Rittenberg's take on Brew ESPN Blog

[Golden Shower]

Thanks for having my back Buddylee853! I got yours!

 

[oleboy41]

In your Microsoft Outlook:
Go to Tools
Click on Account Settings
Go to the RSS Feeds tab
Click on New
Enter in the feed web address (http://myespn.go.com/blogs/feed?blog=bigten)
and click Add

You can do that for any RSS feed. My workday has gotten a whole lot better since I figured this RSS thing out. If you are a Twins fan, you can get Joe C's, LaVelle's, and Howards blogs all delivered to your inbox. So anytime the twins don't trade anyone, you will be the first to know.

thanks but I forgot to add we use Lotus Notes for work. I've been trying to figure out how to do it with Notes but I can't. Is an RSS feed a strictly Microsoft thing?

 

[buddylee853]

Thanks for having my back Buddylee853! I got yours!

No problem, man!

 

[harrys ghost]

thanks but I forgot to add we use Lotus Notes for work. I've been trying to figure out how to do it with Notes but I can't. Is an RSS feed a strictly Microsoft thing?

No, you can use it with Google or Yahoo (if you have an e-mail account with either).

 

[dayjoh]

I hope this is a joke.

Of course it's a joke. Just like Rotundo over there. Gotta admit, I do laugh when I see his name though.

 

[caliGopher]

Easy Killer

caliGopher and Rotundo reflect one of the major problems we have in society....we want what we want and we want it NOW! No one has the patience to build anything any more. Have you guys ever heard of the saying "Rome wasn't built in a day."? Well neither will the Gopher's return to national prominence. It starts with recruiting. So far I think we can say Brewster is on his way to bringing in higher caliber players than the previous regime and ones we can say are better than we might expect given the last 40 years of Gopher football history. Some times you have to tear it down to rebuild it better than what you previously had. I am fine with saying the jury is still on Brewster long term. But give it a rest! How can you judge him and say he cannot deliver the whole package when he has had 2 years on the job. That is a joke! But then again, these guys probably know more than the rest of us schmucks that are okay with giving Coach Brew some time before we indicted, sentence and convict him! That is why people like them lose me at HELLO.

That's a pretty big accusation, and jumping to conclusions on my thoughts and approach are exactly why people like you never get to Hello with me.

On one thing we can agree, the jury is still out on Brewster. I will be the first to apologize if and when he shows he can coach.

Rome, it is true was not built in a day, but it also was not built 40-50% of the way by the good people of Rome (guys like Matt Spaeth, Ben Hamilton, Tyrone Carter, MBIII, Ben Utecht, Eslinger, Setterstrom, Lloyd, Ellerson, etc) only for someone without any experience building a city coming in and raising the city and then trying to build it back up without a plan that would work and without an idea of what he was doing. You're o.k. with that, I'm not.

Two years later, we're restarting the rebuilding process again from a system and philosophy perspective. Oddly, the system is getting closer to what was "not going to work" and gone is the talk that the only way we'll be successful is if we run the spread offense. At least there are better players on the defensive side of the ball at this point for sure which hopefully will prevent another disasterous season like 2007.

As for your rush to judgment that I my expectations were unrealistic. You're right, I want one of the best O lines in the country again. I would settle for signs of improvement over the course of the 2008 season so I could hang my hat on the fact that we have young players developing, and forming the foundation of an O-line that can live up to the standard of the past several years.

I'm disappointed in Brewster because the staff he put together apparently can only coach 4 and 5 star Seniors to do well. It certainly helps the situation to have that kind of experience, but with a good coach, you see the fundamentals, the discipline and the evolution of players into what they can become. With Brewster, we just have to be patient until we have all his players in place. The only problem with that is that we are now five years away again, since we are no longer a spread coast offense and I can only assume we were recruiting the right players for our previous system. Will it work? In 2007 I was assured there would be no problems with the O-line. That ended up not being the case, and last year speaks for itself.

Brewster has done a much better job of recruiting than any of the coaches in the past. I was adamant that he needed to deliver on that from day one much to the chagrin of a number of people on this board, yet he delivered in a few weeks. The only complaint from his first few weeks was the inability to hold onto Greg Jones. Last years class was great on paper, and now nearly all of the players are on the team. He slipped in recruiting this past year, but no one seems to be concerned about that. I was expecting a top 25 team on signing day and he fell short on signing day and when the team reports.

What I haven't seen is competent game day coaching. Even with sub-standard players that can be evident as the philosophy translates into the play of the team on the field -- although the execution may be lacking due to the caliber of the players. They should be in position to make the play even if they aren't able to. That certainly didn't happen in 2007 and I applaud Roof for finding ways to mask the holes through on D via good coaching. I wish he was still here. But the retread job of Cosgrove will be just fine regardless of how poorly he performed the last time he was employed, I am assured by folks on this board.

What I haven't seen is discipline. We've had way to many stupid penalties. In 2007, we had way to many people lining up incorrectly, particularly on D, nearly every play.

What I haven't seen is player development. If anything, our execution, particularly on offense was in steady decline for the past two years.

What I haven't seen is keeping players on the roster. The players Brewster recruits. Way too many of them have disappeared. Of course the easy brush off is "they weren't good enough" but if we haven't had the players on the roster to even fill the position, can we really afford to watch depth walk off the team each year to be replaced by true freshman that "need time to develop" thus self fulfilling the need to "give Brewster a chance"?

Brewster will get his time regardless of what I think. Again, if he ends up delivering, fantastic. I'll apologize to everyone here over and over again. I will take my crow with a side of BBQ sauce. If it doesn't go that way, at least the next coach we have will have a better ranked recruiting class worth of players on the roster, so we can count the Brewster hire as sheer genius, assuming we hire someone who can coach next time around.

I will not ask all of the people who have closed their eyes to what is going on in the program to apologize to me. I'll hope we make a better hire and go into the future with a real chance to rebuild the program. I will hope that some learn when you gamble on a hire, like we did with Brewster, the leash is a bit shorter. A bit tighter unless and until he proves himself.

But I'm just an idiot who wants everything now. If there is any glaring problem with society right now its the over willingness to ignore problems when "change" is happening. Change for changes sake doesn't do much for us, particularly when the change was going to happen anyway, what we really needed was a competent choice to deliver change.

As long as Brewster is the coach, I will continue to plunk down dollars in support of my beloved Gophers and hope that all of the evidence is wrong, or that if it isn't, we make a better hire from day one next time around. I was a Gopher long before Brewster showed up, and will be one long after he's gone.

 

[grunkiejr]

I have to agree with Caligopher. The big talk does nothing for me. It does annoy me and makes me question the intelligence of our head coach. A lot of you seem to like hearing about hot chilli, never ending tremendousness, and rosebowl trips followed by 1-11 seasons. I don't.

This year I expect the best gopher team since 2003. I am concerned that we will be outmatched on the sidelines but I hope I am wrong. Exactly what good did all that rosebowl talk do? Talking is easy, meaningless and has proven quite hollow to this point. This year the wins/losses will matter far more than all the upbeat talk.

I watched a Big Ten Stories clip on Gary Barnett discussing his time at Northwestern. When he did his first press conference he just blurted out that the goal was the Rose Bowl. Looking back on it he thinks it was one of the best things he did because it gave the program a vision and goal to reach for.

Brewster didn't say we were going to the Rose Bowl in 2007. If you want a coach that doesn't want to look at the goal and talk about the goal then you want a different coach than I want.

 

[calminnfan]

I'd prefer a guy that doesn't just dream big, he delivers:
On signing day.
When the players show up.
In Stemming attrition of his own recruits for whatever reason (academics, playing time, etc). When hiring a staff.
In game preparation.
On the sidelines on game day.

So far, Brewster is 1.5 for 6. Minnesota needs someone who can deliver 6 of 6.

True, but given what he inherited and what he has accomplished in getting better quality recruits and coaches here, and being willing to make changes when he needs to, I think he is on his way to delivering.

Though his game time decisions need a little adjustment, he continually improves the team each year, not just in record, but in coaches and in quality recruits.

 

[oleboy41]

That's a pretty big accusation, and jumping to conclusions on my thoughts and approach are exactly why people like you never get to Hello with me.

On one thing we can agree, the jury is still out on Brewster. I will be the first to apologize if and when he shows he can coach.

Rome, it is true was not built in a day, but it also was not built 40-50% of the way by the good people of Rome (guys like Matt Spaeth, Ben Hamilton, Tyrone Carter, MBIII, Ben Utecht, Eslinger, Setterstrom, Lloyd, Ellerson, etc) only for someone without any experience building a city coming in and raising the city and then trying to build it back up without a plan that would work and without an idea of what he was doing. You're o.k. with that, I'm not.

Two years later, we're restarting the rebuilding process again from a system and philosophy perspective. Oddly, the system is getting closer to what was "not going to work" and gone is the talk that the only way we'll be successful is if we run the spread offense. At least there are better players on the defensive side of the ball at this point for sure which hopefully will prevent another disasterous season like 2007.

As for your rush to judgment that I my expectations were unrealistic. You're right, I want one of the best O lines in the country again. I would settle for signs of improvement over the course of the 2008 season so I could hang my hat on the fact that we have young players developing, and forming the foundation of an O-line that can live up to the standard of the past several years.

I'm disappointed in Brewster because the staff he put together apparently can only coach 4 and 5 star Seniors to do well. It certainly helps the situation to have that kind of experience, but with a good coach, you see the fundamentals, the discipline and the evolution of players into what they can become. With Brewster, we just have to be patient until we have all his players in place. The only problem with that is that we are now five years away again, since we are no longer a spread coast offense and I can only assume we were recruiting the right players for our previous system. Will it work? In 2007 I was assured there would be no problems with the O-line. That ended up not being the case, and last year speaks for itself.

Brewster has done a much better job of recruiting than any of the coaches in the past. I was adamant that he needed to deliver on that from day one much to the chagrin of a number of people on this board, yet he delivered in a few weeks. The only complaint from his first few weeks was the inability to hold onto Greg Jones. Last years class was great on paper, and now nearly all of the players are on the team. He slipped in recruiting this past year, but no one seems to be concerned about that. I was expecting a top 25 team on signing day and he fell short on signing day and when the team reports.

What I haven't seen is competent game day coaching. Even with sub-standard players that can be evident as the philosophy translates into the play of the team on the field -- although the execution may be lacking due to the caliber of the players. They should be in position to make the play even if they aren't able to. That certainly didn't happen in 2007 and I applaud Roof for finding ways to mask the holes through on D via good coaching. I wish he was still here. But the retread job of Cosgrove will be just fine regardless of how poorly he performed the last time he was employed, I am assured by folks on this board.

What I haven't seen is discipline. We've had way to many stupid penalties. In 2007, we had way to many people lining up incorrectly, particularly on D, nearly every play.

What I haven't seen is player development. If anything, our execution, particularly on offense was in steady decline for the past two years.

What I haven't seen is keeping players on the roster. The players Brewster recruits. Way too many of them have disappeared. Of course the easy brush off is "they weren't good enough" but if we haven't had the players on the roster to even fill the position, can we really afford to watch depth walk off the team each year to be replaced by true freshman that "need time to develop" thus self fulfilling the need to "give Brewster a chance"?

Brewster will get his time regardless of what I think. Again, if he ends up delivering, fantastic. I'll apologize to everyone here over and over again. I will take my crow with a side of BBQ sauce. If it doesn't go that way, at least the next coach we have will have a better ranked recruiting class worth of players on the roster, so we can count the Brewster hire as sheer genius, assuming we hire someone who can coach next time around.

I will not ask all of the people who have closed their eyes to what is going on in the program to apologize to me. I'll hope we make a better hire and go into the future with a real chance to rebuild the program. I will hope that some learn when you gamble on a hire, like we did with Brewster, the leash is a bit shorter. A bit tighter unless and until he proves himself.

But I'm just an idiot who wants everything now. If there is any glaring problem with society right now its the over willingness to ignore problems when "change" is happening. Change for changes sake doesn't do much for us, particularly when the change was going to happen anyway, what we really needed was a competent choice to deliver change.

As long as Brewster is the coach, I will continue to plunk down dollars in support of my beloved Gophers and hope that all of the evidence is wrong, or that if it isn't, we make a better hire from day one next time around. I was a Gopher long before Brewster showed up, and will be one long after he's gone.

I've seen a much different team than you, apparently. I've seen pretty good gameday coaching and preperation. Last year this team was in position to beat NW and Wisky and lost due to bad breaks and youth. Say what you want but the truth is way too many of our 1st and 2nd string players last year were in their first year of D1 ball and that's a recipe for disaster. We came out flat against Iowa and Michigan but that was mainly due to a complete failure in our OL and a lack of competent WRs on the outside. Tell me how many of our offensive skill position guys would've seen any PT for any of the top 5 teams in the B10 last year. The only real answer is Weber and Decker. The rest were guys who should've been on the bench or taking a red shirt. I guess you wanted Brewster to have those guys making big plays all year long. Guess what though? They played admirably. OUr frosh fumbled away a Wisconsin win and we got a Gopher bounce against NW. A 9 win season would look a lot better than a 7 win one. Brewsters young squad played Pat Fitzgerald to a draw and same with Bielema. He handled Zook and Tiller and showed well against Tressel.

 

[grunkiejr]

Rome, it is true was not built in a day, but it also was not built 40-50% of the way by the good people of Rome (guys like Matt Spaeth, Ben Hamilton, Tyrone Carter, MBIII, Ben Utecht, Eslinger, Setterstrom, Lloyd, Ellerson, etc) only for someone without any experience building a city coming in and raising the city and then trying to build it back up without a plan that would work and without an idea of what he was doing. You're o.k. with that, I'm not.

Two years later, we're restarting the rebuilding process again from a system and philosophy perspective. Oddly, the system is getting closer to what was "not going to work" and gone is the talk that the only way we'll be successful is if we run the spread offense. At least there are better players on the defensive side of the ball at this point for sure which hopefully will prevent another disasterous season like 2007.

I don't necessarily agree with this. Yes, we are switching the style of offense but it doesn't mean that we are starting all over. Whether or not he has stated it, Brewster clearly believes it is about the Jimmy's and the Joe's and not the X's and the O's. Whether or not it was intended this way the spread offense served as a means to an end to give us a loaded receiver corps and talented QB's. It will take everybody time to learn the new offense and for the QB's to learn the read progression but one has to wonder (and I don't know the answer) whether going to the spread --which was very in vogue--helped us recruit better athletes faster. I'm not sure that an athlete like MarQueis Gray would have looked at us if we were running a pro-style offense. Now that the NFL has shunned the spread to some extent it probably leaves us on good footing to continue recruiting our current caliber of athlete (assuming we are successful in the new offense).

I'm disappointed in Brewster because the staff he put together apparently can only coach 4 and 5 star Seniors to do well. It certainly helps the situation to have that kind of experience, but with a good coach, you see the fundamentals, the discipline and the evolution of players into what they can become. With Brewster, we just have to be patient until we have all his players in place. The only problem with that is that we are now five years away again, since we are no longer a spread coast offense and I can only assume we were recruiting the right players for our previous system. Will it work? In 2007 I was assured there would be no problems with the O-line. That ended up not being the case, and last year speaks for itself.

I personally thought they did a much better job last year. In 2007 we had a ton of holes and were asking a lot of overmatched players like Collado & Theret to compete at a level they weren't ready for. The fact is we got back to a typical Mason season last year but we actually seem to be progressing now because we are adding another talented class of freshman and the other talented class has a year of experience in the program. I don't think anybody says that they can't be successful until the 2008 class is seniors but to have a truly talented and deep team it will take another couple of year and that is what the best teams in the Big Ten have right now.

Brewster has done a much better job of recruiting than any of the coaches in the past. I was adamant that he needed to deliver on that from day one much to the chagrin of a number of people on this board, yet he delivered in a few weeks. The only complaint from his first few weeks was the inability to hold onto Greg Jones. Last years class was great on paper, and now nearly all of the players are on the team. He slipped in recruiting this past year, but no one seems to be concerned about that. I was expecting a top 25 team on signing day and he fell short on signing day and when the team reports.

Greg Jones was still looking around when he committed to Minnesota so losing him to Michigan State wasn't a surprise. The press conference announcing Brewster was 1/17/07 and Jones committed to MSU on 1/18/07 which means Brewster probably hadn't been approved by the NCAA to speak to recruits.

Last year's class was solid. It would have been nice to add Taylor Lewan and Ronnie Wingo or Sheldon Richardson (going to Juco anyway so it wouldn't have mattered). The separation between 37 and 25 was honestly very small if you look at the 25th ranked class on Rivals. With the number of highly ranked 3-stars (RR: 5.7) it is a surprise more of them didn't end up 4-stars. Going by position ranking Hageman, Alipate, Garin, Gregory-McGhee, and Lewis just narrowly missed being upgraded which would have made a huge difference in the rankings. If you don't get hung up on the actual rankings and you just compare classes you'll see how close they are. Also, on a 2-year basis (08-09) Minnesota ranks #3 in the Big Ten behind OSU & Michigan which demonstrates the quality of classes we have brought in.---although PSU is bringing in a heck of a 2010 class so they'll pass us on a 3-year basis.

What I haven't seen is discipline. We've had way to many stupid penalties. In 2007, we had way to many people lining up incorrectly, particularly on D, nearly every play.

Agreed. I like seeing that our players have an edge to them that they didn't in the past but we definitely need to clean that up. The Gophers were a very chippy team last year. We also need to get the false start and holding penalites under control because they killed drives in a lot of games.

What I haven't seen is player development. If anything, our execution, particularly on offense was in steady decline for the past two years.

Adam Weber clearly regressed in year 2. Eric Decker clearly got worse. Brandon Green was better at the beginning of the year than at the end. Lee Campbell got worse as the season went on. Kyle Theret was clearly better as a true freshman than he was at the end of his sophomore year. The OL didn't improve like we would have liked to have seen it but every other position on the field did show imporovement. If you don't see that you're blind.

What I haven't seen is keeping players on the roster. The players Brewster recruits. Way too many of them have disappeared. Of course the easy brush off is "they weren't good enough" but if we haven't had the players on the roster to even fill the position, can we really afford to watch depth walk off the team each year to be replaced by true freshman that "need time to develop" thus self fulfilling the need to "give Brewster a chance"?

This might not satisfy you but the situation hasn't been different at Michigan. In the first year or two of transition you get a lot of turnover.

The 2007 class is going to be a little bit of an outlier because we were in a bad position. Our two choices A) don't fill scholarships for two yrs (we had 28+ graduating in 2008 and can only take 28 recruits in a year so even if we had extra schollies left over from 2007 we couldn't use the schollies until '09) B) Take risks on players that are not committed elsewhere either because they are academic risks or walk-on caliber athletes. He chose B which hurt us with the APR by taking away three scholarships but if he chose option A he would have been self selecting that "punishment" without any potential upside.

From the 2008 class we lost Brock to academics (not unique---Wisconsin and Michigan have both lost players to academics this year, Iowa lost Greene a couple years ago). It looks like we will lose Nance due to competition (it happens) and Smith to moving closer to home/family. I would love to not lose a single player but as a whole our grades are better (led the conference in all academic selections) than they have been in the past.

If it doesn't go that way, at least the next coach we have will have a better ranked recruiting class worth of players on the roster, so we can count the Brewster hire as sheer genius, assuming we hire someone who can coach next time around.

Exactly. The cupboard was bare when he got here but our talent is built up to a level we haven't seen since the early years of Mason and in my mind it will continue to get better than that. If it doesn't work out at least we are in a better place than we were a few years ago.

 

[GopherGod]

I've seen a much different team than you, apparently. I've seen pretty good gameday coaching and preperation. Last year this team was in position to beat NW and Wisky and lost due to bad breaks and youth. Say what you want but the truth is way too many of our 1st and 2nd string players last year were in their first year of D1 ball and that's a recipe for disaster. We came out flat against Iowa and Michigan but that was mainly due to a complete failure in our OL and a lack of competent WRs on the outside. Tell me how many of our offensive skill position guys would've seen any PT for any of the top 5 teams in the B10 last year. The only real answer is Weber and Decker. The rest were guys who should've been on the bench or taking a red shirt. I guess you wanted Brewster to have those guys making big plays all year long. Guess what though? They played admirably. OUr frosh fumbled away a Wisconsin win and we got a Gopher bounce against NW. A 9 win season would look a lot better than a 7 win one. Brewsters young squad played Pat Fitzgerald to a draw and same with Bielema. He handled Zook and Tiller and showed well against Tressel.

And I thought we lost to NW, not a draw. The team was completely unprepared for the Iowa game and put up a terrible showing against a average Kansas team after having a month to gameplan for that game, that falls on the coaches and ultimately on the head coach who has the final say.

 

[EG#9]

If I could get back to the original topic, I don't understand why Brewster' s optimism bothers so many people. I think it is real tough to win (games or recruiting battles) without believing you are going to do it. Brewster sets goals that may not seem achievable to many fans, but they are what his team needs to strive for. Do you want a coach to come out and say "we have a really tough schedule this year, we'd be happy if we won 8 games" ? I don't see how setting those types of limitations would be beneficial.

I would be annoyed if Brewster acted after the season like he had a great year by winning 7 games, but he did not. I think he realizes that winning 7 games and losing to both rival schools is not acceptable. He went out and fired his OC and his OL coach after that year.

 

[Golden Shower]

That's a pretty big accusation, and jumping to conclusions on my thoughts and approach are exactly why people like you never get to Hello with me.

On one thing we can agree, the jury is still out on Brewster. I will be the first to apologize if and when he shows he can coach.

Rome, it is true was not built in a day, but it also was not built 40-50% of the way by the good people of Rome (guys like Matt Spaeth, Ben Hamilton, Tyrone Carter, MBIII, Ben Utecht, Eslinger, Setterstrom, Lloyd, Ellerson, etc) only for someone without any experience building a city coming in and raising the city and then trying to build it back up without a plan that would work and without an idea of what he was doing. You're o.k. with that, I'm not.

Two years later, we're restarting the rebuilding process again from a system and philosophy perspective. Oddly, the system is getting closer to what was "not going to work" and gone is the talk that the only way we'll be successful is if we run the spread offense. At least there are better players on the defensive side of the ball at this point for sure which hopefully will prevent another disasterous season like 2007.

As for your rush to judgment that I my expectations were unrealistic. You're right, I want one of the best O lines in the country again. I would settle for signs of improvement over the course of the 2008 season so I could hang my hat on the fact that we have young players developing, and forming the foundation of an O-line that can live up to the standard of the past several years.

I'm disappointed in Brewster because the staff he put together apparently can only coach 4 and 5 star Seniors to do well. It certainly helps the situation to have that kind of experience, but with a good coach, you see the fundamentals, the discipline and the evolution of players into what they can become. With Brewster, we just have to be patient until we have all his players in place. The only problem with that is that we are now five years away again, since we are no longer a spread coast offense and I can only assume we were recruiting the right players for our previous system. Will it work? In 2007 I was assured there would be no problems with the O-line. That ended up not being the case, and last year speaks for itself.

Brewster has done a much better job of recruiting than any of the coaches in the past. I was adamant that he needed to deliver on that from day one much to the chagrin of a number of people on this board, yet he delivered in a few weeks. The only complaint from his first few weeks was the inability to hold onto Greg Jones. Last years class was great on paper, and now nearly all of the players are on the team. He slipped in recruiting this past year, but no one seems to be concerned about that. I was expecting a top 25 team on signing day and he fell short on signing day and when the team reports.

What I haven't seen is competent game day coaching. Even with sub-standard players that can be evident as the philosophy translates into the play of the team on the field -- although the execution may be lacking due to the caliber of the players. They should be in position to make the play even if they aren't able to. That certainly didn't happen in 2007 and I applaud Roof for finding ways to mask the holes through on D via good coaching. I wish he was still here. But the retread job of Cosgrove will be just fine regardless of how poorly he performed the last time he was employed, I am assured by folks on this board.

What I haven't seen is discipline. We've had way to many stupid penalties. In 2007, we had way to many people lining up incorrectly, particularly on D, nearly every play.

What I haven't seen is player development. If anything, our execution, particularly on offense was in steady decline for the past two years.

What I haven't seen is keeping players on the roster. The players Brewster recruits. Way too many of them have disappeared. Of course the easy brush off is "they weren't good enough" but if we haven't had the players on the roster to even fill the position, can we really afford to watch depth walk off the team each year to be replaced by true freshman that "need time to develop" thus self fulfilling the need to "give Brewster a chance"?

Brewster will get his time regardless of what I think. Again, if he ends up delivering, fantastic. I'll apologize to everyone here over and over again. I will take my crow with a side of BBQ sauce. If it doesn't go that way, at least the next coach we have will have a better ranked recruiting class worth of players on the roster, so we can count the Brewster hire as sheer genius, assuming we hire someone who can coach next time around.

I will not ask all of the people who have closed their eyes to what is going on in the program to apologize to me. I'll hope we make a better hire and go into the future with a real chance to rebuild the program. I will hope that some learn when you gamble on a hire, like we did with Brewster, the leash is a bit shorter. A bit tighter unless and until he proves himself.

But I'm just an idiot who wants everything now. If there is any glaring problem with society right now its the over willingness to ignore problems when "change" is happening. Change for changes sake doesn't do much for us, particularly when the change was going to happen anyway, what we really needed was a competent choice to deliver change.

As long as Brewster is the coach, I will continue to plunk down dollars in support of my beloved Gophers and hope that all of the evidence is wrong, or that if it isn't, we make a better hire from day one next time around. I was a Gopher long before Brewster showed up, and will be one long after he's gone.

Two frickin' years...you are throwing in the towel on him after 2 years! Go ahead! I think a good MAJORITY of us fans are willing to give him more time. But I shouldn't be too hard on you because I am ready to throw in the towel on the Obama Administration 6 months in myself. Unfortunately we have 3 plus more years of this guy being in WAY over his head. But that is for another topic.

The good news for us is that Coach Brew doesn't seem to be complacent. He tries something, sees it isn't work, and tries to fix it. FYI, no one cares how long you have been or will be a Gopher fan....irrelevant!!

 

[Golden Shower]

And I thought we lost to NW, not a draw. The team was completely unprepared for the Iowa game and put up a terrible showing against a average Kansas team after having a month to gameplan for that game, that falls on the coaches and ultimately on the head coach who has the final say.

And we should agree with your assessment that Kansas was an average team that we should beat because.....??? How did we do at Illinois this past year?? Yeah....want to ignore that one huh? Can't have your cake and eat it too....d-bag!!

 

[ulfr]

And we should agree with your assessment that Kansas was an average team that we should beat because.....??? How did we do at Illinois this past year?? Yeah....want to ignore that one huh? Can't have your cake and eat it too....d-bag!!

It is pretty easy to ignore.

We beat a team with a losing record.

I was Champaign and at the time and it felt like a huge win I will concede, but in the final analysis, ahem... not so much.

Rome, it is true was not built in a day, but it also was not built 40-50% of the way by the good people of Rome (guys like Matt Spaeth, Ben Hamilton, Tyrone Carter, MBIII, Ben Utecht, Eslinger, Setterstrom, Lloyd, Ellerson, etc) only for someone without any experience building a city coming in and raising the city and then trying to build it back up without a plan that would work and without an idea of what he was doing. You're o.k. with that, I'm not. HEY let us not forget Nero, or any number of crazy Caesars

Two years later, we're restarting the rebuilding process again from a system and philosophy perspective. Oddly, the system is getting closer to what was "not going to work" and gone is the talk that the only way we'll be successful is if we run the spread offense. At least there are better players on the defensive side of the ball at this point for sure which hopefully will prevent another disasterous season like 2007.

Then you must realize that the U of M has been in thte TWILIGHT ZONE since 1960...almost 50 years

And if you figure that out, you may realize that 50 years of ineptness is not solved/resolved overnight

This is easily the biggest frustration with Brewster and his fervored supporters. We were not languishing in the basement when he came aboard. We were overly content to be in the middle of the conference, but we were cracking the top 25 earlier in this decade. It is not like the guy is trying to make Tulane back into a world beater. But to bottom out as bad as we did definitely displayed our coaches green-horn nature.

Now we all have to wait to see if his third defensive coordinator can be as good as Brewster's second or as good as the second defensive coordinator under Barry Alvarez which Cosgrove once was. We have to break in a new system on offense instead of enjoying the benefits of being in the third year of the system with veterans starting to emerge from underclassmen ranks. While he has impressed me with the coaching talent Brewster has surrounded himself with I think a few years of continuity is more than needed to elevate this squad to the next level.

That all being said I do think that we lagged in the talent we had been attracting in the last 4 or 5 ... programs. Brewster has put a very visible effort in remedying that. While he frustrates me in not being able to attract the state's top one or two talents, and he has struck out on some recruiting gambles, he has gone out and gotten some impressive young athletes from some diverse corners of the nation and the team is looking athletically upgraded.

Brewster didn't say we were going to the Rose Bowl in 2007.

"Taking Gopher Nation to Pasedena sooner than later" and the "cupboard not being bare at Minnesota" surely implied a hope that it would be within the cupboard members expiration date!

I think that we should have expectations of our coach, especially one peddling such lofty dreams. I think it is silly to fixate on lambasting anybody who is not all aboard the Kool-aid Express and it is ridiculous to be perfectly fine with winning 3 of 17 BCS caliber matchups.

But I am not expecting Pasadena travel plans this decade, certainly not anymore. I am expecting to be victorious against SDSU and NDSU next year. I am expecting to not be continually totally embarrassed by Iowa or Wisconsin and to beat one or the other by Thanksgiving 2010. I am expecting there to not be a major fall off in recruiting in this class (which doesn't seem to be in the offing at all with early progress logged). If these things come pass or are not improved upon in the next two years then I will consider Brewster's program an abortion in waiting.


Now that I have added to the Brewster-is-not-performing-as-advertised-and-it-is-okay-to-not-be-okay-with-that portion of this thread : allow me to say that Rittenberg is doing a great job and is easily one of the more entertaining followers of the Big Ten to read.

 

[grunkiejr]

He can't really tell the existing players that the cupboard is bare, but in reality, it was pretty bare. And it got a lot more bare in April of 2007 when a few defensive starters were kicked off the team.

Lets drop this now because it isn't going anywhere. You're still pissed about 2007 and other people are able to get over it and look at where we were more realistically and choose to look at the future more optimistically.

 

[caliGopher]

Cupboard was bare defensively in 2007

He can't really tell the existing players that the cupboard is bare, but in reality, it was pretty bare. And it got a lot more bare in April of 2007 when a few defensive starters were kicked off the team.

Lets drop this now because it isn't going anywhere. You're still pissed about 2007 and other people are able to get over it and look at where we were more realistically and choose to look at the future more optimistically.

We did have players and playmakers on Offense. Only "hole" on the offensive side of the team was depth at reciever, although since Dunbar apparently didn't realize that Jack Simmons was something of a good player so seemed to mostly ignore him for two years (as bad, if not worse than what Elliot Uzelak did to Corey Sauter in Mason's first year).

It's easy to forget we had those players, I know because the D was so bad, but the players (and we did have them) on offense didn't get much help from the coaching staff in year one and relying on a red shirt QB with the need for the O to outscore everyone because we the D coaching staff gave up on August 1 was a recipe for disaster.

 

[harrys ghost]

We did have players and playmakers on Offense. Only "hole" on the offensive side of the team was depth at reciever, although since Dunbar apparently didn't realize that Jack Simmons was something of a good player so seemed to mostly ignore him for two years (as bad, if not worse than what Elliot Uzelak did to Corey Sauter in Mason's first year).

It's easy to forget we had those players, I know because the D was so bad, but the players (and we did have them) on offense didn't get much help from the coaching staff in year one and relying on a red shirt QB with the need for the O to outscore everyone because we the D coaching staff gave up on August 1 was a recipe for disaster.

What difference does it make if you have a decent OL and reasonable receivers if you are forced to use a freshman RB and a freshman QB -- and you have no depth anywhere?