Gophers Over .500

In the last forty years the Gophers have finished over .500 in the Big Ten five times. Stoll in his 7 years did it once in 1973. He was ran out of town so they could bring in "one of our own". That was Joe Salem. He never got them above .500, but he did get them to 4-5 twice. He begat Holtz who brought a lot of hope and bluster and got to 4-4 but not over .500 in his two years.

The next coach was John Gutekunst. He got them over .500 twice in his 6 years in 1986 and 1990. He was a Defense first Coach. In 1992 he went 1-7 in the Big Ten (2-9 overall). His teams scored 13 points or less nine times that year. They had only one Big Ten home game with an attendance over 32,000 and that was the Wisconsin game. It was only 36,133. They ran him out of town.

They then brought in Wacker. His teams were clean, scored a lot of points and got to 3 Big Ten wins once. Mason then came in for 10 years and got them over .500 twice, in 1999 and 2003. He wanted four non-Conference "gimmes" so he could win 2 or 3 times in the Big Ten and go bowling. We know what happened to him. He was followed by Brewster who could only get to 3 and couldn't even get 3 Non-Conference wins regularly. Then we get to Kill. He may get to zero in his first year. He wants to go the Mason route loading-up on bad Non-Conference teams and hoping for the best in the Big Ten.

That's forty years, three stadiums, a few presidents, seven coaches, a handful of A.D., a boatload of Coordinators and not a sniff of a Rose Bowl. Heck, the guy who talked about Rose Bowls left the most hated coach in years. He turned out to be a bad coach, but the leash would have been longer apparently, if he would have bad mouthed the situation right off the bat. A whole lot of people in this state love to hear how bad things are.

We blame everybody for why this program hasn't turned around. Maturi is only the current favorite. Why the Gophers can't be like Iowa or Wisconsin is the main refrain, pretending that the "only game in town" part doesn't exist or doesn't really appeal to 17 and 18 year olds. Those three coaches got us pretty close. Stoll was thrown out by the "powers that be". Gutey had no support left and then Mason. Many now long for Mason but don't want to talk about his conviction that an occasional 5-3 or 10-3 are the summit not a 7-1 and a Rose Bowl bid.

Now we've got a guy that is saying he wants to "downscale" the Non-Conference schedule and needs three or fours years to be competitive again in the Big Ten. In other words to get us back to where Mason, Gutey and Stoll had us. That's the "summit" for Kill and as far as I can tell, people are quite happy with that as long as no one talks about it.

Will Kill ever get us back to a 5 Big Ten win season? Better yet how many people are going to be in TCF in November next year if Kill is telling the truth about how abysmal things are? How will Kill's health affect recruiting? Lots of questions out there but thinking about them isn't popular.

I hope Maturi resigns and does it as soon as possible. There's no reason for him to stay. He desn't need the heat and the public doesn't want him around. If I was Kill though I'd want him to stick around though. Once he leaves the focus on how bad the football future could be will be pointed right at Jerry.

You speak a lot of truth.

Solutions? If firing Maturi is all we can do I see a lot of cold winters ahead.

So, keflivik, what are you saying? Were the coaches all inadequate? Were the administrators incapable and inadequate? Or, is this a really tough place to win big?

Now, back in Stoll's day, it was pretty much the Big TWO, little 8 Conference. THAT would have been a great time to make a run, tie for the title and be awarded the RB because either OSU or Michigan had been there more recently. By the time Smokey Joe got here, MSU and iowa and once in a while Illinois were starting to join the party. Eventually PSU joined in the fun...and now Nebraska has joined the crowd. The Big Ten is a lot harder to win now. Maybe there would be some merit in scheduling some winable games. I'm sure the Big Ten Network wants as many teams to become bowl elegible, because all the money goes into the pot and comes back to the ad's.

My wish is that all the Big Ten Teams would play each other every year. Now THAT would be some great fun! I never care much for the ooc season. Big Ten play is much more fun!

And keflivik: it is prexy k and who ever his ad will be that need to be worried about paid attendance in November of 2012. That wild and crazy prexy b ruined the free-rent arrangement with the damn dome when he extended Mason's contract so that Mason could get the Naming Rights deal with TCF done so that the U could go out on the limb for the new stadium. Don't you just LOVE it? Now any and every prexy and ad at the U for a LONG time will have to worry more about keeping the season ticket buying public a little more happy. Yes, that's right: the new prexy and who ever his ad will be HAVE to make a committment to Gopher Football to keep the fans buying their season tickets and making contributions just to buy those tickets. Man, that is PRESSURE for the good prexy k and his new ad to insure that Gopher Football is better supported than prexy b and badger joel macturi supported football. Why, they ran the football program into the ground and left prex k, his new ad and Coach Kill holding the bag. Only, Coach Kill will at least have some guarantees. I'll bet that deep-down-inside, prexy k is really ticked off at former prexy b for putting the pressure on him like that...

badger joel macturi's mug on the jumbo just may create quite a stir in the stands from some fans during the remainder of the 2011 season...it's nice to be noticed...

Nice of you to start this post keflivik...
; 0 )

Texas-Gopher said:

You speak a lot of truth.

Solutions? If firing Maturi is all we can do I see a lot of cold winters ahead.

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Prepare for some cold winters or hope that Lucia and Tubby can bring back their winning ways.

There is no real solution. No available money or "force of will" can change the things that other schools use to recruit against us. That's because those things are either true or at least true in people's minds outside the state. Stoll could have kept things going if he was allowed to stay, but the suits "who wanted better" drove him out. Mason could have done the same thing if he had wanted the job rather then wanted to move on. Kill is already giving up mixed signals and his health is always going to be a factor.

The Gophers need a coach who will commit to the program. The fans need to learn to enjoy whatever success can be achieved. A coach who comes in while scanning the room for a "prettier girl" won't work but fans who can't enjoy a 9-3 or 10-2 season because it didn't "accomplish anything" aren't any help either.

I am not ok at all with going back to the 4 patsies and hoping for 3 Big Ten wins (theoretically even 2 Big Ten wins if it comes in a year where a bowl needs to take a 6-6 team). If Kill wants to go back to scheduling 4 creampuffs, I would hope that would hurt his popularity on this board. I think the schedules are planned out pretty far in advance with at least one BCS school each year, so it's probably a non issue unless things improve significantly.

There is no reason Minnesota fans need to settle for less than what Iowa and Wisconsin have achieved. I think it's a self fulfilling prophecy when people say the Gophers will never be good.

I hate to say it, but I can't make myself believe this crew will win five conference games in any year even if they are here four years. Hope I'm wrong, but what we've seen so far this year is a nightmare. Salem's teams, in what seems to have been a similar situation, quit on him in '82 and it got worse in '83.

Iceland12 said:

Mason could have done the same thing if he had wanted the job rather then wanted to move on.

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Mason was here for 9 years and he left involuntarily. You'd think if he wanted to move on that badly he would have?

You are a coach at a bottom-rung BCS program for a while, and eventually the HC position at OSU or LSU becomes available, and they are interested. What do you do? Seriously...

"I'm sorry, but I have the best stadium, the best boss, the best coordinator funding, the HOTTEST fat Lutheran chicks, the BEST weather, and the BEST BEST BEST fan base I could ever want, right here at Minnesota. But thanks for calling!"

EG#9 said:

I am not ok at all with going back to the 4 patsies and hoping for 3 Big Ten wins (theoretically even 2 Big Ten wins if it comes in a year where a bowl needs to take a 6-6 team). If Kill wants to go back to scheduling 4 creampuffs, I would hope that would hurt his popularity on this board.

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Mason, like Alvarez, always did his best to load up on creampuffs, because it was the smart, not necessarily "popular among GH retards," thing to do. In the Mason years, when bowl game season rolled around and we had enough wins to reach, say, the Alamo Bowl, we would always get picked over because their bowl committee knew that our fan base STUNK.

Maybe what Mason should have done to make you happy was schedule some more mid-level BCS teams, get a few more Ls on the schedule so that instead of the Alamo Bowl picking over us, it would be the Insight Bowl picking over us, and we could instead end up in the Motor City Bowl, or maybe no bowl?

Mason was trying to build a program. He took interest in two vastly superior jobs, including one at his alma mater, and he got crucified for looking outside the Garden of Eden at Minnesota, where coaches MUST WIN NOW, despite the worst stadium in the conference, the worst coordinator funding, etc. He did an AMAZING job considering the circumstances.

SickAndTiredOfLosingToWI said:

Mason, like Alvarez, always did his best to load up on creampuffs, because it was the smart, not necessarily "popular among GH retards," thing to do. In the Mason years, when bowl game season rolled around and we had enough wins to reach, say, the Alamo Bowl, we would always get picked over because their bowl committee knew that our fan base STUNK.

Maybe what Mason should have done to make you happy was schedule some more mid-level BCS teams, get a few more Ls on the schedule so that instead of the Alamo Bowl picking over us, it would be the Insight Bowl picking over us, and we could instead end up in the Motor City Bowl, or maybe no bowl?

Mason was trying to build a program. He took interest in two vastly superior jobs, including one at his alma mater, and he got crucified for looking outside the Garden of Eden at Minnesota, where coaches MUST WIN NOW, despite the worst stadium in the conference, the worst coordinator funding, etc. He did an AMAZING job considering the circumstances.

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So much wrong with your post. First of all Glen Mason was at Minnesota TEN YEARS. He was not trying to "build" a program, we had completed his building. He didn't just take interest in another job, he left his name out there so long that another Big Ten coach (Randy Walker) spoke out against him for what he was doing to Minnesota. A lot of posters like to claim the Alamo Bowl bypassed the Gophers for Michigan State (I assume this is what you are referring to), but the reality is both schools were 5-3 in the Big Ten and Michigan State BEAT MINNESOTA AT THE DOME. If you can't beat mid-level BCS teams, you shouldn't go to a bowl.

What Mason should have done to make me happy was not recruit at the absolute bottom of the Big Ten his last 3 years. What Mason should have done to make me happy was actually beat Iowa and Wisconsin with regularity instead of getting blown out by one or the other every year and then referring to them as "trinket games". What Mason should have done to make me happy was finish 6-2 in the Big Ten at least once in his decade at the helm (Indiana was the only other team in the conference to fail to win 6 conference games during that time span). What Mason should have done to make me happy was have at least one huge comeback victory that rivaled the absolute meltdowns against Texas Tech, Michigan, Purdue, Northwestern and others.

Glen Mason was under no pressure to WIN NOW...He had TEN years! Cite a coach who produced a worse conference record that was allowed to remain at a BCS school for 10 years...

I am sure there has to be another one.

SickAndTiredOfLosingToWI said:

Mason, like Alvarez, always did his best to load up on creampuffs, because it was the smart, not necessarily "popular among GH retards," thing to do. In the Mason years, when bowl game season rolled around and we had enough wins to reach, say, the Alamo Bowl, we would always get picked over because their bowl committee knew that our fan base STUNK.

Maybe what Mason should have done to make you happy was schedule some more mid-level BCS teams, get a few more Ls on the schedule so that instead of the Alamo Bowl picking over us, it would be the Insight Bowl picking over us, and we could instead end up in the Motor City Bowl, or maybe no bowl?

Mason was trying to build a program. He took interest in two vastly superior jobs, including one at his alma mater, and he got crucified for looking outside the Garden of Eden at Minnesota, where coaches MUST WIN NOW, despite the worst stadium in the conference, the worst coordinator funding, etc. He did an AMAZING job considering the circumstances.

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+1

Iceland12 said:

That's forty years, three stadiums, a few presidents, seven coaches, a handful of A.D., a boatload of Coordinators and not a sniff of a Rose Bowl. Heck, the guy who talked about Rose Bowls left the most hated coach in years. He turned out to be a bad coach, but the leash would have been longer apparently, if he would have bad mouthed the situation right off the bat. A whole lot of people in this state love to hear how bad things are.

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That's the truth right there.

Why do we run this same thread 3-4 times per year? Do we really need to discuss the past like we could change it.

The only thing in this entire thread that has a scant amount of current impact is the idea that the new stadium will put pressure on Prexy K and the new AD and Coach Kill to perform better because we have to pay for the damn thing...which is music to my ears.

No, but a whole lot of morons seem to think that the past has no effect on the future.