Golden Gophers – Page 290 – David Shama's Minnesota Sports Headliners

Teague, Flip Missed Golden Connection

Posted on August 14, 2015August 14, 2015 by David Shama

Norwood Teague’s departure as Golden Gophers athletic director stirs memories of his failed connection with Flip Saunders who was a candidate to replace Tubby Smith as Minnesota’s basketball coach in the spring of 2013.

Saunders was a once-in-a-generation fit for the job. The former Gophers point guard played during the program’s glory days of the 1970s when the team’s talent was extraordinary and the capacity crowds at Williams Arena were the envy of college basketball. Saunders, a four-year starter, later was an assistant coach for the Gophers and eventually became the popular head coach of the Timberwolves who reached the NBA Western Conference Finals in 2004.

Saunders kept his permanent home in the Minneapolis area after he left the Timberwolves and made coaching stops in Detroit and Washington, D.C. He was out of coaching in 2013 when Smith was fired by Teague. Saunders, full of energy and with a never ending appetite for basketball, had stayed active in the sport with national TV work, and when in Minnesota attended games including those involving Apple Valley High School superstar Tyus Jones.

Sources said Saunders was interested in returning to his alma mater. Teague, a cocky administrator and newcomer to this state, had other candidates for his basketball coaching job and made them a priority. The search wasn’t gaining ground when Teague agreed to meet out of town with Saunders—a gesture that may well have been prompted by pressure from program boosters and media to interview the former Gopher.

Saunders was told in the interview he would need the approval of Teague to hire his assistant coaches, according to multiple sources. A career coach with more than 30 years of experience and with connections all over the country, Saunders wasn’t going to be told who he could hire.

There probably were other issues—perhaps including bonus incentives—that may have tripped up getting a deal done. Whatever the stumbling blocks, talks ended within about 24 hours.

My sources questioned the determination of Teague’s efforts with Saunders. I know the late David Larson, a major Gophers financial supporter and former member of the University of Minnesota’s Board of Regents, was angry a deal couldn’t be reached with Saunders.

What Larson and other proponents of a Saunders hire saw was a unique candidate and golden opportunity for the Gophers and the University. Saunders would have jump-started a program that has been in decline for more than 15 years and is still going downhill. Saunders’ relationship with Jones could well have resulted in the two of them leading a Gophers on-court turnaround last season. Instead Jones, playing as a freshman for Duke, was named the Final Four’s Most Outstanding Player after the Blue Devils won the national championship.

As a former college point guard and veteran NBA coach who had coached some of the world’s best at that position, Saunders could have made a convincing pitch to Jones who he had a relationship with. Jones committing to Minnesota might have caused a domino effect in recruiting that at this point would have the program rolling.

Saunders was intrigued with college basketball and returning to Minnesota. He had insights into coaching in the Big Ten because of his close friend Tom Izzo, the legendary Michigan State coach. Over the years Saunders had thought about college coaching and planned to use the famous pregame ball handling and passing show he had learned as a player under coach Bill Musselman at Minnesota. It was a show stopper choreographed with music that had the stands packed 30 minutes before tipoff, with enthusiastic fans ready to clap and roar approval.

No wonder Larson and other insiders were angry when a deal wasn’t reached with Saunders. What they knew is this: When you’re dealing with a big time coaching candidate the strategy is to create a deal that person can be happy with and gives him the authority, structure and resources to be successful. Let’s also make this point: Of course you negotiate and make deals that you wouldn’t for other candidates.

Teague, who was hired as Minnesota AD in 2012, was an outsider from the East. In not developing relationships and understanding the culture here, he failed many times. I don’t think he understood what he had in Saunders.

The most passionate of Gophers basketball fans might now forgive but they won’t forget.

Worth Noting

Gophers senior wide receiver KJ Maye, who played in 13 games and started five in 2014, caught 16 passes for 298 yards and one touchdown. His goals for this season are “maybe like 60 catches, 900 yards,” he said.

Sophomore Brandon Lingen, who played prep football at Wayzata High School, is one of the Gophers trying to replace the departed Maxx Williams, probably the best pass catching tight end in program history. Does Lingen compare himself with Williams?

“Try not to because he’s a really good tight end,” Lingen answered. “But at the same time I try to emulate him, try to be just like him—trying to do what he did well and hopefully some day try to be like him.”

Lingen said earlier this year Williams, now in training camp with the Ravens, took all the Gophers tight ends out to dinner. What is the best advice he has heard from Williams? “Work hard and treat practice like a game,” Lingen said.

Stefon Diggs, the Vikings fifth round rookie draft choice from Maryland, impressed with a 62-yard punt return in Minnesota’s preseason opening win Sunday against the Steelers. Vikings special teams coach Mike Priefer was asked if he anticipates Diggs taking that primary punt return role from incumbent Marcus Sherels, the former Gopher from Rochester, Minnesota.

“I would like to continue to work Marcus [Sherels] in there because if he’s going to be the guy, then we need to make sure he’s ready for the season as well,” Priefer said. “You can’t just roll the ball out there against San Francisco and hope Marcus is the guy. So, were going to continue working the top three returners (including Adam Thielen) as we go forward.”

The Vikings open the regular season on September 14 against San Francisco, but tomorrow night play preseason game No. 2 against the Bucs starting at 7 p.m. in TCF Bank Stadium. Diggs, also a wide receiver, and Sherels, a reserve defensive back going into his sixth NFL season, have four more preseason games to prove their value. So, too, does Thielen, a second-year wide receiver, who didn’t return punts in game action last season. Sherel’s 10.5 career average on punt returns is the best in franchise history. His 15.2 average in 2013 was second best in the NFL.

Sports Media News reported on Tuesday the Vikings-Steelers game averaged 11 million viewers on NBC and was the most watched NFL preseason telecast on any network in five years.

Twins catcher Kurt Suzuki is struggling at the plate with a .231 average and just four home runs and 33 RBI. The team needs offensive production and first baseman Joe Mauer doesn’t have stats worthy of his $23 million salary. He is batting .269, with seven home runs and 50 RBI while usually hitting No. 3 in the lineup. But Twins president Dave St. Peter all but dismissed the notion of returning Mauer, a former All-Star catcher, back to that position. St. Peter said the organization has crossed the “threshold” with Mauer regarding catching because of his concussion history that prompted the switch to first base in 2014.

While the Twins are only 4-8 in their last 12 games, St. Peter is encouraged the club is playing “meaningful games in August for the first time in five years.” The Twins, who lost 90-plus games the previous four years, are a wildcard contender with a 57-57 record. St. Peter hopes that will help season home attendance to total about 2.2 million. The club’s attendance in 2014 was 2,250,606.

Rob Fornasiere, the Gophers assistant head baseball coach, is excited about the return of pitching coaching Todd Oakes who has made a courageous and inspirational recovery from cancer. “I would say the biggest boost we have for the coming season (2016) is the return of Todd Oakes full-time to our coaching staff. Just the overall presence and confidence he brings to the pitching staff I think will have a dramatic effect on our whole team. So you can talk about recruiting all you want, but I still think he is the biggest addition we have coming back to our team.”

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Peterson Tells NBC He Understands Critics

Posted on August 12, 2015August 12, 2015 by David Shama

Controversial Adrian Peterson didn’t play in last Sunday’s nationally televised preseason Vikings-Steelers game but he certainly wasn’t ignored. Among references to the Vikings running back was acknowledgment by NBC that Peterson declined an on-camera interview regarding the incident last year when he beat his four-year-old son with a switch. However, NBC pro football analyst Cris Collinsworth reported a conversation with Peterson where the future Hall of Famer “owned up” to his mistake.

Collinsworth told TV viewers Peterson understands the harsh views people have about him if all they know regarding his character are graphic photos showing the bloody injury his son suffered. Peterson’s supporters, though, including many individuals in the Vikings organization, have long insisted the 30-year-old Texas native is someone they like for his personal qualities and community involvement.

“It was a difficult conversation with him,” Collinsworth said on the NBC telecast. “He explained his family growing up—that he had tough love. That he was spanked by his parents and extended family, and (he) thought that discipline went a long way towards the guy that he became. Also, that many of his friends did not receive that kind of discipline and they’re in jail to this day.”

Adrian Peterson (Photo courtesy of Minnesota Vikings)

Peterson has multiple children by different women. He talked to Collinsworth about his 10-year-old daughter “who understood everything that was being said about her father” (involving the child abuse incident and his NFL suspension last season).

Peterson and the Vikings were in Canton, Ohio to play in the annual Pro Football Hall of Fame Game. Chris Wesseling, writing for NFL.com on Sunday, reported Peterson believes his eventual induction into the Hall of Fame is a “no-brainer.”

Peterson has the third highest all-time average of rushing yards per game, but Wesseling quoted him as having career ambitions that go beyond being acknowledged as football’s greatest running back. He wants to be known as “the greatest player” ever.

Because injuries are a possibility, Peterson probably won’t play in the team’s remaining four preseason games. His first on-field appearance is likely to be the regular season opener September 14 against the 49ers.

Worth Noting

Sports Illustrated’s August 10 College Football Preview predicts the Gophers will be third in the Big Ten’s West Division after Wisconsin and Nebraska. Iowa, Northwestern, Illinois and Purdue will finish behind Minnesota.

Ohio State is the magazine’s choice to win the East Division and is ranked No. 1 in the country. S.I. projects a four-team college football playoff between the Buckeyes, Auburn, Notre Dame and TCU. The Gophers play at Ohio State November 7 and host TCU in Minneapolis September 3.

About 5,000 tickets remain for the TCU game that is expected to sell out. Among fans attending the game will be about 8,000 University of Minnesota students, including 3,000 who purchased tickets. Another 5,000 will be freshmen who annually receive free tickets to the home opener.

Among true freshmen making a good impression at early Gophers practices were offensive tackle Quinn Oseland and running back James Johanesson. Oseland, 6-6, 301 pounds from Springfield, Illinois, was rated the No. 2 offensive tackle in Illinois by Scout.com. Johannesson, the two-time North Dakota Gatorade Player of the Year, rushed for 81 career touchdowns at Fargo South High School. If Johannesson, 6-1, 221 pounds, becomes a starter for the Gophers some day, he will draw comparisons with Barry Mayer, a similar size running back from Fargo who led Minnesota in rushing in 1968 and 1969.

Mayer’s son, Adam Mayer, is a freshman walk-on wide receiver with the Gophers. The 6-1, 205-pound Mayer is from Concord, California where he played on a state championship high school team and was considered one of the better prep receivers in the Bay Area.

Gophers senior wide receiver KJ Maye liked what he saw of true freshman wide receiver Rashad Still during informal summer workouts. “The way that he can go get the deep ball and the way that he learns (impressed),” Maye said. “He learns pretty good.”

Still, 6-5, 200 pounds and from El Paso, Texas, was ranked as the No. 62 senior prep wide receiver in the nation by ESPN.

Dan O’Brien, Gophers senior associate athletic director, said his teenage son Casey had a successful surgery for cancer on his right lung last week. In a few months Casey will undergo surgery on the left lung with intent to remove all the cancer in his body.

O’Brien will have to decide whether he wants to be a candidate for the athletic director’s job vacated by Norwood Teague.

It’s interesting to look back at the comments of Rick Pitino about Teague. Pitino, the Louisville basketball coach, is the father of Gophers men’s coach Richard Pitino who was Teague’s most important coaching hire in three years at Minnesota. In April of 2014 the older Pitino, talking on 1500 ESPN, referred to Teague as one of the five best athletic directors in the country. “He’s an awesome AD,” Pitino said. “He is going to bring them to heights they’ve never seen before.”

Gene Taylor, the former North Dakota State athletic director who is credited with helping shape the Bison’s nationally prominent football success, told the Fargo Forum last week he isn’t interested in the Gophers job. Taylor is now deputy director of athletics at Iowa.

Chris Obekpa, the 6-9 shot blocking center the Gophers reportedly once had interest in, has transferred from St. John’s to UNLV. Obekpa, who was suspended by St. John’s earlier this year, will use his final season of college eligibility (2016-2017) at UNLV.

A source told Sports Headliners Dr. Bill McGuire’s option to buy eight acres of land near Target Field and the Farmers Market expires at month’s end. McGuire’s intent has been to build a new outdoor soccer stadium there or in St. Paul as part of the effort to acquire a Major League Soccer franchise for Minnesota. Proponents of the Minneapolis site want to see Hennepin County involved in covering infrastructure costs.

Danny Santana, the former Twins shortstop recently sent down to AAA Rochester after hitting .218 here, is batting .266 with the Red Wings.

The Gophers have commitments from Arizona, Illinois, Michigan State, UCLA and Washington to play in a round-robin baseball tournament at the new U.S. Bank Stadium. Rob Fornasiere, Minnesota’s assistant head coach, said the Pac 12/Big Ten Challenge will be the first weekend in March of 2018.

Minnesota native Karl Gregor is the new men’s head tennis coach at Tufts University. Gregor, a Wayzata High School alum, was interim coach of the team last season. He is a 1997 graduate of the Air Force Academy where he played No. 1 singles.

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Kill Invaluable to Gophers AD Search

Posted on August 10, 2015August 10, 2015 by David Shama

There are two individuals at the University of Minnesota who should have the most say in who becomes the next athletic director—president Eric Kaler and Gophers football coach Jerry Kill.

Kaler and a few others hired Norwood Teague for the job three years ago. Teague was a poor choice and his flaws were seen long before he became a national news story because of sexual harassment. A trusted source told Sports Headliners that no one in the small group who finalized the hire of Teague was a University of Minnesota coach.

That is an error in judgment which can’t be repeated in hiring Teague’s successor. Kaler and other academics need a small number of administrators and coaches from the athletic department’s 25 sports to lend expertise and balance to the vetting process. A couple of the best and brightest from the athletic department should be part of the inner circle making the final selection. An extraordinary business person with expertise in athletics, hiring, fundraising and marketing is a must-have member, too.

Could you imagine a search committee comprised only of Gophers coaches and athletic administrators selecting the school’s next president? With no representatives from the academic world, the makeup of such a group would make no sense.

Kill can be invaluable to Kaler. The two are men of high character and they have a relationship of trust. They care deeply about the University, and it’s been generations since the school had such a supportive president for athletics.

Kaler is a career academic with a doctorate degree in chemical engineering. He is also an accomplished administrator, and sports fan, but he can’t match Kill’s longevity, experience and success in athletics. Kill, 53, has been coaching football since 1985 and starting in 1994 has been a head coach at five different schools.

Kill has seen the inside workings of athletic departments and the management style of athletic directors. As a head football coach, his responsibilities have mirrored many of those required of an athletic director including hiring and managing personnel, running a department, setting proper direction in the classroom and community for student-athletes, working with the media and school faculty, and fundraising.

In five seasons as Gophers football coach Kill has proven worthy of Kaler’s trust and has more than earned a preferred seat next to Kaler in choosing the next athletic director. Kill has turned around a football program that creaked and cracked on the inside and outside. His football team collectively had a 3.04 GPA last spring semester and his players are earning their degrees after he inherited a program where players were on academic probation and not attending classes. Also, ask the University police and Minneapolis police if there hasn’t been a dramatic change in off-field behavior.

On the field the Gophers have gone from being a joke to commanding respect. Minnesota’s consecutive 8-5 records are the school’s best two-year run since 2002-2003. The 5-3 conference record a year ago was tops since 2003. Last season’s team played in the school’s first New Year’s Day bowl game since 1962 and Minnesota came within one win of advancing to the Big Ten Football Championship game.

Kill, a cancer survivor who works to control his epilepsy everyday, has won the respect of Minnesotans and many others beyond the state’s borders. His tireless willingness to speak around the state and assist charitable organizations says volumes about his character. The fact a national poll of college football coaches last year placed him near the top as a coach his peers would want their sons to play for is the highest of praise.

Kill has become the face of the athletic department. School administrators sometimes talk about sports being the “front porch” the public sees first when looking at a university. If so, at Minnesota a big part of that picture is Kill—maybe sitting there on the front porch humbly dispensing wisdom and life lessons to all who listen.

Kaler needs to listen to Kill who is popular with Gophers fans and big time donors. Those who are influential contributors found Kill to be much more likeable than Teague who could come across as aloof and arrogant. Kill has been and will continue to be heavily involved in the Gophers $190 million project to upgrade athletics facilities including a new football complex and indoor practice building that still looks on schedule for this fall despite Teague’s departure.

Kill isn’t ready to step down as Gophers football coach but otherwise would be a top-shelf choice as athletic director. Some have suggested that at least for awhile he could lead the athletic department and be the football coach. This would be an enormous workload and seems impractical even with the best surrounding administrative support staff.

Dan O’Brien is likely to receive Kill’s support for athletic director. O’Brien was already on the Gophers football staff when Kill was hired in late 2010 from Northern Illinois. O’Brien started at Minnesota as director of football operations and has been promoted a couple of times since with his most recent title being senior associate athletic director. He was one of Teague’s top assistants.

O’Brien was athletic director at Concordia-St. Paul from 1999-2002 and Hamline from 2002-2007. He didn’t come to the Gophers from glamorous programs but neither did Kill whose coaching stops before Northern Illinois included Emporia State and Saginaw Valley State.

All you need to know about O’Brien regarding Kill’s feelings is this: “I’d jump off a bridge for Dan O’Brien,” Kill said last week.

Kaler needs to decide what qualities and characteristics he wants and values in his next athletic director. The advice from here is that a big time athletic director needs the skill to identify and hire the right coaches and other staff, know how to fundraise and have the acumen to run a $100 million, 25-sports department. He or she needs to be an authentic person who treats everyone with respect and dignity—even those who offer no direct benefit to Gophers athletics.

An athletic director’s staff can provide the expertise and sweat to help make the department successful and avoid problems with the NCAA, media and other potential critics. Being the AD at Minnesota is a huge challenge but the requirements of the job to be successful are simple. It’s critical to hire top performing coaches because those who win and demand excellence on and off the field will be the bedrock of a successful athletic department. Winning generates the most money possible and those revenues will fund competitive salaries and facilities. But it takes more than gate receipts, broadcast revenues, stadium revenues and such to stay relevant in the arms race of college athletic departments. It takes aggressive fundraising and the next Gophers athletic director will pick up at midstream where about $70 to $80 million has already been secured. That’s a long way to $190 million and a stark reminder why the Gophers athletic director needs to be an accomplished fundraiser.

Teague was an outsider who didn’t have relationships in Minneapolis when he was hired from VCU. His successor might well have ties to the state and the Gophers. Names that could draw public speculation and social media endorsement include interim athletic director Beth Goetz, former Gophers football coach Glen Mason, ex-Gophers quarterback and Super Bowl winning coach Tony Dungy, and Phil Esten and Tom Wistrcill, both former associate athletic directors at Minnesota.

Goetz won’t be the only woman considered and she shouldn’t be. She seems approachable and sincere, and has a quiet leadership style that is authentic. Her career experiences include five years as associate athletics director at Butler and since March of 2013 with the Gophers where she has been Deputy Athletics Director and senior woman administrator.

Northwestern athletic director Jim Phillips might be a long shot for Minnesota but why not knock on his door? He is one of the country’s most respected athletic directors who has reportedly turned down opportunity to work elsewhere. He was also Kill’s boss at Northern Illinois. He’s a man the Gophers coach admires.

Whatever Kill says to Kaler about candidates should carry a lot of weight.

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