Thanks to all who responded. I'm still not sold. Couple of reasons why. Go ahead and pick away...
1) We are a B10 school. We shouldn't have to provide our coaches with training wheels to do their job. I don't want two more years of learning curve...
2) What is this team's personality. Like him or not, you always knew what Mason's team would do - run the ball, control the clock, and bend but (hopefully) not break on D. I have no idea what Brewster is trying to instill. First it was the spread. Now he says he's about power running. This shift has to affect recruiting and perhaps player retention. Certainly if I was competing with the U for a player, the first thing I'd do is try to plant a seed of doubt by pointing this out.
3) The cupboard was not bare when Brewster came here like it was when Alvarez joined Scony or Zook took over in Illinois. Certainly changing systems and philosophies is difficult, but not to the point where we should have had to suffer through the worst season in the history of a storied program like ours.
4) Some of the in-game decisions have been absolutely horrifying. Two examples from last year include the end-of game coaching against NW and then the polar opposite decisions at the end of the first half versus Scony. A head coach needs to know when his team can make hay and when he needs to pull in the reigns. People who seemingly have the guts to gamble are usually the best at understanding all the variables and knowing when it's actually in their favor to act...
I don't know recruiting. Who knows if last year's, this year's, or next year's classes will pan out. All I look at is game day results. Thus far Brewster-led teams have delivered the worst season in Gopher football history and the worst home shutout loss in Gopher football history. That there were 6 more wins this year versus last year SHOULD be meaningless to all of us. We never should have been 1-11 in the first place. Now the spread experiment has failed and Brewster has surrounded himself with more novices and unproven commodities (Davis not included). If he's still learning his job as a head coach as many of you have said (and suggested is a reason to cut him some slack), how can we rationally expect that he is teaching the other novices...
I've tried to limit my points and to use specific arguments but I'm sure I'll be dubbed a troll again. Again, I apologize for have expectations for the U and of the head coach.
I agree on the "training wheels" part, but that's the extent of my disappointment with Brewster thus far. He wasn't ready for the job, but everything he's done since has shown me a level of humility that far exceeds that of most big-time coaches. Brewster is prepared to say what he "doesn't know." It's going to take him awhile to instill a consistent image of what Gopher football will look like while he's running the ship and I agree 100% with you on that frustration.
But saying the cupboard wasn't bare like it was when Alvarez and Zook took over at their respective schools really isn't saying that much. Mason never ever recruited much depth. We were shuffling guys around all the time and rarely had battle-tested guys ready to take over when someone graduated. Why did Cupito take snap after snap when we were beating the snot out of some cupcake instead of Mortenson getting quality experience? Mason did a good job with the running game, but other than that, he didn't do a whole heckuva lot.
Brewster inherited a junior QB (who I am convinced could have developed if not buried during the Mason years) with limited snaps and a very good red-shirt freshman prospect. I felt bad for Mortenson, but Brewster's decision was kind of a no-brainer in terms of future development. The defense had some decent bodies, but also had a platoon of lead-legged DBs (all of who could outrun me, so I'll admit this is a cheap shot of sorts) who couldn't cover a bed. Add to that the legal problems and the loss of four guys who could have contributed and you've got what we had in 2007.
Mason's defenses not only bent like a troop of Gumbies, they regularly fell apart like an Italian coaltion government.
But the clincher for me was Mason's relationship with high school football in Minnesota. In my work, I run across school superintendents, high school athletic directors, and high school football coaches. Not on a regular basis, but enough to know that I can ask them frank questions. I have yet to hear a positive comment about Mason from any one of them. More often, I hear derision (except I hear from some that Mason gave an excellent motivational presentation that had nothing to do with football, but more about life goals). Mason was greatly disliked by the high school football community in Minnesota and it's no wonder there was a steady exodus of Minnesota's top players to other programs while he was running the show in the Bierman Building.
I'm way old and I realize that this isn't like the old days when a Minnesota HS stud like Jim Carter wouldn't even consider anything but the old homestate team. Kids are different now and you're not going to keep every top prospect. But Mason got so few of the top Minnesota kids that it bordered on ridiculous.
Izaty's, I respect your position and hope I haven't come off as snide. I just believe the Mason regime had run its course. It seems that every time we either came close or even beat OSU or Penn State or Michigan, Mason came off as almost apologizing to John Cooper or Joe Paterno. I had finally had it, not with the Texas Tech collapse, but with the 10-9 win over NDSU in 2006. Mason had sold his teams on "toughness," but it was obvious that day any edge we had in that department was gone. It was clear to me then that Mason had "lost" whatever he once had in terms of promise. The sun set for me that day.
Whether or not Brewster is the right guy remains to be seen. I, too, would like a little less of the Wacker-esque rhetoric, but that's who Brewster seems to be and as long as it's genuine, I don't have that big a problem. So I caution patience. Brewster seems to be coming into his own a bit and if he gains some measure of bearing, I think he is going to be fine.
