I don't understand how things like this get repeated CONSTANTLY both on this board and in the local media:
"It has happened before. For a decade, Glen Mason kept the Gophers in a state of aggressive averageness, of middling respectability, where attention-grabbing upsets of the league's elite happened almost annually. (And when was the last time you had an inkling that the Gophers were about to shock a national powerhouse?) The Gophers never climbed out of the middle class under Mason, but those 6-5 and 7-4 regular seasons look like a dynasty compared with the destructive Brewster era that followed."
Inaccuracies in this paragraph
1. The Gophers were almost 20 games under .500 in the Big Ten during Mason's tenure with an average conference record that worked out to about 3-5. This is the definition of being BELOW average, not "average averageness"
2. Attention grabbing upsets of the league's elite NEVER happened. Yes the Gophers defeated Penn State when they were ranked highly and also defeated Michigan and Ohio State once each. That said, the most amazing statistic of that decade was that the Gophers NEVER defeated a team that finished in the top 3 of the Big Ten. They beat name teams a few times (certainly not annually) but NEVER beat a team that was elite.
3. The 6-5 and 7-4 regular seasons look like a dynasty compared with the destructive Brewster era that followed. Simple research shows that Brewster was 7-5 in year two and 6-6 in year 3. If you replace Cal with a typical Mason cupcake in year 3, you have two 7-5 regular seasons. In any case, the Gophers were....SURPRISE! 3-5 in the Big Ten in both seasons. Now somehow, these 3-5 seasons became "destructive" under Brewster while they were "average" under Mason.
The rest of this article is really good, but it drives me crazy that these myths about the Mason/Brewster era's of Gopher football get repeated so often by people that should know better.
