doodledee

The new gopher football coach is some guy named Tim Brewster. It was first reported as 'official' by ESPN last night, at which point the local media jumped on it like a forbidden trampoline. I saw the headline on the Strib's website, sent out my obligatory "who the hell is Tim Brewster?!" emails and sat back and waited for the backlash to start. A couple of hours later ESPN forced everyone to re-evaluate their sources when they pulled their story, which was more or less the only source the local media was able to definitively point to. The Strib eventually got ahold of Maturi and switched their headline to "no new contract yet" or something, and by 10:30 the local TV crews were just reporting it as rumor. At least the one I watched did.

I went to bed comfortable with the chaos. When I woke this morning and heard it was official: Tim "Punky" Brewster is the new coach of the program. I guess hiring a no-name football coach is a 24 hour business.

Seems like kind of an odd choice. For all I know he's a football genius who will bring us 6 Rose Bowls in the next 10 years, but here's my initial take:

• He has no head coaching experience beyond the high school level. Here's where I remind everyone that the Gophers play Division I college football in the Big 10.
• He hasn't been in control of an offense since he was a high school coach. Apparently he ran a pretty good offense back at Whatever High he was coaching at, so here's where I'll remind everyone of what happened last time this town brought in a superstar head coach with a kick ass system and limited experience controlling an office.
• The biggest upside for Brewster is that he was apparently some sort of superstar recruiter in college. While at Texas, he apparently recruited much of the national championship team from the 05-06 season. Here's where I point out that recruiting a bunch of kids from Texas to play for Texas maybe isn't as hard as people think it is and, conversely, that getting the next Vince Young to come to play for Minnesota is probably a lot harder.
• His current gig is tight end coach for Denver. Before that he was tight end coach for San Diego. Here's where I point out that a lateral career move between two division rivals is usually driven by one thing: money. Here's also where I point out that if he's such an awesome college recruiter (see above), why leave the college game to be stupid tight end coach in the NFL?.

On the bright side, Nostradoodle predicts 14 additional season tickets will be sold as a result of the hiring. Nostradoodle will not be one of them. Nostradoodle will, however, be happy to eat his hat and jump on the bandwagon as soon as this team shows signs of life.

It's official: Brewster is new U football coach [strib]