-Tim Brewster shaming Wisconsin coach Bret Bielema for going for two points late in
Why not start taking action on if Minnesota head coach Tim Brewster will finish out the season?
Will there be a player mutiny? Will the school's president or AD Joel Maturi--who might be on thin ice for hiring Brewster in the first place and last winter extending his deal despite a 6-7 record--be forced to make a change before the Gophers limp through the rest of their schedule, likely to finish 1-11.
Will he be able to admit this didn't work, and he had made a mistake?
Time will force those questions to answers, but after Saturday's loss at Wisconsin and his tizzy fit in the post game handshake with Badgers coach Bret Bielema, Brewster looks like a defeated man full of self-pity and perhaps resigned to the fate that hangs over his head.
Maturi fired Glen Mason on New Year's Eve of 2006--abruptly--after an embarrassing loss to Texas Tech in the Insight Bowl, a record-setting defeat that saw the Red Raiders score 31-unanswered points to force overtime and ultimately win 44-41.
Unnerved by the collapse and the clock ticking on the calendar year that would bring Mason a scheduled bonus, Maturi pulled the plug on Mason and called a hastily put together press conference long past dark on New Year's eve to make it official.
Mason seemed slow or perhaps incapable of reaching the Rose Bowl, and Gophers fans settled for a string of Music City or Insight or Sun Bowls. In 10 years that his Gophers teams went 67-57 overall, Mason went to seven bowls and won three of them. All the while, developing a pipeline of NFL running backs and running a Big 10 program that was mediocre at worst.
Plateau-ed out perhaps, or the proverbial sin of trading a bird in the hand for the prospect of two in the bush, Maturi and Minnesota overreached.
They have a two-year-old outdoor stadium on campus that draws far less interest than it ought to be afforded for a beautiful piece of architecture in its infancy. And why should they come to see this year's team (Brewster's fourth) lose to the likes of South Dakota (the Coyotes?), and Northern Illinois. USC filled the stadium for an afternoon, but the Gophers blew that too, falling hard in the fourth quarter that made the eventual 32-21 score seem to be almost a lie.
Minnesota has bleed in-state talent for years to Notre Dame or USC in particular, but Mason was able to keep some of those 3 or 4 star guys from the state staying in Minneapolis. Brewster has not only failed terribly at that, but it turns out the top-notch talent that made his recruiting grades exciting...those guys turned out to be a bunch of thugs who largely didn't pan out.
Perhaps Brewster ought to consider himself lucky that he plays in a market and city where the Vikings' legacy endures, the Twins have a new ballpark and won the AL Central again, and the Wild and Timberwolves are starting up again.
Huh, the Gophers football team sucks? Who knew.
Watch this clip of Brewster complaining about Wisconsin coach Bret Bielema running up the score on his team. The noise from a tired and defeated man.
