Confession...

I read another post where someone was shy about getting back on the message board due to being a strong Brewster supporter. I admit I was one of those to the very end, and now I would like to confess that I was dead wrong after learning more about Brewster.

At the same time I agree, that Brewster and Mason are coaches of the past who aren't here for various reasons. Therefore no need to bring up either of them. I pledge my 100% support to Kill's era who obviously has a plan to make a team jell.

For your penance son, you must say tremendous 100 times followed by 25 get your dag-gum chili hots and you shall be absolved of your sins.

There's no need to apologize for actually being a fan of your team and its coach. I was convinced that Brewster would be our own personal Moses, and never wavered until we lost to USD.

The problem is that there are a lot of self-aggrandizing dicks on this board who wanted to see Brewster fail, because they'd rather be right than actually see the Gophers have success.

There's no need for a confession here. I was 100% behind Brewster until South Dakota, and I don't feel like I have anything to apologize for. I thought he could recruit, and I thought he could learn to coach in a timely manner. After a couple of years, it became obvious I was wrong about one of those things. But there's no reason to be ashamed of supporting your coach.

beavergopher said:

For your penance son, you must say tremendous 100 times followed by 25 get your dag-gum chili hots and you shall be absolved of your sins.

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A wee bit Catholic are you?

BTW I was and all-conference altar boy.

dpodoll68 said:

The problem is that there are a lot of self-aggrandizing dicks on this board who wanted to see Brewster fail, because they'd rather be right than actually see the Gophers have success.

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Amen.

Agree that there is no need to apologize for supporting the coach. For a fan, I think it's a very positive thing to stand behind the coach of your school's team and be fully supportive of him until it becomes impossible to do so any longer. The opposite of that is to be someone like a Patrick Reusse, and take an immediate dislike to someone for no real reason other than because you can, and then just continually seek to undermine him in whatever ways possible. I have no doubt but that deep down (or maybe even not so deep) Reusse was rooting for Brewster to fail, because that would validate his initial opinion of Brewster and make Reusse feel like he was really prescient and really, really 'smart'. That's a big boost to Patty's ego. He was 'right' about Brewster. Yay for us.

Whenever a new head coach comes in there is some hope that things will get better and fans can all get behind them. So far, the new coach hasn't done anything wrong - he hasn't had his team blow a big lead in the 4th quarter, made any boneheaded coaching decisions and hasn't lost any games. All is good.

In the coach's first year, most can be written off as the coach is bringing in new schemes and new coaches and is trying to win with the previous coach's players who may or may not even fit his system. You can't really harp on the coach if they have a bad first year. Blaming Brewster in his first year would have been grossly unfair to the guy as he really didn't have a lot to work with especially on defense and he was trying to implement his spread offense to a team used to running Mason's running offense. Still, red flags were there as the team went 1-11, committed a lot of very stupid penalties but the big one there was they did not get better as the season went on. I would hope and expect that Kill's Gopher team next year gets to be a smarter football team, more fundamentally sound (improved blocking and tackling) and get more and more comfortable with the new systems he is bringing in. I do not expect a lot of wins, especially with a very tough schedule, and we might have to take a step backward before we can get better, but if all goes well we just might start seeing the Gophers laying a foundation to move forward from here. I am excited to see how it all plays out and I think we will get better!!

dpodoll68 said:

The problem is that there are a lot of self-aggrandizing dicks on this board who wanted to see Brewster fail, because they'd rather be right than actually see the Gophers have success.

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Yeah.. this was my issue. I defended Brew up through USD, although afterwards didn't give him a snowballs chance. My issue was with the hard ons that wanted us to fail because they didn't like Brew for one reason or another (Reusse and Souhan being the leaders of that pack).

Whether you were "for" brewster or "saw through" brewster had NO role in what brewster did or didn't do. He got himself into the situation he was in all by himself. IF you saw through brewster and stated that the emperor had no clothes and that he was doing a terrible job, you were perhaps a much better fan of the program by calling for steps to be taken to defend the program. No fan is that powerful. No fan can safeguard the program by failing to call a spade a spade. Fans are just fans. Some are jerks...no doubt about that. And, the degree of jerkiness lies in the eyes of the beholder...or basher....or mobber, which ever the case may be. ; 0 )

I have always said and have always lived by the motto: I NEVER let the bas.a.ds get me down! You shouldn't either. Just say what you think...let a few other people say what they think and pretty soon everyone will just say what they think and let the chips fall where they may. That way, a board can have a display and representation of the real cross-section of what the people think. THAT is a very good thing!

My love for the Gophers and the unpredictability of college football caused me to be a staunch Brew supporter 'til the end. Did he suck at coaching? Hell yeah! But I was behind the program and no matter how down I was the Sunday after a game, by Friday I was convincing myself week after week that Brew would finally have it turned around and we would get that vital second win or huge upset.

I could never hate on the guy because he really believed he could do it. He wasn't a "snake oil salesman" because that title requires deception with intent. He was just an inexperienced coach with poor long term planning skills and a great first impression. I think a lot of people were mainly upset with him because he gave them something that a Gopher coach hasn't done in a long time - optimism through his approach. Mason sucked at that. He showed results, but the guy was a plank. Most of us got fed up with waiting for the results to show with Brew and a lot of people probably felt betrayed or lied to.

Regardless, he didn't get it done, it's over, and we have the Killster. If I could have the last four years back I would still back Brew wholeheartedly for the sake of pissing off the stupid schleps on this site who want to make sure we know how right they were for "seeing him for who he really was" week after week (cue smartass remark by oak street/charlesbenjamin/et al.). Shocking that the odds of someone being right about a coach bombing at the U are high considering the past 50 years of futility.

I was more skeptical of Brewster in his first year than this year. The seven win start really set the hook on me. By the time this year came around I was very resistant to the people who hated him, and loathed those who wanted somebody "more Minnesotan", or hated Brewster for being bombastic (which is easy to be in a passionless tundra that is this Christ-forsaken college sports market). Unlike Mason, who outwardly had given up on ever being more than a fringe bowl bid, Brewster wasn't mailing it in. But by mid way through '10 his team did.. and he got the axe.

And who is to say things might not have gone different had just a few things gone differently? A breakthrough at running back (the only recent tradition Brewster inherited) for example might have been enough to put him over the tipping point to from mediocrity and success. And he was close. LaMichael James, Josh Huff, Ronnie Wingo, Ethan Grant, Dontae Williams, Marcus Coker: all of these highly touted backs either committed or gave serious consideration (ie multiple visits) and ended up elsewhere, where many have been very productive. Any of whom might have been the difference in a seven win season and a lack-luster bowl and a nine or ten win season and some serious momentum. And this was by a guy most of you would allege couldn't coach his team out of a refrigerator box...

Kill isn't blowing me away by any means as a hire. Surely he is more qualified than Brewster, but I've seen a lot of his games, and he is no coaching savant either. That doesn't mean I am not going to be a fan come Saturday though! Reservations are set aside on game day.

Besides Mason and Brewster aren't the real let downs, given how far the football program still has to climb to even equal Purdue or MSU in relevance. The real disappointment of my dozen odd years of Gopherdom has been the revenue winter sports! Tubby still hasn't done any better than 6th in the B1G Ten, (no better than Brew!!!) and seems not likely to better that mark this year. And don't get me started on hockey!

Actually, given how much change he had going on constantly, it is amazing how well we did in his second and third years. I think that primarily is due to Decker, Tow-Arnett, and Weber.

imthewalrus said:

Whether you were "for" brewster or "saw through" brewster had NO role in what brewster did or didn't do. He got himself into the situation he was in all by himself. IF you saw through brewster and stated that the emperor had no clothes and that he was doing a terrible job, you were perhaps a much better fan of the program by calling for steps to be taken to defend the program. No fan is that powerful. No fan can safeguard the program by failing to call a spade a spade. Fans are just fans. Some are jerks...no doubt about that. And, the degree of jerkiness lies in the eyes of the beholder...or basher....or mobber, which ever the case may be. ; 0 )

I have always said and have always lived by the motto: I NEVER let the bas.a.ds get me down! You shouldn't either. Just say what you think...let a few other people say what they think and pretty soon everyone will just say what they think and let the chips fall where they may. That way, a board can have a display and representation of the real cross-section of what the people think. THAT is a very good thing!

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Good post....my feeling is if we hadn't fired Glen Mason after the Texas Tech loss, we would have ended up firing him a year later as it would have been a down season because the talent was pretty down. (I don't think he would have gone 1-11 though) With Brewster, many people such as myself knew after last year's loss in the bowl vs. Iowa St. that he wasn't going to go any further and most likely down this year. (This isn't a great prophecy - most every preseason publication had us forecast 10th or 11th in the Big Ten this year.) Many people around here knew you could give Brewster another season this year, but it would have been like giving Mason one more year after the TT loss. The results were fairly predictable.

#2Gopher didn't start this thread to give Brewster haters another opportunity to rip him and tell us how happy they are he is gone. If you read #2's post again you will see that he wants just the opposite to happen. The feeding frenzy that as occurred in GopherHole since Brewster was fired has been pathetic.

Brewster came to Minnesota and worked his rear end off for 3 1/2 year to try to turn a football program around that hasn't won squat for 43 years. He failed to get it done just like every other Gopher coach since Warmath. Brewster deserves to be remembered and treated much better by Gopher fans than he has been so far. Mason supporters can say the same thing about their guy. There are few things more disgusting than people who love to kick a guy when he is down.

Brewster is not the enemy and neither was Mason. It is time for Gopher fans to move on and do what we can to support Coach Kill as he takes on the monumental job of trying to win a Big 10 Championship for Minnesota.