Jim Souhan: Kill wisely steers clear of hype at U's spring 'game'

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Here is the Article( i havent read it yet but Suhan's a hack, so here it is)

You need a lot of quotation marks to write about what happened Saturday at TCF Bank Stadium, where the Gophers played their "spring" "football" "game."

Spring? Except it felt like November.

Football? Sure, without punts, kickoffs or quarterbacks getting tackled.

Game? If one team scrimmaging itself in front of a couple of thousand fans while the coach stands behind the offensive huddle and the scoreboard doesn't register scores, then, sure, it was a "game."

For people who became accustomed to Tim Brewster's bluster and haven't found the right 12-step program to wean themselves off of it, the most interesting aspect of the afternoon came when new coach Jerry Kill held a press conference to "rally" the faithful.

Artfully woven into his platitudes were these assessments:

This team lacks depth.

This team lacks speed.

MarQueis Gray, easily the squad's most impressive and important player, is still learning how to play quarterback.

That's what Kill said. What I heard was, "Don't get your hopes up yet, people."

We are all inevitably compared to our predecessors and peers, and Kill is currently benefiting from his juxtaposition to Brewster.

Brewster predicted Rose Bowls. Kill has artfully lowered expectations while simultaneously raising his likeability, a shrewd move for someone who understands how many light years this program is from Pasadena.

"We need more speed and more athleticism," Kill said. "That's something I've said from the beginning when I came in. And we just have to increase it. That's not going to happen overnight and we will keep plugging along. We're going to have to utilize the talent that we have and I think we can."

It is said of great coaches that "You don't want to be the guy who replaces the guy, you want to be the guy who replaces the guy who replaced the guy." At Minnesota, you simply want to be the guy who replaces the guy.

When we were first introduced to Kill, he recalled the reaction of himself and his coaches when the Northern Illinois bus pulled up to TCF Bank Stadium last fall, how he felt like they were visiting the big-time.

Saturday gave Kill a reminder that architecture doesn't always reflect stature. This beautiful college football stadium held a smattering of fans. There wasn't much noise, and when the scrimmage ended, fans didn't cheer, instead filing out as if they had just seen a movie that put them to sleep.

The Big Ten Network plans to run its broadcast of the "game" Sunday night. Not exactly Ohio State treatment.

The day of Kill's introductory news conference, he sounded like a candidate for the Blue Collar Comedy Tour. Saturday, he just sounded blue collar.

"It was certainly great to work with the kids over the past practices and get in our 15th and final practice today," he said. "I look forward to watching the tape and evaluating how they did and their technique and fundamentals. But it's been a good thing. We'd like to turn around and have 15 more practices, but we can't. I do think that there is progress being made. Infant steps."

What Kill seems to recognize is that false hope won't do him any good. Given the state of the program and how Brewster's bluster backfired, Kill has already succeeded as a public figure.

The day he was hired, the vocal Gophers faithful hated him. By the end of his introductory press conference, the vocal Gophers faithful had decided to give him a chance.

Today, by merely avoiding saying anything stupid, Kill has become the most popular figure in Gopherland since Brewster and Tubby Smith brought different forms of optimism to Minnesota in 2007.

Considering the task ahead, Kill will probably be downplaying expectations again at next year's "spring" "football" "game."

Jim Souhan can be heard Sundays from 10 a.m. to noon and weekdays at 2:40 p.m. on 1500ESPN. His Twitter name is Souhanstrib. • [email protected]
 

Jimmy is right. Kill did win over a lot of people with what he says. Too bad Soupcan hasn't done that by "writing" an "insightful""column".
 

Thats not fair or accurate in writting that Jerry Kill was hated. Many hated the hire is a more truthful statement. Thats a big deference. Wise up Jim.
 

Wow

Complete and utter trash. Can't believe I read half of that.
 


All of Suhan's stuff has always been crap anyway - so does not surprise me
 

Are you effin' kidding me!?! Why, oh why, did I click on that f&*^kin' link?!

This guy needs to just stop. Ugh. How the eff he has a job is beyond me.
 


Can't we get better writers? Surely the U graduates a lot of people with journalism degrees. He mocks the size of the crowd, but it wasn't a bad crowd, it was estimated at about 6,000 people. He isn't aware that there aren't that many schools that pull in big spring game crowds. And he mocks the weather too - yes, this was Spring.

I admit, a game format is more fun than a scrimmage, even if the score is meaningless. One year, I remember Goldy Gopher coming into the game, and scoring on a long TD run, with the players pretending to be unable to catch him. It was a lot of fun.

What is missing from this article is any analysis of the action on the field. There is mocking the weather, mocking the format, talking about Kill not raising expectations. But anyone can give you that. There's nothing about the action on the field, nothing about what was good, or what was bad. The kind of things we expect "experts" to be able to tell us.
 



RodentRampage: I had two "U" officials tell me 2,500 for the crowd, which by the way, was a lot better than last year... Same bad weather as last year, and the Easter holiday might've hurt them somewhat yesterday... but no shot was the crowd anywhere near 6,000.
 

RodentRampage said:
Can't we get better writers? Surely the U graduates a lot of people with journalism degrees. He mocks the size of the crowd, but it wasn't a bad crowd, it was estimated at about 6,000 people. He isn't aware that there aren't that many schools that pull in big spring game crowds. And he mocks the weather too - yes, this was Spring.

I admit, a game format is more fun than a scrimmage, even if the score is meaningless. One year, I remember Goldy Gopher coming into the game, and scoring on a long TD run, with the players pretending to be unable to catch him. It was a lot of fun.

What is missing from this article is any analysis of the action on the field. There is mocking the weather, mocking the format, talking about Kill not raising expectations. But anyone can give you that. There's nothing about the action on the field, nothing about what was good, or what was bad. The kind of things we expect "experts" to be able to tell us.
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Phil Miller's a damn good writer. Informative, but not boring. There's a bit of personality in his writing, which isn't easy to pull off as a beat writer. As a columnist, Soupcan's m.o. is to stir the pot and promote dialouge. Problem is this is the same old song and dance from him. This particular column stinks to high heaven of a lazy ignoramous who has chosen to go back one more time to the Brewster Bashing Well and take the Easter weekend off.
 

It is true that most schools don't get a huge turnout at their spring games but it is tough when the gophers are competing for recruits with offers from the schools with a huge turnout(i.e. Jordan Westerkamp). It makes an impression on these guys, when they go from one school's spring game with 66000 and the next weekend are at one with anywhere from 2500-6000. It just makes Kill's job that much tougher.
 

Does anyone have the ambition to actually count heads in the pictures?
 



Highwayman: Souhan wisely steers clear of journalism at U's spring 'game'

Maybe the worst sports "writer" at the Nation's newspaper laughingstock.
 

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