Reusse: Kill follows the Mason School of Scheduling; Kill still wants out of UNC game

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If bowl games didn't exist we wouldn't be seeing the current problems of scheduling.
 

Iceland12 said:
Yeah, I was. Still upset about how that little d-bag Holtz told his kids at halftime that there was nothing to "those rumors" that he was heading to No-ter- Dame right before he did it. The U said we would play UNC the same as the bleeps in Baylor said they'd come up here and honor the contract they had signed. Many Gopher fans were upset about it then, now many of those same people are coming out as hypocrites.

Just not very good at throwing away basic principles to make things easier. Assume you are?
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Nope. But if it's rampant and not limited to Kill, why dont you get off your high horse or stop watching Gopher football or sports in general. You're an armchair ethics guy, right?
 

Iceland12 said:
Yeah, I was. Still upset about how that little d-bag Holtz told his kids at halftime that there was nothing to "those rumors" that he was heading to No-ter- Dame right before he did it. The U said we would play UNC the same as the bleeps in Baylor said they'd come up here and honor the contract they had signed. Many Gopher fans were upset about it then, now many of those same people are coming out as hypocrites.

Just not very good at throwing away basic principles to make things easier. Assume you are?
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He honored the terms of his contract. Holtz had a clause in his contract that allowed him to leave for Notre Dame. Contracts only obligate people according to the terms in the contract. We didn't have to like Holtz leaving, but he didn't break his contract. We didn't have to like Baylor backing out of playing here, but they could only do so according to the terms of the contract.
 

MNGoldenGophers1 said:
Don't even bother reading fat Patti's article. She is still smarting from being bullied on the playground as a young lass and her only way to feel better is to knock others. I have fat Patti just ahead of Sid in my dead pool. Patti's ample girth is going to result in a major heart attack just wait and see.

Go Gophers!
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We you wrote this, you said it all.
 



BarnBoy said:
Nope. But if it's rampant and not limited to Kill, why dont you get off your high horse or stop watching Gopher football or sports in general. You're an armchair ethics guy, right?
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Struck quite a nerve huh?

Let' see, dishonor a contract, run away because you're scared of playing a 7-6 team on probation or quit following the team.

Stop looking for reasons why TCF isn't full. B.B's got it nailed.
 

The Brewmaster said:
The same people -- and bloggers (MV, I'm looking in your direction, although you'll pretend it never happened) -- who praised and even got excited when Brew scheduled real, live, competitive opponents will now mouth-and-cup Kill because he's trying to beat up on cupcakes.
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Ding ding ding!! I really like the product that FBT puts out, but it is stunning the total 180 that MV did on Brewster, and now the personal glee he demonstrates in running him down. It's like he doesn't think anyone has been reading his site from the beginning.
 

RodentRampage said:
He honored the terms of his contract. Holtz had a clause in his contract that allowed him to leave for Notre Dame. Contracts only obligate people according to the terms in the contract. We didn't have to like Holtz leaving, but he didn't break his contract. We didn't have to like Baylor backing out of playing here, but they could only do so according to the terms of the contract.
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No he didn't. That's the "big lie" that just won't die. Paul Giel, the President of the U and the Treasuer's Office all said that there was no Notre Dame out. They said if he wanted to leave there was no use holding him to the contract. It was the Weasel himself and the sycophant columnist from Minneapolis who came up with that story to try and burnish Lou's image.

Worked pretty well too.
 

Coach Kill knows more about getting his team ready than I'll ever know, so I'll just cheer for the U whomever they play. I have no say in the matter.
 



Gopherprof said:
Ding ding ding!! I really like the product that FBT puts out, but it is stunning the total 180 that MV did on Brewster, and now the personal glee he demonstrates in running him down. It's like he doesn't think anyone has been reading his site from the beginning.
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Yeah, I really like MV's work but I've noticed the same thing.

As far as scheduling goes, there are two schools of thought and they have some merits. The position that we are in, I want as many cupcakes as possible early in the season. However, I can see why schools who are more accomplished start upping their schedule.
 

GOPHER.NATION. said:
If you were a recruit, what would sound better? Going to bowl games consistently or playing USC? Tough question . .
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If I was a recruit, neither of those things would be appealing (unless we're actually beating USC). Haven't we already seen this show before? If we're going to the Pizza Bowl in Detroit because we beat up on Eastern Illinois and UNLV, recruits aren't going to care and are still going to look at us as a non-entity nationally (because that's what we will be).

That's not an inherent criticism of Kill's decision. My opinion is essentially that of Teague; I'll shrug my shoulders and leave it up to the coach. The one benefit Kill has going for him is that a lot of people would gladly settle for what Mason brought us because of the extreme embarrassment we've suffered in the last few years. When Mason was fired we were ecstatic about the talk of Rose Bowls, but we've become so cynical and took such a beating during the Brewster era, that we're more content keeping our heads down and setting more realistic goals. I'm not saying that's a bad thing, but I think it explains some of the willingness to defend an attitude that Mason got grilled for.
 

Um, we loose those non-conference games.

I say we figure out how to beat the patsies first.

Many people are misreading Kill's point, and it's a point I strongly agree with. This is not about avoiding tough competition out of fear of a loss. This is about avoiding tough competition because we don't have the depth to play a long conference schedule.
 

Studwell55 said:
Um, we loose those non-conference games.

I say we figure out how to beat the patsies first.

Many people are misreading Kill's point, and it's a point I strongly agree with. This is not about avoiding tough competition out of fear of a loss. This is about avoiding tough competition because we don't have the depth to play a long conference schedule.
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Agreed.
 



Iceland12 said:
No he didn't. That's the "big lie" that just won't die. Paul Giel, the President of the U and the Treasuer's Office all said that there was no Notre Dame out. They said if he wanted to leave there was no use holding him to the contract. It was the Weasel himself and the sycophant columnist from Minneapolis who came up with that story to try and burnish Lou's image.

Worked pretty well too.
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It doesn't really matter. He asked to get out of his contract, and the U let him. That's how contracts work. Perhaps the U was foolish for letting him out of it, but he didn't break his contract.
 

Studwell55 said:
Um, we loose those non-conference games.

I say we figure out how to beat the patsies first.

Many people are misreading Kill's point, and it's a point I strongly agree with. This is not about avoiding tough competition out of fear of a loss. This is about avoiding tough competition because we don't have the depth to play a long conference schedule.
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"It's not my fault, it's Brewster's"

2014 would mean that Kill will have three full recruiting classes under his belt. 2015 would be four. How about seeing if UNC will swap for 2015?
 

RodentRampage said:
It doesn't really matter. He asked to get out of his contract, and the U let him. That's how contracts work. Perhaps the U was foolish for letting him out of it, but he didn't break his contract.
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If it didn't matter why did Lou and his crew go out of the way to lie about it?
 

Well as someone that watches A LOT of college football, I'd argue any bowl game is better than no bowl game. Going to Detroit is better than staying home. Losing to Iowa St. while gaining something south of 100 yards of total offense is better than zero. I certainly prefer to play BCS teams, but I also see the need to win all 4 games. I will say that while Kill will have 2 BCS teams under his belt, neither one were ones he scheduled. And my favorite non-conference game of Mason's entire tenure (not counting bowl games) was beating Baylor, because we were all surprised how dominant we were in that game. My favorite non-conference game in Wacker's tenure was beating Syracuse (which almost got our god awful team ranked that year). So saying all that, I'd have to agree that you start with easier teams, learn to beat them, and then start sprinkling in a lower-tier BCS team while we're still a lower tier BCS team. There are enough teams out there we'd be a pickem against this year (Syracuse, Colorado, Maryland, Kansas, Arizona, etc). So the trick is to maximize your chance to win (most important) while keeping folks coming to the games. Or as is often said, just win baby.
 



My two or three cents on the topic:
1. With the conference realignment, the Gophers are guaranteed to play Michigan, Michigan St, Iowa, Nebraska, Northwestern, and Wisconsin every year. Each of these programs is currently quite formidable, with a game Northwestern program the easiest of the bunch. One looks at the other division, except for Ohio State and Wisconsin, and you see programs that are big question marks moving forward-Purdue, Illinois, Indiana, and Penn State. The Gophers definitely landed in the tougher division within the conference (at least for the foreseeable future). Six physical, tough games are guaranteed each year.
2. Start with those six games-then there will be games with Ohio State that come around and Purdue and Illinois certainly have had strong peaks at times. The only BT "cupcakes" you may see in the foreseeable future would be Indiana and Penn State. In the unlikely event the schedule brings both those programs to the schedule, the number of tough conference games may stick at 6; but I would say the likelihood is a minimum of 7 Big Ten games each year which are going to be highly competitive for the Gophers.
3. So, seven games against (roughly speaking) top 50 teams each year, right off the top. I can understand why Coach Kill would be looking at the other five games, four of which he has control over and attempt to ease the foot off the pedal as far as non-conference scheduling goes.
4. On the flip side of the complaints against equating UNC with USC or Texas, I believe you could argue a similar point as to what's the benefit of playing another middling major conference opponent. Go to UNC and lose, what does that get you? Those "in the know" realize you've just been defeated by a mediocre program; the casual fan will see a non-conference loss and lose interest fast. More importantly (along the thinking of dpo's reasoning), you've also chipped away at the opportunity of getting to a bowl game and building something stronger. It's not about getting into the second rate bowl game, it's all that comes along with that (extra practices, getting to a bowl game, going to recruits and telling them we're a program that gets to bowls, but you can help us get to the next step, etc.) Playing North Carolina in the Meineke Car Care Bowl in December could be much more valuable than playing them in September.

5. I'm just going to echo dpo's comment here-let Kill work at building this program a bit before demanding the attention grabbing non-conference opponents. If we're in years 5-9 and he's still avoiding quality opponents while the program has risen, we can and should question improving the non-conference schedule; if he's still needing to pad the non-conference schedule to get to six wins, we should also be unsatisfied.
 

Iceland12 said:
THERE'S the problem. Jerry puts North Carolina in the same category as USC and Texas! Kill thinks that even one game against a comparable BCS team destroys his chance of a Bowl Game. The problem is the only way his "weak sister" schedule works at the box office is if he can consistently go 7-1 or 6-2 in Big Ten Conference play. That would make the Gophers a big time draw and make buying Season Tickets the only way to get seats. That's happened ONCE in the last 50 years. Cal Stoll did it in 19 and seventy-three!"

That's fair. However, what are our chances of beating a mid-tier ACC team next year?

I would guess you give the Gophers a better shot next year than I do at beating UNC. In my mind, a 90% chance of a win against New Hampshire is worth more than a 30% chance of beating UNC or 5% chance at upsetting a big name.
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vinko bogataj said:
This is an interesting question. Lots of ways to look at this:

If you take the quote from Coach Kill at face value, it sounds like he is trying to duck any strong OOC competition. It becomes pretty easy to say "he wants to be like Mase, get some cheap wins, hope for 3-5 in league and get to Phoenix for a game no one will watch or remember. He is looking for a 9 year cushy deal to retire on". Personally, I don't think that is the case, but I can certainly understand someone making that leap.

If you want to take another, slightly less cynical approach, you could argue that with the financial situation we are in, the athletic department needs the money and what Coach wants is another gate to invest in the program. This is the least plausible of the three ways of looking at things.

The third approach is that Coach Kill thinks that the best way to get a B1G championship is to get 4 games, preferably home, to get the kinks worked out. This approach keeps the team relatively healthy, builds confidence and (in his mind) should help build buzz. I suspect this is where Coach is on this topic. That said, the challenge to that approach is our history. Whether you like Reusse or not (and I personally do not), he correctly illustrates the challenge Coach Kill faces. The small, loyal group who steadfastly support this program, of which I am one, will buy season tickets, tailgate passes, join GLC and buy Gopher gear religiously as always. That works well in some ways. But it does nothing for the average fan on the street. The cynical bandwagon jumper of today who we need to get on board for good and bad seasons (see numerous posts detailing "what can we do to fill the stadium/sell tickets? threads) will not get excited. That is how we end up with great OOC records and 40,000 in the house for a ranked Purdue conference opener in 2005. While I have been a diehard for years, I am smart enough to know that a gaudy OOC record against cupcakes makes you no more than a local and national punchline if you can't back it up. At the end of the day, this program needs to sell tickets and generate revenues and do it now. We have a thread here projecting our attendance Saturday at present that shows 35% expect less than 40,000 and another 35% expect less than 45,000 for a pretty good UNH squad. If you drop that game or Western Michigan the following week, what will attendance be. Will it spike for the 'Cuse game against a BCS opponent? Might be a telling statistic to see if the one mid-tier/low-tier BCS opponent is a good call or not. If we can't draw for that game, I would tend to side with Coach that you get your wins and hope you can carry over and have that one breakthrough season that can drive ticket sales for years. The only problem is that if you miss that breakthrough season and get back to Mason levels with garbage OOC wins, expect a return to the days of 40,000 home games with few students and sell outs only courtesy of the NDSU's, Wisconsin's and Iowa's. If you do get a crowd spike for 'Cuse, it makes a pretty good argument that fans want to see a decent OOC game every season if possible. Should be interesting to see what happens with attendance the next few weeks.
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No idea if this is what Kill is doing or not but it could be taken that way. I see no reason to not play at least one comparable to your program BCS team a year.

For now giving Kill a pass on this seems reasonable. Hopefully within the next few years scheduling at least one BCS team will become commonplace and trying to get to that magical 2-3 win conference season just to get to a lower-tier bowl game is an after thought.
 

You guys do know that Florida is a pretty good program, right? They don't play NC games outside of Florida. This year they are playing Bowling Green, Louisiana-Lafayette, Jacksonville State, and Florida State. They eliminated FSU off of their schedule as they didn't want to play a tough NC game either. But then the legislature stepped in and made it a law that they had to play each other. So it's not like championship level teams don't do this in other places. And Florida would be doing this every year if legally allowed to.
 

It's mostly about Kill wanting 8 home games (like any coach would), secondly about who we have scheduled. We have a new NC opponent lined up at home for both 2013 and 2014. UNC has an opponent lined up for 2014, but not 2013. They also want to play at home both years. We're trying to make a "three way trade" to solve both teams' dilemmas.
 

RodentRampage said:
He thought it would look better from a PR perspective, but he didn't break his contract.
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Don't know if he wouldn't have honored his contract if they wouldn't have agreed to release him from it. He forced his way out then. That's much closer to breaking a contract then to exercising an "out" clause.

To Kill's credit he was jumping into a worse situation not a better one.
 

highwayman said:
It's mostly about Kill wanting 8 home games (like any coach would), secondly about who we have scheduled. We have a new NC opponent lined up at home for both 2013 and 2014. UNC has an opponent lined up for 2014, but not 2013. They also want to play at home both years. We're trying to make a "three way trade" to solve both teams' dilemmas.
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Now that sounds reasonable. Why couldn't you have been here a couple of hours ago. :cool:
 

kill - currently no margin for error. get kids some confidence. conference schedule factors into it don't want to be beat up. as you get better you need to schedule tougher. Need a balance a fine line. Have to get players better, better recruiting then you can schedule tougher opponents. wants to get to big ten schedule and win big ten games.
 

Kill just said that when the program gets towhere he wants it he will schedule those games that the fans want, but we are not there yet.
 

wels0081 said:
That's fair. However, what are our chances of beating a mid-tier ACC team next year?

I would guess you give the Gophers a better shot next year than I do at beating UNC. In my mind, a 90% chance of a win against New Hampshire is worth more than a 30% chance of beating UNC or 5% chance at upsetting a big name.
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Look I am not one to see things through Maroon colored glasses but I sure as hell would hope that in year 3 we have more then a 30% chance of beating a team like North Carolina. We have been beaten down over the years and our standards have dropped but bare minimum we should expect to be competitive with the North Carolina's of the world. If we can beat Iowa and Illinois we can beat North friggin Carolina and I am sick of hearing this building a program line of BS. 3 years of the same system should have you in position to compete with most teams outside of maybe the top 10%.

If Kill wants future schedules filled with patsies so be it, but trying to back out of a series with North Carolina looks gutless. You may not like it but the game is on the schedule so instead of trying to protect your teams fragile egos and pad your winning record look at it as a challenge and go out and win the damn game.
 

MNVCGUY said:
Look I am not one to see things through Maroon colored glasses but I sure as hell would hope that in year 3 we have more then a 30% chance of beating a team like North Carolina. We have been beaten down over the years and our standards have dropped but bare minimum we should expect to be competitive with the North Carolina's of the world. If we can beat Iowa and Illinois we can beat North friggin Carolina and I am sick of hearing this building a program line of BS. 3 years of the same system should have you in position to compete with most teams outside of maybe the top 10%.

If Kill wants future schedules filled with patsies so be it, but trying to back out of a series with North Carolina looks gutless. You may not like it but the game is on the schedule so instead of trying to protect your teams fragile egos and pad your winning record look at it as a challenge and go out and win the damn game.
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Using Sagarin ratings as of right now, we would be a 15-point underdog if we played @ UNC this weekend.

Deal with things as they are, not how you would like them to be.
 

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