Gophers Hired Tim Brewster for All the Wrong Reasons
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by user Leslie Monteiro
When there was a report indicating that Denver Broncos tight end coach Tim Brewster was going to be the new Gophers football head coach on Monday night, many Gophers fans initially did not think much of the hire. They wanted TCU head coach Gary Patterson or USC offensive coordinator Lane Kiffin, who had ties to Minnesota high school coaches. After doing research and sleeping on it, many fans approved this hire based on the fact that he is a great recruiter and how he will sell the program. This should not be a criterion of hiring a head coach. He should be hired based on his competency of being a good leader and being a good game day coach. A head coach can always hire assistant coaches that have an expertise for recruiting.
Gophers athletic director Joel Maturi clearly made this hire to please the Minnesota High School Coaches Association. Those high school coaches wanted to create a relationship with the University of Minnesota after former head coach Glen Mason alienated all of them for not being involved in talking to them and their players. The idea was to get players to go play at home rather than go elsewhere. It is not a bad strategy, but it should not be the be all and end all.
Mason's recruiting was not that bad. He was able to get good amount of students from the North Star state in recent years. He was able to get players from Ohio thanks to the help of his right hand man, Mitch Browning, who was the Gophers offensive coordinator. It seems the natives were upset at Mason because he failed to get big names that played high school football. Here is the deal, folks. It does not matter what town a player is from. The objective is to get players who can play the game or players willing to learn to better players. Only in Minnesota, fans tend to be in love with the provincial players for whatever reason.
It is not like Minnesota is a hotbed for football players. The state is not in the level of Texas, Ohio, Florida, California, and even New York and New Jersey when it comes to having getting good football players. What Minnesota player out there was a must for the Gophers? Larry Fitzgerald Jr. and James Laurinaitis come to mind, but who else. Minnesotans should not overrate their own players and they need stop with their love affair with their guys.
Would recruiting even be an issue if Mason won big conference games? Definitely not. Mason failed because he simply did not have a clue of getting his team out of a rut or how to get the job done when it matters.
Gophers were better off hiring a good coach that had a defensive background. A guy like Charlie Strong or Dwayne Walker would have been the correct choice.
Strong has ran a good defense for the 2006 national champions. A great defense is needed to win games in a big conference. Florida’s offense was talked about thanks to Urban Meyer’s work, but the Gators would not win big games in the SEC and they would not beat Ohio State without their defense. This is something to be considered which is why Strong would have been the right choice. Strong also has good recruiting ties from Florida. Florida is a powerhouse for football unlike Minnesota so he would have made sense than Brewster.
Walker would have been fine too since he went to Minnesota as a football player not to mention he runs a good defense at UCLA.
The problem with Brewster is that he has never been a coordinator or be a big part of Mack Brown’s gameday work when he was with him at North Carolina and Texas. Most Division I-A college football teams hire coordinators or coaches for small programs to be their head coaches.
Brewster was introduced to the Twin Cities media and to the student body at the campus yesterday afternoon. He certainly said the right things, but then again coaches will always saythe right things in their press conferences. If they did not say those things in an interview, they would not be considered as the head coach. He will be judged obviously on his win-and-loss record. It will take three or four years before anyone can judge. He will be considered a success if he can be the coach that leads his team to beat Wisconsin, Iowa, Michigan, and Ohio State on a consistent basis. It is not going to mean much if he brings hometown kids and then see the team fail.
It will be interesting to see what the new guy will do. He is coming in with rave reviews from guys like Tom Lemming, Rival.com’s Jeremy Crabtree, Denver Broncos head coach Mike Shanahan, Chargers head coach Marty Schottenheimer, and Brown.
He is being lauded for the attributes that got him this job. It is clear that the Gophers want him to be the face of the program as they get ready for a new stadium in 2009.
Maturi better hope this hire and his basketball coach’s hire works out or else he will be looking for work.
This is a risky hire for a guy who never called plays.
There are two types of college football coaches. The head coaches who hit the road hard and recruite Charlie Weis does this despite the high level of his program, also Urban Myers does this. OR the Coaches who let their assistants do the recruiting. Those would be the Steve Spurriers.
The coaches who can sit back and rely on their assistants are the big name coaches.