Great Turnout Tonight

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gophers&guns

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I just wanted to say I had a blast at the social tonight, and for my first Goal Line Club event I am extremely glad I joined. Hope everyone had a wonderful night at the social, and GO Gophers!
 

gophers&guns said:
I just wanted to say I had a blast at the social tonight, and for my first Goal Line Club event I am extremely glad I joined. Hope everyone had a wonderful night at the social, and GO Gophers!
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As always, the GLC does a great job connecting the fans with the team. 600 plus fans, plenty of new members signed up. Coach Kill and his wife Rebecca stuck around to the bitter end and talked to anyone who wanted to speak to him. He signed autographs and chatted up the kids. There is no pretence or insincerity in this guy. You get what you see.
 

Only two comments?

There have been only two, very brief comments about this event? What happened there?
 

LonelyIowaGopher said:
There have been only two, very brief comments about this event? What happened there?
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I wasn't there, but from the televised interviews, the crowd looked huge! It seemed like Brewster's first recruiting party had only about 100 people there, and this year they had close to 700. The program's moving up! (Did Mason have recruiting parties?)
 

700? Geez, was there an open bar?
 


WAGopher said:
Did Mason have recruiting parties?
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Yeah...he had one every year the night of National Signing Day, and he'd say, "Sweet! I can stop pretending to care about all of this offseason BS now! I've got from now until August to get my handicap down to scratch, get my veneers polished daily, and work on this awesome fake bake."
 

WAGopher said:
I wasn't there, but from the televised interviews, the crowd looked huge! It seemed like Brewster's first recruiting party had only about 100 people there, and this year they had close to 700. The program's moving up! (Did Mason have recruiting parties?)
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It sounds like people really want to get behind this guy and fight for this program.
 

Cash bar.

My favorite Kill comments:
- Matilus is up to 235 right now ("he's been enjoying the recruiting circuit" - a reference to the big meals recruits get)
- talked about all of the great things here in MN, but emphasized "we don't have to apologize for anything. If a recruit has a problem with the weather, then go somewhere else! I can go get someone else that wants to be here."

Also, reiterated that spring practice will be open to anybody and encouraged people to "come out and see us."

Also, Darrell Thompson MC'd. Former players Ricky Foggie, Chip Lohmiller, Marion Barber, and Ray Hitchcock came on stage and DT interviewed them about why they came to MN and what their experience was like; pretty cool. Also, Hithcock is an assistant at Cretin and talked about how different this staff is compared to the others we've had, how they "just get it" and that Limegrover, not three hours after being on campus for the first time, was over at Cretin recruiting their kids. Hitchcock said, "we're not sending our kids anywhere else anymore; they're coming here to the UM".

We'll see, but it was nice to hear.
 

Kill's staff "gets it."

My brother's wife is from Faribault and has a friend who works in the athletic department at the University of Minnesota. He used the same phrase to describe Jerry Kill within weeks after Kill's arrival, "He gets it."
This same individual thought Mason was arrogant beyond belief but within a few months of Brewster coming, longed for the days of Mason. There have been just too many comments made about the interpersonal skills (or lack thereof) with regard to Mason and Brewster for them not to be at least partially true.
It's always been my experience that Minnesotans love genuine people. Jerry Kill and his staff seem to be just those kinds of folks.
 




I love the Hitchcock quote!!!

I want to hear more Minnesota coaches saying that!!!!

way to go Coach K!!
 

I got the impression that Kill didn't think much of Brewster. He thanked Horton a couple times but didn't mention Brewster by name. But he made some cracks about different things that I thought were subtle rips on the way Brewster did things.

Overall I had a great time and it was awesome to actually meet Coach Kill. Though I couldn't believe how small he was -especially for a former linebacker. He was probably 5'9" on a tall day!

My only disappointment was that when Brewster had his first signing day they had Floyd available to take pictures. I was hoping he would be there last night too, but if he was I didn't see him.
 

Lakeville Goldy said:
I got the impression that Kill didn't think much of Brewster. He thanked Horton a couple times but didn't mention Brewster by name. But he made some cracks about different things that I thought were subtle rips on the way Brewster did things.
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IMO you're probably just reading too much into it, but I'd be interested in knowing what the comments were or what about the way they were delivered made you feel that way.

Based on how he's carried himself in public thus far and based on how he talks about negative recruiting/badmouthing I doubt these were directed as rips on Brewster. I've seen/read lots of Kill statements that have to do with shortcomings he currently sees (i.e. we need to get faster, we'll provide continuity in coordinators, better focus on academics, etc). By extension these statements are critiques of Brew's program. But that's pretty much a given when you change coaches. If what Brew was doing was working we wouldn't have hired someone new. And when the new guy has a different way of doing things he's obviously going to say the team isn't where he needs it to be. But that doesn't mean Kill intended to rip into Brew.

As I said though, I wasn't there and I'd be interested in hearing more about the quotes you are referring to.
 



LonelyIowaGopher said:
There have been only two, very brief comments about this event? What happened there?
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well advertised to season ticket holders, GLC members and people on the forums. Also on Gophersports.com
 

I thought after the NIU game last season there was a bit of a mutual, if not respect, personal affinity between Brewster and Kill.

From the outside, I don't doubt that Brewster's administrative skills left something to be desired. He just seemed to have an inability to focus and if what we were seeing was disjointed, I can only imagine how crazy it might have been "behind the curtain" on a daily basis.

But those days are gone. Glad that Kill "gets it."
 

Haugy#33 said:
I love the Hitchcock quote!!!

I want to hear more Minnesota coaches saying that!!!!

way to go Coach K!!
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I like hearing it too but I want to see it happen more. When Brewster came here the same sentiment was expressed but it didn't necessarily equate to recruiting results.
 

LonelyIowaGopher said:
My brother's wife is from Faribault and has a friend who works in the athletic department at the University of Minnesota. He used the same phrase to describe Jerry Kill within weeks after Kill's arrival, "He gets it."
This same individual thought Mason was arrogant beyond belief but within a few months of Brewster coming, longed for the days of Mason. There have been just too many comments made about the interpersonal skills (or lack thereof) with regard to Mason and Brewster for them not to be at least partially true.
It's always been my experience that Minnesotans love genuine people. Jerry Kill and his staff seem to be just those kinds of folks.
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I stated basically the same thing as above but "getting it" is going to get the job done. You can be a grade A a-hole but if you win it will be overlooked. However, you can be nice guy and still get fired for losing (see Jim Wacker). Granted, I'd rather have a winning nice guy than a winning a-hole but either way you have to win. For the record I do hope (and think) that Jerry Kill will win here.
 

"Getting it."

"Getting it" means a lot more than being a nice guy. It also means knowing what you want to do and putting the pieces in place to do it. Kill's staff has been up and running since early in his tenure.
"Getting it" also means that you realize how lucky you are to have a head coaching job in the Big 10 and to be willing to earn the $1 million you'll probably get paid. From every indication, Kill lives, eats and breaths football coaching. He will work his tail off 365 days a year which is something Mason never did. He'll also know what he's doing every step of the way rather than having to learn on the job (or not) ala Brewster.
"Getting it" means reaching out to the fans, high school coaches and the media. It means being totally accessible, especially early in your tenure. It means opening spring practices up to the public and strongly encouraging fans to attend them.
"Getting it" means not playing games like Mason did in his last contract extension. He held up the athletic department until the last minute pending the outcome of a bowl game. He lost that game, of course, and then inked his contract immediately.
 


gophers&guns said:
I just wanted to say I had a blast at the social tonight, and for my first Goal Line Club event I am extremely glad I joined. Hope everyone had a wonderful night at the social, and GO Gophers!
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glad you joined the club, looking forward to getting to know you on saturdays.
 


Haugy#33 said:
I love the Hitchcock quote!!!

I want to hear more Minnesota coaches saying that!!!!

way to go Coach K!!
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I love Ray Hitchcock, but he has really always been "one of us". The Cretin staff, for the most part, stays out of these matters and sort of guides the kids to their best possible destination. Unlike a lot of HS staffs, sending a bunch of kids to D1 football scholarships is really old hat over there and Ray isn't going to be able to build a pipeline from Cretin to the U. I don't think pipeline's really exist within Cretin. A lot of kids go to Notre Dame for obvious reasons (catholic, private, sort of a college version of Cretin) and a lot of kids go to the U because it's the home state. Until we start winning at a higher rate consistantly, we will always have a bit of a difficult time locking down the Hendersons, Floyds, Mobleys of the world.

It is a good sign that Ray does seem to genuinely like Coach Kill though because he isn't someone who hides his feelings really well and i'm sure kids can pick up on that.
 


gophergrad said:
...and now I'm sick of the phrase "getting it"
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I just hope Kill gives 110% and takes it one game at a time. We haven't been successful in the past because the other team has just wanted it more. We need to bring our A game every day. Do that and we just may be playing in the grand-daddy of them all!
 

GoAUpher said:
IMO you're probably just reading too much into it, but I'd be interested in knowing what the comments were or what about the way they were delivered made you feel that way.
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Might be reading more into it, but I was there with LG and we talked about this afterwards.

One specific example: Someone asked Kill why there were no DTackles on the list of new recruits, especially with the poor DLine performance last season. Kill acknowledged the performance problem, then talked about how there were already a bunch of DTs on the roster (6-7), and you can only commit a certain number of scholarships to a position. He went so far as to say he would consider shifting some D-Ends to D-Tackle.

I took it that he was both:
A) pointing out poor DT talent (i.e. a big miss by previous staff, as we just have a bunch of big guys who can't play)
B) we have too many DTs on scholarship (i.e. poor planning/allocation of limited resources)

Again, I may have read more into it than was there.


On the positive side, it is very obvious that Kill has a plan, and he is executing to his plan. He has acknowledged that there will be some stopgap measures, but he is moving the ship in the right direction.
 

He sure seemed to like the new DE's though. When he was talking about getting minutes from some freshmen at certain spots it made me think that sliding an end or two to tackle is an option.
 

Bob_Loblaw said:
The Cretin staff, for the most part, stays out of these matters and sort of guides the kids to their best possible destination.
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I was under the impression this wasn't always the case. It seems that during the Mason years, the Gophers were hard pressed to get anyone from CDH to the U.
 

Thomas Hammock...

Even though I see the world through maroon and gold glasses I don't see any situation where I wouldn't listen to Thomas Hammock. He is definitely intimidating, if he told me I should come play for the U I would say "yes sir, whatever you say sir"
 

...last night was my first GLC event, and overall I had a good time and will plan on attending next year. But I was really disappointed when they did the Rouser at the beginning of the night, and it seemed like a solid 1/3rd of the people there obviously didn't know the song (i.e. the 25% of fans that don't know the cadence change is coming at the end and keep on happily clapping out of rhythm every Saturday). It never really bothers me at games because I figure a lot of those people are drunk students or only get to a game every year or two. I was definitely not expecting the people at an event like this to not know the Rouser. But that has nothing to do with the actual quality of the event, which was pretty much top-notch across the board (with the possible exception of some really iffy food).
 


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