Jerry Kill’s busy to-do list as the Gophers’ new football coach includes aggressively monitoring the academics of his players. It’s no secret some have lagged in classroom performance and Kill said during an interview with Sports Headliners “the truth” comes out at the end of May.
He receives daily updates on what’s going on with his players and no one will be more interested in the academic results when spring semester ends. “I think we’re working together to do the best we can. …Trying to salvage some things,” he said.
Kill wouldn’t predict how many players might become academically ineligible to play. “Hopefully we can save the majority of them that were in difficult situations,” he said.
The Gophers have an already thin roster as Kill prepares for the season opener at Southern California on September 3. But regardless of the depth impacted by academics later this spring, Kill knows there’s a lot of future work to be done in recruiting better players and students.
He has seven coaches on the road recruiting, and looks forward to having high school players and potential recruits on campus next month when they participate in camps. He and his assistants took over the Gophers program too late last fall to put their mark on recruiting.
“This past year (the 2011 recruiting class) we really can’t take a whole lot of credit one way or the other, except for about four, five, six kids” he said. “But going to this year, it’s critical for us to have a good class.
“And we need to do a good job in the state of Minnesota. We need to recruit to our culture. We need to recruit the kids that are going to be successful here at the University of Minnesota.”
Kill said it will take a lot more than one class to improve a program that was 3-9 last season and has been floundering for years. “If you’re going to turn around a program, you can’t build it off mistakes,” he said. “You gotta do well.”
Other than Minnesota, Kill wouldn’t single out states his recruiting will focus on, but the Midwest is the first target. He and his assistants will rely a lot on relationships to help them with players regardless of where they are from.
“We want to concentrate in the Midwest as much as we can, and recruit kids that understand the weather conditions, the school etc.,” he said. “And then what we can’t get here, you go back to relationships, people you trust.”