also makes decisions on poor Royce and on Mbakwe look pretty understandable and fair given our history.

Maturi isn't the greatest A.D. ever, but he hardly deserves the bashing he gets here. We've got a long history of mediocrity combined with population, climate perceptions, and cultural and political factors that make this a damn near impossible job. All in all, Maturi has done a decent job with some real accomplishments in navigating all this.

By the way, women's rowing is a convenient target and hard to defend. But, in reality, if you're going to blame it for football failures, you're sort of off base. Women's rowing exists because of Title IX which was overall a damn good idea. If you want to get rid of it, then you have to look at sports like wrestling, baseball, or men's swimming, or track and field. These are all sports the U is successful in and which traditionally have been part of college sports. Yes, there are other minor men's sports but they don't have the numbers to be as big a factor. They also have monied boosters which is another thing Maturi has to handle, and I would guess it's more important to keep those people happy instead of some disgruntled anonymous guy on GH.
 


gopherphan said:
This.
Honestly, its great that more kidscan compete in sports and such, but ffs youre worried about keeping all those sports due to funding, yet you wont dedicate any time to dealing with problems in your revenue sports.
Won't dedicate any time? How about helping to raise money to build a brand new football stadium?

no one cares about those sports except those kids and their parents (hardly even their own friends)
Thanks for letting me know what I care and don't care about. You don't speak for everyone. How they hell do you know what these kids friends think of their sport? Ridiculous statement.

the only important things in the college world are football, basketball, and in minn's case hockey. If those men's sports arent AT THE VERY LEAST up to par, people will be upset with the job youre doing no matter how many stadiums you build (which doesnt seem to have helped the on field product at all). Then, raising expectations and then failing to meet them by a long shot, and mishandling of high profile player incidents does nothing to help the cause (Royce dug his own grave, but Maturi horribly botched mbakwe)That's strictly your opinion, many disagree with you. He has tried to win over the most people by taking the political route and not taking sides on ANYTHING and just making everyone Feel Good, and im pretty sure its just upset more people than it has appeassed (I for one want an AD that can actually make a decision and stick by it, and one whos not afraid of how the decision will appear in public) Didn't he make a decision on Mbakwe and stick to it?
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...
 

Is Maturi a great AD? No
Is Maturi a good AD? Probably not
Is Maturi a serviceable AD? Probably
Is Maturi the worst in school history? Absolutely not

How about the guy who was the AD during the Salem era and the move to the metrodome? Who was the AD that was present for years 4-22 of the Conference title drought in football. Not to mention he was AD during the Musselman fiasco. During his tenure, gopher football went from the number 3-4 team in the conference, to perhaps the biggest laughing stock of the league (we were vying with indiana for this title). He was also the AD during the dutcher scandal (and he handled it fairly poorly).

I hate to say it, but Paul Geil is probably the worst AD in gopher history.
Mulligan is spot on, and it isn't close. Paul Geil is as AD is the worst thing to happen in the history of Minnesota athletics.
 

While it's true that all of the negative comments about Paul Giel happened, it must be tempered with the fact he worked under the most anti-sports administrations and board of regents in the U's history. He was more passionate about Gopher sports than Maturi and truly wanted to do bring Minnesota back to the top. However, he had very limited decision making authority and an even a more limited budget. I'm not saying he was a great AD and he did make some bad decisions like firing Cal Stoll and hiring Joe Salem to replace him. He also passed on Bobby Ross and hired Gutenkunst. But Giel would have been lucky if he had one tenth of the support from the president that Maturi enjoys today. With a freer hand, his tenure might have been more successful.
 

I do care about the non-revenue sports, even if I may care about them less than the revenue sports. I've never been to a Gophers soccer game, but I want the Gophers to win their soccer games. Being good at the non-revenue sports is better than being bad at the non-revenue sports. Starving the non-revenue sports isn't some "magic bullet" for the other sports.

I've had my issues with Maturi, particularly his statements that he has "no preference" on alignment. He says that he wants to focus on the needs of the Big Ten, but his job is to fight for the interests of the University of Minnesota first.

Maturi has his problems, but can we put aside the histrionics for a moment? There have been problems in the athletics department for some time, they predate Maturi. Maturi wasn't the one who abandoned Memorial Stadium. He didn't hire Joe Salem or Jim Wacker. He did get TCF done, which is a major accomplishment.
 

History will prove Maturi to be a great AD if Tubby and Brew both have smashing success.

History will prove him an OK AD if one or the other has smashing success.

History will prove him a bust as an AD if neither Tubby or Brew prove capable of elevating Minnesota men's basketball or football out of their histories of mediocrity.

That's just the way it is, fair or not.
 

If he will be remembered as a bust if football and basketball remain mediocre, then how will be be remembered if both the football and basketball teams both became not mediocre, but actually bad? Would be become a super-ultra-mega-hyper bust? When people say "that's just the way it is", it usually isn't.
 

"When people say 'that's just the way it is', it usually isn't."

So it's kinda' like when someone insists there's only one way to skin a cat, i.e. Big Ten football divisions with the addition of Nebraska absolutely, positively must be aligned strictly East-West, I'm-right-everyone-else-is-wrong kind of thinking.

Are we going to be able to talk you off the bridge if Penn State joins the Gophers, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska and Wisconsin in the "West" division?
 

The one thing Maturi won't do is embarrass the U in the manner in which the outgoing University of Georgia AD Damon Evans did to his university.

Here's his arrest report.

Basically, he was a 40-year old AD at his alma mater, making $550,000 per year, with a contract extension just going into effect, married with children. He was pulled over for drunken driving with a 28-year old female acquaintance in the passenger seat of his car and her red panties on his lap. Wow. This happened last Wednesday and he's already been fired.
 

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