The Wacker years
Kind of got me thinking of the Wacker years in general....
What was he like truly as football coach? The general consensus is "great guy, horrible coach." I went to a lot of the games during those years and kind of know what most do: great offenses, lousy defenses.
What was kind of the state of the U back during those years? He clearly had success at TCU. Was he a bad coach? Was he a decent coach that was in a bad situation in terms of the administration here at that time?
More of wanting to gain more knowledge than anything....
Coach Wacker wasn't a horrible coach, his philosophy was that he could win shootouts because that is where he thought he could get enough athletes to win games.
There was not a lot of administrative support for Gopher football back then and very little promotion to the students, Niels Hasselmo the president at the time was from Sweden and even suggested that Minnesota could drop football and replace it with Mens soccer. The campus had an ugly look to it back then to, a lot of graffity and disrepair of buildings, Washington ave bridge had a rotten smell, and dreary, trash not picked up regularly on the mall, and neglect from central administration and really the legislature as a whole of the Minneapolis campus, not a lot of student pride or connection to campus. Professors could have gave two bleeps about football then too. Playing in the dome wasn't the draw they thought it would be, but admisinstration didn't like paying for the shuttle buses for students to go to games. Basketball and Hockey were winning a decent level back then too.
Wacker used to beg students to come out for the football games on Northrup plaza even handing out free tickets to the dome to as many kids as he could find that would take them with hot dog cookouts and free food. IF there were 25,000 to 30,000 fans at a lot of games we were lucky and student attendance must have been less than a 1,000 plus they stuck us upstairs in the corner endzone. Students today have no idea how much nicer they really have it and todays tickets are still really cheap and a good value compared to back then, with the exception that tuition was much cheaper in that era.
Coach Wackers philosophy seemed to be that he could outscore any team by throwing the ball all over the field and running the ball for a lot of points. If you can't stop them try to out gun them.
There was some decent players back then Tutu Atwell, Chris Darkins, Lee Hutton, Ryan Thelwell, Tim Schade, Tony Levine on Oand on D there were some pretty good players Rodney Heath, Lamanzar Williams, Craig Scruggs, Ed Hawthorne, Antoine Richard, Ogun Akbar, just not enough of them. It was fun to see them throw the ball around and Darkins run as those teams could really put up some points and make some barn burners out of games until they came up against teams with power defensive fronts and a lot of team speed to match the offense. Most of the team speed for the Gophers was really on the offensive side of the ball and that seemed to be where they concentrated most recruiting efforts. Circa 1993 to 1994 we tried to play a little 3-4 front with Ogun Akbar as one of the defensive lineman nose tackle I believe at 227 pounds. That 1993 game against Purdue in the Dome against Mike Alstot still sticks with me at what a score fest back and forth contest it was a 50 to 60 point game on each side.
The defensive line was ok talent wise and there was some decent talent in the secondary but very little depth on defense. Coach Wackers recruiting strategy was to try and pull out as many athletes from Texas and Florida as he could, but he didn't seem to find the right niche of guys that would fit well here, to many misses on fourth and fifth tier guys from those states. Back then almost zero to none of the top Minnesota kids stayed in state, and there were a lot of overlooked athletes besides the Big dogs leaving, going to places like NDSU that probably could have helped the Gophs.
My memory is the linebacking core had it the toughest because the defensive line was lighter than most Big 10 O-lines were relied a lot on to fill gaps and make tackles. They were not the fastest group of linebackers and the other Big 10 teams used to pick them apart with TE drag routes and run the ball a lot. This was Ron Daynes era starting in 1994 so we took a few beatings from him, but coach Wacker did manage to beat Wisconsin twice including at Camp Randall during their first Rose bowl season so he does have that feather in his cap.
Just a couple pratices I remember seeing all of the emphasis seemed to be completely on the offense and running offensive sets while the defense did not seem to be getting a lot of coaching beyond some individual drills, a lot of defensive guys standing around not getting much in the way of coaching. You could tell defense was not a priority for coach because he almost thought it a lost cause to begin with. Our pratice facility and outdoor fields seemed really dumpy compared to the other college campuses I have visited in the Big 10, the indoor field still to this day is still a dump. They had none of the academic support and dorm priorities back then as they do now.
If Wacker could have had some equivalent defensive coaches and little more success in recruiting defensive lineman and better linebackers who knows things might have gone better. Those Wacker years the early 1990's they could score with anyone,
and played a lot of ping pong games with high scores, if they would have had some OK to better defensive coaching and
a little more fan support things might have been better. These guys were not a football team without talent they just lacked direction and coaching on the defensive side of the ball and it showed just about every game. Coach Wacker thought he could not recruit enough team speed on both sides of the ball, and Minnesota doesn't produce a lot of speed guys Johnny's and Joes for defense so he thought he try to win in the Big 10 by outscoring everyone in each game. If he would have had a little more funding from the Athletics maybe he could have brought in better defensive coaches and staffs. Seems to me when Dienhart and Boston took over, and got coach Mason initially they were able to give him more resources than coach Wackers staff ever got. The philosophy was sure enough entertaining football to watch but in the end you just knew the defense wasn't going to make enough stops to win games. It became like that every year then, and it was ultimately coach Wackers undoing and what led to his firing.
