Tim Brewster's contract status is costing him players
We’ve known it was coming for some time now, but it appears that things are official now. Tim Brewster has signed a two-year extension with Minnesota, and he’s now under contract through the 2013 season.
Gophers football coach Tim Brewster said today that he and the school had agreed to a two-year contract extension.
The terms of the deal have not yet been released. Brewster’s current contract — a five-year deal signed when he was hired before the 2007 season — is worth $1 million per year, with $400,000 in base salary, $400,000 in supplemental compensation and $200,000 in deferred compensation. There were also some performance bonuses built into the original contract.
With National Signing Day coming up on Wednesday, this should have a positive impact on Minnesota’s 2010 class, as incoming recruits now know that Brewster is under contract for the four years they’ll be on campus.
By all accounts, Wisconsin’s O’Brien Schofield was having a very good offseason as he prepares himself for the NFL Draft this spring. During the East-West Shrine Game, knowing that he projects as a linebacker rather than a defensive end, Schofield spent all of his time practicing at the linebacker position and playing there in the game. As a result he impressed quite a few scouts and improved his draft stock enough that ESPN’s Todd McShay said he was likely going to be a third round pick.
Now we can’t be so sure when Schofield will be drafted.
It’s being reported that during one-on-one drills in practice for the Senior Bowl, Schofield suffered a torn ACL.
It seems the coaching carousel that was set in motion when Pete Carroll decided to leave USC to return to the NFL with the Seattle Seahawks is still spinning, and it’s now affecting the Big Ten conference. It seems more and more likely that the Minnesota Golden Gophers are going to have to find their third offensive coordinator in three years.
That’s because all signs coming of out Minneapolis are pointing towards Jedd Fisch joining Carroll’s staff in Seattle as quarterbacks coach.
Fisch spent eight seasons coaching in the NFL before leaving his post as the Denver Broncos’ wide receivers coach to take over the Minnesota offense last season. As for whom his replacement will be once it does become official, and Fisch goes to Seattle, head coach Tim Brewster has expressed that he’d like his new coordinator to take over the system Fisch has already implemented.
“If I have to make a change the offense will stay the same,” Brewster said. “The scheme, the terminology, the system will stay the same.”
It was a very up and down freshman season for Michigan quarterback Tate Forcier, as he came out of the gate pretty hot and helped lead the Wolverines to a 4-0 start before the team lost seven of its last eight games. During those final eight games it was evident to anybody watching that Forcier had an injured shoulder.
Forcier hurt the shoulder during Michigan’s comeback against Indiana on September 26 and he’d often be seen grimacing after throwing, being hit, or on the sidelines. The team kept saying it was a sprained shoulder, but it turns out it was a bit worse than that.
It seems that Forcier was playing the last eight games of the season with a partially torn labrum.
Last season the Big Ten football season kicked off on a Thursday night in Bloomington when the Indiana Hoosiers hosted the Eastern Kentucky Colonels. Now obviously, this was not a marquee game, but I know I was pretty excited about it. After spending months preparing this site to launch, I was desperate to have an actual game to write about.
So the earlier it got here, the better. Plus, I have to admit I was pleased to see that the Big Ten might finally be considering playing more games during the week instead of playing every game on Saturday. For the 2010 season it seems that trend is continuing. The Minnesota Golden Gophers will be opening their season on Thursday night September 2 at Middle Tennessee State, and it was announced on Thursday that Ohio State has also moved its opener against Marshall to that same Thursday night.
There hasn’t been a lot of good news coming out of East Lansing regarding the Michigan State football program over the last few months. Usually any post I write about the Spartans here these days has something to do with yet another player being suspended or kicked off the team for their role in a fight at Rather Hall.
Well, today I have good news to report about Sparta. Linebacker Greg Jones just announced at Michigan State’s season wrap-up press conference that he’s going to be coming back for his senior season in East Lansing.
This is great news for the Spartans defense. As a whole this season, the unit left a lot to be desired and I know it didn’t live up to my own personal expectations for it. Had the heart and soul of the defense, Jones, left for the NFL after this season I’d have a hard time believing the Spartans defense could get better next season.
Justin Feagin
You know, for all the crap I’ve given Minnesota for their players routinely getting in trouble with the police for underage drinking, I do have to give the school some credit. At least nobody in the Gophers program has gotten involved in any cocaine deals or had their dorm rooms set on fire by a psychotic drug dealer.
No, that type of thing has only happened in Ann Arbor with former Michigan wide receiver/quarterback Justin Feagin.
Feagin was charged with drug conspiracy after his dorm room was set on fire by T.J. Burke when an attempted cocaine deal the two were orchestrating went wrong, and Burke thought that Feagin was attempting to scam him. Well, Justin finally had his day in court and he plead guilty to one of the charges he faces.
After graduating college, a friend of mine moved to Minneapolis for their job and spent a few years living there. When she came back to Illinois to visit the first time and we hung out, I asked her how she liked living in Minnesota. She said it was nice and that the people there were pretty cool, but there really wasn’t all that much to do.
“There are two things to do in Minnesota. You can fish, or you can drink. Well, I don’t like to fish.”
Yes, and apparently neither do any of the players on Minnesota’s football team. It’s another week, so that means it’s time for an all new episode of “Guess Which Underage Gopher Got Busted For Drinking.” We even have a guest star this week!
By most accounts, Rich Rodriguez’s first two years in Ann Arbor have not been successful. His Wolverines — not to be confused with Lloyd Carr’s University of Michigan — have gone 8-16 with a 3-13 conference record since taking over the program, and then there were those allegations of overworking his players and that small faction of fans who would like nothing more than to see Rich torn limb from limb and spread throughout the four corners of Michigan.
Rich, however, is optimistic about 2010.
He sat down for a Q&A with the Orlando Sentinel’s Andrea Adelson to talk about what’s gone wrong in Ann Arbor, and what is going to go right in the future. While Rodriguez admits to some mistakes he’s made, particularly in recruiting too much offense and not enough defense, he’s not quite ready to give up just yet. In fact, he thinks the Wolverines will be back in a bowl game next season.
Over the last month or so the Minnesota Golden Gophers have lost a couple recruits to other schools with head coach Tim Brewster’s contract status up in the air. Well, now that the school’s Athletic Director Joel Maturi has confirmed that Brewster will be getting a contract extension following a 6-7 season, there was hope that would calm the recruiting waters.
And it has, but that hasn’t stopped the Gophers from losing another recruit.
James Green is a four-star receiver from Florida who had originally signed a letter of intent with Tennessee last year, but after failing to qualify academically he had to sit out a year. He then just recently gave Minnesota a verbal and agreed to a scholarship, but once again Green has failed to meet a school’s academic requirements and will be heading to Toledo instead.
The head coaching vacancy at Central Michigan has finally been filled, and it’s going to cost Mark Dantonio his running backs coach and one of the top recruiters the Spartans have. That’s because Dan Enos is going to be leaving East Lansing to take over the Chippewas, where he’s expected to be announced as the new head coach on Tuesday.
Enos is the first coach that Dantonio has lost from his staff since he took over the program in 2007.
As a wise man in Iowa once told us, “If you don’t love it, leave it, USA number one.” They were brilliant words when Ricky Stanzi shared them with the number one nation in the world, and they still are these many days later. One of the great things about this country is the opportunity it presents for those who live within its borders.
Every child has a chance to play sports growing up, and then if they’re good enough they have the chance to get a college education out of it. Some of those gifted young Americans even have the chance to play that sport professionally, and make gobs of money doing so.
One of those little patriots is Iowa cornerback Amari Spievey, and Spievey has decided to pursue the American dream.
