Worst Gopher Head Coach in last 40 years

Who is the worst MN Football Coach in last 40 years?

  • Cal Stoll - 39-39 (.500)

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Joe Salem - 19-35-1 (.352)

    Votes: 21 14.9%
  • Lou Holtz - 10-12 (.455)

    Votes: 3 2.1%
  • John Gutekunst - 29-36-2 (.441)

    Votes: 1 0.7%
  • Jim Wacker - 16-39 (.291)

    Votes: 35 24.8%
  • Glen Mason - 64-57 (.535)

    Votes: 4 2.8%
  • Tim Brewster - 15-30 (.333)

    Votes: 77 54.6%

  • Total voters
    141
  • Poll closed .
Bowling Green was an 8-5 MAC team. Why are they on your list? Northern Illinois was an 11-3 MAC team. Why are they on your list? NDSU was undefeated and probably would've won the I-AA national title in 2007 had they been eligible. No Big Ten team should ever lose to teams like this, but much better Big Ten teams have lost to teams far worse than any of these.



We're holding wins against him now? Give me a freaking break.



Wacker was 8-32 in the Big Ten, a winning percentage of 0.200. What is your point?



I say he would've won all 5 remaining Big Ten games and gone to a bowl game. My prediction is equally valid. This is why untestable ex post facto predictions are so stupid.

LOL; let's bring back Brewster and Tubby for old times' sake!! If Tubby won't take it, let's bring back Monson!
 

This may be the dumbest thing I have ever seen posted here. Are you kidding me? Brewster was on campus for like a minute and a half when this happened. WTF are you talking about? We do know. It would have. Not Mason's fault. Not Brewster's fault. Tighter ship. Nice post.
The rape incident occurred in April right before the spring game. Brewster and his new staff had very stroing influence and a fair amount of control over these players for several weeks of intense activity, where their loose approach to order and discipline and the divergence from the Glen Mason approach certainly would be noted by the players.

If you have no understanding of the cues 19 year olds take from the coaches and other players, then you need to rethink what dumb means. Brewster and his bombastic BS certainly sent direct and non-direct messages to the players, and the level of respect and fear of the staff certainly went down right away. Mason was not afraid to toss players off the team quickly, and the players knew it.


By the time Brewster was fired a pattern had developed on that team that was not good, and Jerry Kill had to take a hard line to rid the team of that element. I think the 340 lb blogging, nightclub promoter Jewhan Edwards was a fine example of the team culture Brewster and his staff created.

I find your outrage over one sentence in my post to be silly. The main point, that went right past you was that the 2007 Gopher team would have won 6 games easily, maybe more, and certainly not 1, 2 or 3 games. The 2006 team wasn't all that great early on and finally got it together late. With an eligible Gary Russell that 2006 team could have been very good. Mason's system had a way of evening things out, and 3 win seasons were going to happen as frequently as 11 win seasons.
 

This may be the dumbest thing I have ever seen posted here. Are you kidding me? Brewster was on campus for like a minute and a half when this happened. WTF are you talking about? We do know. It would have. Not Mason's fault. Not Brewster's fault. Tighter ship. Nice post.
The rape incident occurred in April right before the spring game. Brewster and his new staff had very stroing influence and a fair amount of control over these players for several weeks of intense activity, where their loose approach to order and discipline and the divergence from the Glen Mason approach certainly would be noted by the players.

If you have no understanding of the cues 19 year olds take from the coaches and other players, then you need to rethink what dumb means. Brewster and his bombastic BS certainly sent direct and non-direct messages to the players, and the level of respect and fear of the staff certainly went down right away. Mason was not afraid to toss players off the team quickly, and the players knew it.


By the time Brewster was fired a pattern had developed on that team that was not good, and Jerry Kill had to take a hard line to rid the team of that element. I think the 340 lb blogging, nightclub promoter Jewhan Edwards was a fine example of the team culture Brewster and his staff created.

I find your outrage over one sentence in my post to be silly. The main point, that went right past you was that the 2007 Gopher team would have won 6 games easily, maybe more, and certainly not 1, 2 or 3 games. The 2006 team wasn't all that great early on and finally got it together late. With an eligible Gary Russell that 2006 team could have been very good. Mason's system had a way of evening things out, and 3 win seasons were going to happen as frequently as 11 win seasons.

In re-reading my post I have to admit I came across a bit strong. I think suggesting that event wouldn't have happened under Mason is ridiculous, but I should have said that more tactfully.


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This is hilarious. I even read a response where Brewster took over a program with "momentum". What "momentum" was that? He took over a team that started out 0-5 in the B1G and narrowly avoided a home loss to a Dakota school and that Gopher team had a 3 year starter at QB in Cupito. That team would lose its QB and best offensive player (Spaeth) to graduation. Then you had 3 or 4 of the best remaining athletes get kicked out of school. Brewster was having to start true freshman that he recruited after getting the job. He quickly got the program back to exactly where it was for the vast majority of the prior coaches tenure, only to crater in year 4. Bad coach? Yes Disaster? Certainly not in comparison to what Minnesota football has been in my lifetime. Worse than Wacker? You have to be kidding me. Also, if we're going to include records in this discussion, then it should be Big Ten records and not overall records. Mason played a MUCH easier non-conference schedule than every other coach on that list.

Part of the reason that Wacker gets more of a pass is there were almost no expectations when he was there. At the time, people thought no one short of Holtz could make this team win. There was no pretense that the Gophers could contend for a title. There was no thought that the Gophers would consistently be .500. When Brewster came, the team was expected to post winning seasons. The team was getting a new stadium. The team had twice been one disappointing outcome away from a Rose Bowl berth. Then Brewster made the biggest mistake of his life - saying he was going to take the Gopher Nation to Pasadena. That increased the expectations dramatically. And then 1-11. Then he had two typical Mason seasons, then the wheels came off.

As far as talent, if there was little talent when Brewster took over, there was next to none when Wacker took over. I met a guy who walked on in 1993 and he said he literally thought that Chris Darkins was so vastly superior athletically to the rest of the team that he could have started at ANY position. I laughed and he said he wasn't joking - that Darkins could move the offensive and defensive linemen around in practice like tackling dummies. He also said he thought Darkins was by far the fastest player on the team.

Not ripping on Darkins, but even if significantly inflated, tells a pretty damning story of what the rest of that team was like.

We'll never honestly know who is better/worse. The situations for each were drastically different. If you could reverse rolls I think the one thing you can safely assume is neither would have won a championship here. :)
 

Um, we were ranked under Brewster.

He was horrible. But, man, Wacker and Salem were bad too.

It's a toss up, really.
 


Um, we were ranked under Brewster.

He was horrible. But, man, Wacker and Salem were bad too.

It's a toss up, really.

For perspective, number of weeks ranked in AP for all Gopher coaches beginning in 1936 (number of years coached during AP polls in parentheses):

Bierman (12), 66
Hauser (3), 11
Fesler (3), 3
Warmath (18), 44
Stoll (7), 1
Salem (5), 1
Holtz (2), 1
Gutekunst (6), 0
Wacker (5), 0
Mason (10), 31
Brewster (3.5), 2
Horton (0.5), 0
Kill (4), 1

Note: The AP has run every since 1936, but didn't always rank the top 25 so this has an affect on comparing coaches by weeks ranked in the AP. These are the years and how many teams were ranked:
1936 - 1961: 20 teams
1962 - 1967: 10 teams
1968 - 1988: 20 teams
1989 - 2014: 25 teams



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I think one thing overlooked when comparing era's is the scholarship limit. When the limit went to 85 in 1992, suddenly teams that had been door mats for years suddenly became competitive (Northwestern, for instance). Teams that were unbeatable could screw up with the wrong coaching staff (Oklahoma went through a very bad spell.) I remember that it was a noticeable change at the time. When Glen Mason came in, I thought we were finally going to take advantage of the new state of college football. Of course, we were one bad 4th period away.
 

I hope that I live long enough to participate in a poll as to who was our best coach.
 

I see that Horton has been promoted from running backs coach to OC at San Diego State.
 



I hope that I live long enough to participate in a poll as to who was our best coach.

Looking at this list, I think it should be between Stoll and Mason. I'd love to see some better choices. I'm fairly confident I would pick Kill over either of those two once he is done, but obviously (or at least hopefully) Kill has a lot of time to change his record (for better or worse)
 




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