Marc Trestman, the Minneapolis native and former Gophers quarterback, is likely not a candidate for the University of Minnesota head football coaching position. Trestman, who yesterday coached Montreal to its second Grey Cup title in three years, has his name rumored with the Gophers job but I am almost certain he won’t be on the list of final candidates.
Trestman, 54, might be a favored candidate of at least some past football letter winners at Minnesota but the Gophers search is believed to be concentrating on candidates with college head coaching experience, and University administrators likely aren’t pursuing Trestman. He was an assistant coach at the University of Miami in the 1980s and spent two seasons as offensive coordinator at North Carolina State (2005 and 2006) before being fired along with head coach Chuck Amato.
But Trestman has been a career assistant in the NFL and for the last three seasons Montreal’s head coach in the Canadian Football League. He’s known as an offensive innovator and gifted developer of quarterbacks who has worked for coaching gurus Bud Grant, Bill Walsh, George Seifert, Jon Gruden and Sean Payton. He was offensive coordinator of the 2003 Oakland team that played in the Super Bowl and lost to Tampa Bay.
Not well known is that Trestman interviewed for the Gophers job in 1996 when he was San Francisco’s offensive coordinator. In his 2010 biography “Perseverance” with local author Ross Bernstein, Trestman writes that he wasn’t expecting to be among the candidates to replace Jim Wacker.
“I was intrigued, so I met with the Gophers athletic director Mark Dienhart on the tarmac of the San Jose airport,” Trestman said in the book. “It was late at night and completely under the radar. I was not well prepared and dealing with the exhaustion of the season. Also, in the back of my mind was the fact I never really saw myself in the position of a college head coach.”
Trestman is a Miami law school graduate but never practiced law and except for a couple of years selling bonds has been a career coach. His first pro head coaching offer came from Montreal although he writes in his book that several years ago he turned down the top job at Cornell.
Yesterday Montreal defeated Saskatchewan, 21-18, to win Trestman’s second straight Grey Cup championship.