Twelve Years Later - Was firing Glen Mason the right call?

Was firing Glen Mason the right call 12 years ago?

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Lincoln gopher said:
I have told this story several times, one of my best friends, a fairly well known restaurant owner in Minneapolis, has only asked one person to leave one of his restaurants because of unruly behavior and that was Glen Mason. He had a really big, do you know who I am attitude.
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Not saying he didn't kick out Mason, but I find it hard to believe he's the only person he's ever had to leave. I think it's a fairly common occurrence to have to kick people out. At least that's what the restaurant owners and managers that I know tell me.
 

PMWinSTP said:
Glen did not care about player ratings, he recruited to their needs with players that fit his philosophy then the staff developed and coached them up. I think had he stayed, Gophs win performance would have been somewhere between NW and Wisc over the past 12 years.
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There’s a large gap between Wisconsin and NW the last 12 years. I think there would have been an obvious gap between Minnesota and NW the last 12 years if Mason stayed as well. And I mean we would be worse than NW.
 

Gopher sports has been one big knee jerk reaction, both positive and negative. Can there be a bigger fan-base than Minnesota that reacts in such epic knee jerk fashion?
No, Mason should not have been fired. Hind sight tells us the firing was disastrous for the program. We still haven't recovered. This is because...we are still a knee jerk reaction program. Perhaps it's just the Minnesota way...
 

btowngopher said:
There’s a large gap between Wisconsin and NW the last 12 years. I think there would have been an obvious gap between Minnesota and NW the last 12 years if Mason stayed as well. And I mean we would be worse than NW.
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Let's not forget Mason had some of the easiest non-conference schedules too. Now there are 9 Big Ten games and it seems we usually have at least one quality opponent in the non-conference and have since Brewster was coach.
 

MennoSota said:
Gopher sports has been one big knee jerk reaction, both positive and negative. Can there be a bigger fan-base than Minnesota that reacts in such epic knee jerk fashion?
No, Mason should not have been fired. Hind sight tells us the firing was disastrous for the program. We still haven't recovered. This is because...we are still a knee jerk reaction program. Perhaps it's just the Minnesota way...
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I don’t get the haven’t recovered take. This year is similar to most years Mason had.
 


Cruze said:
The Brewster hire was nowhere near the disaster that happened when Nortre Dame hired Gerry Faust after Ara Parseghian and Dan Devine, and when Alabama hired Mike DuBose, Dennis Franchione, and Mike Shula before Nick Saban.
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Don't forget Mike Price.
 

BilldGopher said:
The epic loss to Texas Tech was just too much. It was unfortunate that AD Maturi then epically failed to execute on the subsequent hire.

Although I've come to really enjoy post-coaching Glen Mason on the B1G Network and KFAN with Barreiro...HC Mason did not have an endearing personality, especially in the epic losses. This also contributed to the collapse in donor and and general fan support after THAT game.
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I was in Sun Devil Stadium for that meltdown. That game was TOO MUCH. When we f'ed up our playcalling in the 2nd series of the 3rd quarter I saw it coming.
 

btowngopher said:
I don’t get the haven’t recovered take. This year is similar to most years Mason had.
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Mason gave us wins over big rivals and at least one 10-2 season. Kill was close with the New Year's Day Bowl and after a mediocre season this year we pulled a rabbit out of the hat with an upset win at Madison. We have not been consistently competitive since Mason. We have been a massive rollercoaster. We are a knee jerk nation in Minnesota.
 

Shoulda been fired after the Mich collapse.....

But seriously, I'm 40.. the best season I've seen in my life time was under Mason.. sad..
 



Face The Facts said:
This criticism of Glen is shared widely.

He actually turned out to be a good guy as most like him on the radio, but as coach, he was more Denny Green like. Combative, defensive, closed off, with a touch of arrogance.
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I was just going to post similar sentiments. There are two coaches in Minnesota football history who could have had the fan base totally in their corner if they just had presented themselves a little differently to the public when in the job. I love Mason on Barreiro's show and if he shown one gram of the personality that he displays on that show to the public, he'd likely have been able to ride it out a few more years, perhaps until his retirement. Who knows if he would still be coaching as he's 68 years old. Mason and Green were both excellent football guys, but the nuance between college level and pro level public relations is different and Mason just couldn't figure out the Minnesota sports fan.

As for Brewster, I had hope for him (and Kill and Claeys and have for Fleck), but it was pretty obvious from the get-go that he was lacking a few pieces that a successful coach absolutely has to have.
 
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Gophers_4life said:
If Mason had lost to NDSU in 2006, would he have been fired after that game?
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People tend to forget that we were a fingernail away from losing that game. Lose that game and there's no bowl collapse because there's no bowl.
 

MennoSota said:
Mason gave us wins over big rivals and at least one 10-2 season. Kill was close with the New Year's Day Bowl and after a mediocre season this year we pulled a rabbit out of the hat with an upset win at Madison. We have not been consistently competitive since Mason. We have been a massive rollercoaster. We are a knee jerk nation in Minnesota.
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Kill was 29-29 with a 40% winning percentage in the BIG.
Mason was 64-57 with a 40% winning percentage in the BIG.
 

Fun fact: excepting the games against each other’s respective schools, Glen Mason had a better record against the rest of the Big Ten than did Barry Alvarez through their first eight years, respectively.

Glen Mason was canned two years later, Alvarez is the Emperor of Madison.
 



badgergopher said:
Fun fact: excepting the games against each other’s respective schools, Glen Mason had a better record against the rest of the Big Ten than did Barry Alvarez through their first eight years, respectively.

Glen Mason was canned two years later, Alvarez is the Emperor of Madison.
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If Mason had ever grouped enough of those wins together in one year to go to the Rose Bowl like Alvarez, I guarantee you he would've made it to his ninth year.
 

MennoSota said:
Mason gave us wins over big rivals and at least one 10-2 season. Kill was close with the New Year's Day Bowl and after a mediocre season this year we pulled a rabbit out of the hat with an upset win at Madison. We have not been consistently competitive since Mason. We have been a massive rollercoaster. We are a knee jerk nation in Minnesota.
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We are just as competitive now as we were in the average Mason year. Mason did not consistently beat big rivals. He was lucky if he beat one of our rivals in a given year. How many times did he beat Wisconsin or Michigan? One each? And he didn’t have at least one 10-2 season. He had one 10-3 season. Sorry but if tied for fourth in the conference is the best in a decade of work is the best you can do, it’s not enough.
 
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Mason had some very bad losses but to be fair, his teams had some great wins. A few come to mind, Penn State, Ohio State, Michigan, I believe these were all road wins?
 

No, firing Mason was not the right call.


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I believe Mason is the only coach in the last 50 years that defeated every team in the BIG during his tenure. I could be wrong though.
 

Mason had 9 non-conference games against Power 5 schools during an era of 4 non-conference games a season.

6 of those games were Bowl games.
3 were scheduled non-conference

Mason went easier non-conference.
Since then we played 9 Power 5 non-conference games.

That and the 9 game conference schedule makes things a lot tougher. It's about a 1 win total difference per year.
 


This is a really tough call.

I went with "I thought YES then but I was wrong".
 

Word said:
Not saying he didn't kick out Mason, but I find it hard to believe he's the only person he's ever had to leave. I think it's a fairly common occurrence to have to kick people out. At least that's what the restaurant owners and managers that I know tell me.
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Bars that he owned, happened all the time, upper end restaurants not so much. I should have been more descriptive.
 

The answer to this question should the same as the answer to the question "do you think we would have won more games in the last 12 years had we not fired Mason?"
 

I think people are inflating the career of Glen, it was time for him to go. He had some good records and some very good run offenses. Part of the problem was a lack of support for athletics, but Mason had started to complain about recruiting and readily accepted being a second tier program. The Michigan loss was symbolic of an attitude in the program. The players never seem to feel they were good enough to win against a “better opponent”. Also, remember the annual distraction of Mason hunting for another job.

Mason has mellowed and his time on KFAN is a fun listen, would be better if the interviewer didn’t spend 5 minutes asking every question. I listened to the Mase in your face segment last week, for the first time in along time, and I was screaming at the radio for Barrerio to shut up.....


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bleedsmaroonandgold said:
The answer to this question should the same as the answer to the question "do you think we would have won more games in the last 12 years had we not fired Mason?"
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That's a terrible mentality. So sad we missed out on a few music city bowls while trying to obtain something better.
 

I question whether Mason's heart was in it towards the end, he never coached anywhere again, I'm sure there were opportunities, he was never going to hit the recruiting trail like he needed to. And save the get guys for the system and coach them up BS. We all saw what happened the rare times he landed a big recruit like Maroney or Tapeh.
 

Cruze said:
A missed field goal is not even close to the reason he was fired. Mason didn't deserve a chance to coach in TCF and here is why:

1. 32 -48 Big Ten record.

2. Sub-standard recruiting classes that were getting worse the longer he was here.

3. Below average game day coaching decisions resulting in too many blown 2nd-half leads.

4. Poor relationship with Minnesota high school coaches.

5. Bad relationship with Gopher fans that reached its low point when Mason called students who were booing him a bunch of drunks.

6. Mason's attitude and demeanor were a clear message to Gopher fans that his teams would never be able to compete for Big 10 championships and go to Rose Bowls.
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Agree with all of these.

I love Mase and fully appreciate what he did for our university and program, but I also felt at the time and still feel today like he'd just grown a little bit too comfortable in his job, like his (relative) success at Minnesota had coated him in Teflon such that he'd never be fired and could stay here just as long as he wished to do so. I believe he felt this could be the platform where he could coast comfortably right on into retirement if that's what he wanted. I felt like that outlook led to a certain smugness as well as an entirely unwarranted sense of security. He was satisfied where this program was at because well, relative to the clown-show we'd been prior to his arrival, we were better off, and I feel like this led Glen to maybe not work as hard (on the recruiting trail, on cultivating relationships with MN high school coaches, on putting even half as much effort and energy into his defense as he did his offense and etc etc) as he could have or should have.

Basically I think Glen became far too complacent, and complacency as they say is the kiss of death.
 


This is a rehash of several dead threads that are resurrected for absolutely no good reason. This is lousy history and should not be included in the history of Gopher sports.
 


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