April 24, 2007

Football Tid Bits

After 3 months on the job, gophersports.com sat down to interview Coach Brewster. HERE is part 1 of the interview with part 2 coming in Wednesday. This deals with him settling in here, reaching out to the rich history of gopher football and more detail on his assistants. All in all it is a pretty good interview.

Recruiting Update...

  • Minnesota kids are staying home so far. Every MN kid that has received an offer from the gophers and made a decision is coming to the U. There are 2 outstanding offers to MN kids who have yet to make a decision, and they are probably the top 2 kids in the state.
    • Willie Mobley - 79, DE - Eden Prairie - 1. Minnesota 2. Ohio State 3. Iowa
    • Mike Floyd - 88, WR - Cretin Derham Hall - 1. Minnesota 2. Notre Dame 3. Ohio State. Floyd is THE GUY Brewster has to land. One of the best WRs in the country, we run a pass happy offense and a statement recruit that we are keeping our best!
Notice that we are in the recruiting mix with Ohio State and Notre Dame, they are of course from here so we SHOULD be in the conversation but in past years we would just say "well who could blame them for going to (insert big time program here)." Hopefully that attitude is in the past and we can keep our best and steal some guys from other states.
  • Based on ESPN's recruiting Insider here is a breakdown of previous Minnesota recruting classes...
    • 2006 - 16 High School Srs. signed and 2 JUCOs - highest rated player was 75
    • 2007 - 18 High School Srs. signed and 5 JUCOs - highest rated player was 82 (Clint Brewster), nobody over 80 from Coach Mason.
  • 2008? As of April 24th we have signed 7 kids (yet to be rated by ESPN) and have interest from 36 more! From those rated here is the list of interested kids rated 79 or higher...
    • Keanan Cooper - 82, OLB - 1. Texas Tech 2. Mississippi 3. Wisconsin 5. Minnesota
    • Jonas Grey - 82, RB - 1. Florida 2. Michgan State 3. Colorado 5. Minnesota
    • Joe Adams - 81, ATH - 1. Texas Tech 2. Okalahoma 3. Minnesota
    • Quiten Williams - 81, TE - 1. West Virginia 2. Wisconsin 3. Minnesota
    • Jewhan Edwards - 80, DT - 1. Syracuse 2. Minnesota 3. Penn State
    • Kapron Lewis-Moore - 79, DE - 1. Texas A&M 2. Oklahoma 3. Notre Dame 4. Minnesota
    • Brandon Green - 79, WR - 1. Illinois 2. Wisconsin 3. Minnesota
    • Again notice the schools we are in the top 5 with. Notre Dame, Texas Tech, Texas A&M, Florida, Oklahoma, Penn State. We haven't actually signed any of these kids yet but I look forward to tracking these guys and seeing what kind of magic Brewster can work here.
Gopher Nation wants to inspire you and help facilitate a new era of passionate Golden Gopher fans, but THIS IS FREAKING INSANE! I understand being passionate about your team and I know that MANY other NCAA football teams have a fanbase unlike anything Gopher Nation has yet to experience, but this is just plain nuts. 2% of the entire state was at this football game and people were turned away! Was this the Auburn game? Was it homecoming? NO!!! It was their spring scrimmage!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Pretty incredible attendance at the Bama spring game. Wow. Hopefully your blog will have a similar impact on the world of Gophers Sports leading to sold out scrimages everywhere.

It does seem that everything Brewster has done has been perfect. He has brought energy, media attention, etc. Exactly what the program needed. I heard he also changed the old Mason office, claiming it something like a Grandpa's office or something. Lets hope this transfers to winning on the field. In your expert Gophers opinion, how long to compete once again in the Big Ten. Two-Three years?

Tom said...

excelent question and I think it is worthy of a post on it's own. Look for that to be answered (in my opinion of course) sometime in the next few months when there is some down time for gopher athletics.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the link to our story about the spring game. It never occurred to me that our stadium holds 2% of the state's population. What a fantastic stat! :D

Tom said...

2.07% to be exact.