Minnesota Is Losing Commitments
Tim Brewster's contract status is costing him players
The Insight Bowl could end up being very important to Minnesota head coach Tim Brewster as he enters the fourth year of his five-year contract as the Gophers head coach. Athletic Director Joel Maturi has gone on record as saying that any decision on whether or not Brewster will get a contract extension will have to wait until after the Insight Bowl.
A statement that implies that Brewster needs to win the game if he wants the extension. As if that wasn’t enough pressure on Brewster, it seems that his contract status is also affecting his recruiting. The Gophers have now lost two recruits to other schools in recent weeks, with one of them openly saying that Brewster’s contract situation was a deciding factor in his decision to de-commit.
The Gophers had picked up a commitment from four-star running back Josh Huff of Aldine, Texas, who is ranked as the eighth best all-purpose running back in the 2010 class. Now Huff has backed out of his commitment to Minnesota and will be attending the closer to home TCU instead.
While TCU’s performance on the field and subsequent Fiesta Bowl berth no doubt had something to do with it, Huff also said that Brewster’s contract status played a role in his decision ($) as well.
“The distance was one of the reasons,” Huff said. “On top of that I think the coach up there only had one more year on his contract.”
As if losing Huff, one of the Gophers prized recruits in their 2010 class, wasn’t enough, the school also found out recently that three-star cornerback Antoine Lewis of Maywood, Illinois had de-committed from Minnesota to join Danny Hope’s 2010 class at Purdue. ($)
“I have respect for every program, every individual who (recruited me),” Lewis said Sunday night. “It wasn’t necessarily about switching commitments. It was about making the right decision for me.
“Purdue was a very family-like environment and the coaches seemed very genuine and the players acted the same way around the coaches and away from the coaches. … I knew what I was going to do before I left.”
December is a crucial month for recruiting, and it seems the longer that Brewster’s status at Minnesota hangs up in the air, the more damage could be done to the future of the program. Other could soon begin following suit.
