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What do you want the story to say? Kill didn't build NIU up from the bottom. He continued on the foundation that Novak had already established as the story correctly points out.
 

scools12 said:
What do you want the story to say? Kill didn't build NIU up from the bottom. He continued on the foundation that Novak had already established as the story correctly points out.
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That is an issue I have had since Kill was hired. The Kill supporters point to his track record as a builder at Southern and Northern as an indeication of what he will do here, when in fact he only built one of those programs and it wasn't NIU.

This game will be really interesting. It will show if NIU is in the class of the Boise States and TCUs of the world or if they have just benefited from playing in a really weak conference. For my money I lean more towards the weak conference angle considering the way they struggled against two below average BCS squads in Iowa and Kansas. But who knows maybe they will give Florida State a run for its money, stranger things have happened.
 

MNVCGUY said:
That is an issue I have had since Kill was hired. The Kill supporters point to his track record as a builder at Southern and Northern as an indeication of what he will do here, when in fact he only built one of those programs and it wasn't NIU.

This game will be really interesting. It will show if NIU is in the class of the Boise States and TCUs of the world or if they have just benefited from playing in a really weak conference. For my money I lean more towards the weak conference angle considering the way they struggled against two below average BCS squads in Iowa and Kansas. But who knows maybe they will give Florida State a run for its money, stranger things have happened.
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Kill did not build NIU, he rebuilt it. Novak was 9-3, 7-5, 7-6, 2-10 in his last four years, that included 7-1, 6-2, 5-3, 1-6 in the MAC. Program was on the decline and Kill quickly rebuilt it.
 

mnvcguy, maybe you want to characterize it as just a patch-up job, but in Novak's last three years they won 7, 7, and 2 games. Kill got them back up to speed, and that isn't easy under the best circumstances.
 


MaxyJR1 said:
Kill did not build NIU, he rebuilt it. Novak was 9-3, 7-5, 7-6, 2-10 in his last four years, that included 7-1, 6-2, 5-3, 1-6 in the MAC. Program was on the decline and Kill quickly rebuilt it.
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Thanks for the data Maxy. My point is that if someone takes a non-BCS school to a BCS bowl in 2 years it is likely that they stepped into a pretty good situation, i.e., Kill left the program in very good shape.
 

MaxyJR1 said:
Kill did not build NIU, he rebuilt it. Novak was 9-3, 7-5, 7-6, 2-10 in his last four years, that included 7-1, 6-2, 5-3, 1-6 in the MAC. Program was on the decline and Kill quickly rebuilt it.
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Maxy, stop it, this isn't about facts.
 


denguegopher said:
Thanks for the data Maxy. My point is that if someone takes a non-BCS school to a BCS bowl in 2 years it is likely that they stepped into a pretty good situation, i.e., Kill left the program in very good shape.
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Kill is the perfect kind of coach for the MAC. He has a loyal staff and is clearly good at recruiting the kind of athletes you need to compete at that level. The thing that worries me is he still seems to be recruiting those same athletes to play in the Big Ten.
 



MNVCGUY said:
Kill is the perfect kind of coach for the MAC. He has a loyal staff and is clearly good at recruiting the kind of athletes you need to compete at that level. The thing that worries me is he still seems to be recruiting those same athletes to play in the Big Ten.
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So now your not concerned if he built/rebuilt NIU (because people brought facts to oppose your viewpoint. Now you are going to go with "Can he get the players..." And if in 2 years things are still improving it will be "Remember when he backed out of the N. Carolina game?"

We get it you hate him, continue to point that out in every thread and please continue to get on your knees for poor SF24 etc.
 

MNVCGUY said:
Kill is the perfect kind of coach for the MAC. He has a loyal staff and is clearly good at recruiting the kind of athletes you need to compete at that level. The thing that worries me is he still seems to be recruiting those same athletes to play in the Big Ten.
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Which is just not true.
 

mnsports1 said:
So now your not concerned if he built/rebuilt NIU (because people brought facts to oppose your viewpoint. Now you are going to go with "Can he get the players..." And if in 2 years things are still improving it will be "Remember when he backed out of the N. Carolina game?"

We get it you hate him, continue to point that out in every thread and please continue to get on your knees for poor SF24 etc.
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I don't hate Kill I am just not sold on him being able to get the job done here based on the players he is recruiting and the way the team has looked. Time will tell if he can get it done, I truely hope he does I just can't get on board with the blind faith a lot of people on here have placed in Kill based on his "track record". I still stick with the the fact that he did not build NIU, he salvaged what was in place and had success at the school but the foundation was in place when he got there and they were only coming off of one losing season. He was not at NIU long enough for anyone to truly say how he would have done there over an extended period of time. That being said I believe he would have done very well staying in the MAC.

Now he is in the Big Ten. Through 2 recruiting classes what we are seeing is a bunch of players that are getting little to no attention from anyone else in the Big Ten. Doesn't mean they can't play but in general the schools we are beating out for their services are MAC and lower level D1 schools as opposed to the teams we are directly competing against. Because of that we have to believe that this staff can out-teach and out-coach the rest of the conference in order to be successful. I have my doubts on their ability to do that based on what we have seen to date. I hope I'm wrong, again only time will tell.

I don't know SF 24 but I don't think it was right for another poster to essentially pin all the defensive shortcomings on his son when that was clearly not the case.
 

Winning will help the recruiting as much, if not more, than any recruiting acumen or prowess, regardless of the coach.

They won 6 games this year. That will not make it rain 4-5 Star recruits for any program. In either or both of the next two seasons, I expect them to win 8-9 games+. By Year Five for Kill, I would expect to see a higher caliber of recruit at THAT time. F'n ridiculous to expect higher caliber of recruits to a program coming off of seasons with 3 wins, 3 wins, and 6 wins.
 



mnsports1

mnsports1 said:
So now your not concerned if he built/rebuilt NIU (because people brought facts to oppose your viewpoint. Now you are going to go with "Can he get the players..." And if in 2 years things are still improving it will be "Remember when he backed out of the N. Carolina game?"

We get it you hate him, continue to point that out in every thread and please continue to get on your knees for poor SF24 etc.
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mnsports - I have always wondered why MNVCGUY seems to always want to belittle Kill. It seems like it is because he doesn't believe that Kill has Big Ten credentials. What MNVCGUY doesn't seem to understand is: 1. That Minnesota was never going to be able to hire a coach with those credentials. Highly rated coaches were not going to touch Minnesota with a ten foot pole. 2. That changing a program like Minnesota is going to take time and patience. By now most of us have seen enough of Jerry to believe that he is going in the right direction and that he knows how to change a culture. Most of us also realize that it will be a while before we know if he is the answer.

People are obviously entitled to their own opinions but I am starting to find this never ending agenda of MNVCGUY really boring. It is almost now as boring as hand times vs. electronic time discussions.
 

Bottom line is that cash $$$ money buys coaching and talent (recruits). Just ask anyone in the SEC or in Buckyland.
 

MNVCGUY said:
I don't hate Kill I am just not sold on him being able to get the job done here based on the players he is recruiting and the way the team has looked...Through 2 recruiting classes what we are seeing is a bunch of players that are getting little to no attention from anyone else in the Big Ten. Doesn't mean they can't play but in general the schools we are beating out for their services are MAC and lower level D1 schools as opposed to the teams we are directly competing against. Because of that we have to believe that this staff can out-teach and out-coach the rest of the conference in order to be successful. I have my doubts on their ability to do that based on what we have seen to date. I hope I'm wrong, again only time will tell.
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I get that concern (and many people share it with you). But when you're stepping into a program like ours, unless you're such an established name and effective recruiter that I can't even think of a recent example, you've basically got two potentially effective recruiting outcomes:

1) Target, and get, whatever top-shelf talent you can find. This can get you potential difference-makers like Michael Carter, Marquise, etc. But it is often going to result in getting guys who either don't necessarily fit your system, or have other issues (character, grades). Likewise, it can result in a lot of swings and misses, which can lead to top-heavy classes, gaps in the depth charts, etc. Relevant examples: Illinois (Zook), Brewster

2) Target and get guys who may not be elite talents, but fit your system, and are reasonably likely to end up committing to your school. This has the benefit of being more predictable (you can more reliably fill your depth chart) and creating a team that you can 'coach up' (read: the sum is greater than the whole of its parts, because they fit your program). The downside is you're going to get a lot of guys who don't have the top-end talent/measureables of the teams you're competing against, which can serve to put a cap on your short-term upside (no matter how well coached, a bunch of undersized slow kids aren't likely to take home a national championship). But theoretically, you slowly improve the quality of talent you can bring in and move that cap up. Relevant examples: Iowa (Ferentz), Wisconsin (for the last 20 years or so)


I know which group I'd rather be in.
 

Killjoy said:
mnsports - I have always wondered why MNVCGUY seems to always want to belittle Kill. It seems like it is because he doesn't believe that Kill has Big Ten credentials.

People are obviously entitled to their own opinions but I am starting to find this never ending agenda of MNVCGUY really boring. It is almost now as boring as hand times vs. electronic time discussions.
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Crap. I knew there was a chance it would come to this when I started posting here. Many of my doubts surrounding Jerry Kill are based on actual football related stuff but I have to be honest with the fact that much of it is personal as well.

The bottom line for me in all this is I feel that the U of M settled on Jerry Kill when they couldn't land any of their top choices. While Kill is a definite upgrade over Brewster from a straight X/O standpoint he is a downgrade as a recruiter. With Kill the team will return to Mason level success and maybe that is good enough now. 6,7,8 win seasons will be the norm and also the ceiling, he won't be able to recruit the neccessary talent to take the team to the next level. That is what I believe but this is not the place for those beliefs.

Time to hop off the soap box and get out of the way of the Kool-aid drinkers. I truly hope it all works out great for the U of M because it is my alma-mater and I want to see the team become relevant again. I will always be a Gopher fan even if I can't support the Head Coach. Go Gophers!
 

MNVCGUY said:
Time to hop off the soap box and get out of the way of the Kool-aid drinkers.
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1. Where the hell are the so-called "Kool-aid drinkers" on this board? This has to be one of the most negative sports fan boards I've ever been on. Many of the team's own "fans" are harder on the U than fans of other teams are.

2. Please stop using this asinine comparison. I don't know at what point committing mass suicide got conflated with being a fan of a sports team, but it's f'ing nonsense and needs to be removed from everyone's vernaculars ASAP.
 

MNVCGUY said:
Crap. I knew there was a chance it would come to this when I started posting here. Many of my doubts surrounding Jerry Kill are based on actual football related stuff but I have to be honest with the fact that much of it is personal as well.

The bottom line for me in all this is I feel that the U of M settled on Jerry Kill when they couldn't land any of their top choices. While Kill is a definite upgrade over Brewster from a straight X/O standpoint he is a downgrade as a recruiter. With Kill the team will return to Mason level success and maybe that is good enough now. 6,7,8 win seasons will be the norm and also the ceiling, he won't be able to recruit the neccessary talent to take the team to the next level. That is what I believe but this is not the place for those beliefs.
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For the record, I don't consider you a troll or anything like that, and it's reasonable to be concerned with recruiting in general, but I feel like you're overlooking a couple salient points. Specifically:

1) You say Brewster was a better recruiter than Kill (and he was, at least by some measures) but a worse x's and o's guy. But there are two downsides to his recruiting. His top "gets" were some collection of the following guys: Keanon Cooper, Gray, Brandon Green, Moses Alipate, Michael Carter, Clint Brewster. It may be that he just didn't know how to "coach them up" (that seems to be the case with Carter), but it's also true that there are also guys that didn't fit whatever 'system' he was using, guys who bailed prematurely, guys who weren't as good as their recruit rankings, or some combination of those things. That happens when you're recruiting over your program's head and have to go for whichever elite talent you can get.
Additionally, going big often results in spending a lot of resources on guys you don't get (see: "Helicopter rides to visit Seantrel") and ending up with big holes in the roster when you don't get your guys (See: "Our entire offensive line this season").
NO COACH I CAN THINK OF CAN RELIABLY RECRUIT TOP-LEVEL TALENT THAT ALSO FITS THEIR SYSTEM/NEEDS AT A PROGRAM LIKE OURS

2) You assume that the level of recruits he can get is set where it has been, and thus the level of the program is capped at 7/8/9 wins. That's something that simply cannot be determined until Kill shows some level of consistent success with the recruits he is getting. As the team gets better, hopefully the recruits will too. It's not like Iowa or Wisconsin turned it around by bringing in a coach who immediately recruited top-end talent.

There can be virtues to shooting the moon with recruits. Illinois got to a Rose Bowl that way (lightning in a bottle, etc). But Kill has been very up-front that he's looking at the long-term here ("Building on cement"). That, by definition at Minnesota, means starting small and working your way up.

(btw, as a bonus, last years class was pretty much on par with Brew's years at the top end recruit's rankings, and I'd be willing to bet that Kill's classes are more consistent top-to-bottom when all is said and done)
 

dpodoll68 said:
2. Please stop using this asinine comparison. I don't know at what point committing mass suicide got conflated with being a fan of a sports team, but it's f'ing nonsense and needs to be removed from everyone's vernaculars ASAP.
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Thank you. My aunt Michelle Fitch died at the Peoples Temple in Jonestown on that 18th of November, 1978, right along with all 917 of the others, and I will ever believe that was not an act of mass-suicide so much as one of mass-murder, because if you refused to drink, you would either be wrestled to the ground and forcibly injected, or you'd be forced to drink at the barrel of a gun. There was no possibility of resisting that, especially since the vast majority of the victims were women and children (over 300 children). And it was Flavor-Aid, grape to be exact, not Kool-Aid.

That's why it's referred to as being a 'massacre', because it was, a mass-murder on an epic scale.

At any rate, that phrase ('stop/don't drink the kool-aid!') is just quite simply both offensive and obnoxious. It's absolutely heinous, with the ultimate shame being so many of those who so casually use it have no idea even its etymology nor the much deeper and more painful meaning which lies behind it.
 

Seany, thank you for sharing and I'm sorry to hear of your loss. Hopefully everyone will read it, take it to heart, and stop being such insensitive idiots.
 

dpodoll68 said:
Seany, thank you for sharing and I'm sorry to hear of your loss. Hopefully everyone will read it, take it to heart, and stop being such insensitive idiots.
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Well, you're welcome, man, and thank you. I appreciate you bringing it up, if only to belie those misconceptions.

Jim Jones was like Richard Nixon in that he was obsessive about taping everything, and so he taped and recorded his dying day, his drugged-out and panicked rants, and once the Congressman and newsmen had been murdered, his call for everyone to go straight to hell right with him, and that was not a request, but a demand accompanied by gunpoint, and you can hear all this, the screaming, the cries in wonderment and protest as at first he makes sure the children are all lined up to drink, and you can hear every moment of it, him impelling all the way, because that's the 'only way', and how it has to be, with CIA and enemies closing at the gate, and surely now with Congressman dead, how it was all over and time for everyone to go.

The lie I'd love to dispel is that these were a bunch of mindless drones or lemmings marching off to suicide, as you can hear it on the tape, the massive wailing as they watched their children die before them, and the *&^!#*&^!#*&^!#*&^!#ing horror as they are forced to drink, and how they never saw that coming, and who ever could?

My aunt was about a lost and clueless soul, yet she was smart, idealistic, sweet, human, and searching, and she thought she'd found just like all the rest of them, and I'm dead-positive she was one of those there crying against the all of it at the end, the crashing of the dream, and how that must have torn her heart in two. I cannot even begin to imagine the pain of such, and it is wrenching, it breaks my heart for all of them.
 

Seany said:
Well, you're welcome, man, and thank you. I appreciate you bringing it up, if only to belie those misconceptions.

Jim Jones was like Richard Nixon in that he was obsessive about taping everything, and so he taped and recorded his dying day, his drugged-out and panicked rants, and once the Congressman and newsmen had been murdered, his call for everyone to go straight to hell right with him, and that was not a request, but a demand accompanied by gunpoint, and you can hear all this, the screaming, the cries in wonderment and protest as at first he makes sure the children are all lined up to drink, and you can hear every moment of it, him impelling all the way, because that's the 'only way', and how it has to be, with CIA and enemies closing at the gate, and surely now with Congressman dead, how it was all over and time for everyone to go.

The lie I'd love to dispel is that these were a bunch of mindless drones or lemmings marching off to suicide, as you can hear it on the tape, the massive wailing as they watched their children die before them, and the *&^!#*&^!#*&^!#*&^!#ing horror as they are forced to drink, and how they never saw that coming, and who ever could?

My aunt was about a lost and clueless soul, yet she was smart, idealistic, sweet, human, and searching, and she thought she'd found just like all the rest of them, and I'm dead-positive she was one of those there crying against the all of it at the end, the crashing of the dream, and how that must have torn her heart in two. I cannot even begin to imagine the pain of such, and it is wrenching, it breaks my heart for all of them.
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Worst thing I can imagine.

It is not a phrase that I recall using, but I know I never will from this point on. Thanks Seany.
 

They saw a utopian paradise out there in the depths of that jungle, and more importantly, they built one, by virtue sweat, love, labor and belief, and endless hard work. They literally carved it out the jungle, an egalitarian community beyond race and class itself, and such hope led by false Messiah himself, and him so hell-bent on self-destruction, and such insistence on taking everyone with him, and how he did.

And how if that doesn't break one's heart, how maybe one hasn't heart to break, because how can it not but hurt, even still and on into forever.

A heartbreak goes and goes and goes, gone and gone and gone, and now, Sean's done crying the loss, but I'm not, and never will be, and therein lies the all of it.

It hurts, such endless waste and eternal loss, all amplified and exemplified the voice the madman himself, loudspeaker carrying sounds of destruction, murder, suicide, and going away from all the everything. It's time to die, and so we must, and so we will, and so they did, but not by choice, none of them did.
 

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