Gophers athletic director Joel Maturi is a Minnesota native and plans to live here after he retires.  At the end of the 2009-10 school year Maturi will have two years remaining on his contract.  Maturi told Sports Headliners he doesn’t plan to be involved with the process of selecting his successor.  His integrity and openness with people inside and outside the athletic department is much admired.

Point guard Jai Lucas, who was recruited by the Gophers, has transferred from Florida to Texas and will play for the Longhorns this season.  He’s the son of former NBA star John Lucas.

The Gophers women’s basketball team opens its Big Ten season on Sunday at home against Penn State.  Coach Pam Borton, starting her eighth season at Minnesota, has a winning percentage in conference games of .629, fourth best in the league.

Former Twins pitcher Johan Santana will make $19.8 million next season with the New York Mets, according to USA Today Sports Weekly.  The publication reported that Santana will earn $24.3 million in the final season of his contract in 2013.

Santana’s teammate and former Twin Luis Castillo, 34, is still on the Mets roster and apparently a candidate to be the team’s second baseman next season.  Castillo hit .302 last season after batting .245 in 2008.

Former University of Minnesota quarterback Marc Trestman made a place for himself in Gophers history when he recently coached Montreal to the Grey Cup title.  Bud Grant, who played for the Gophers, and Dave Skrien, a former Gophers assistant football coach and player, also coached teams to Canada’s Grey Cup title.

Six MIAC seniors have been invited to play for the North team in tomorrow’s inaugural Division III Football Senior Classic in Salem, Virginia. The players are Bethel cornerback Tim Cornish, Bethel wide receiver Joel Quick and Bethel outside linebacker Nathan Voronyak, Concordia offensive tackle John M. Anderson, Hamline placekicker Derek Johnson, and St. Olaf linebacker Adam Concannon. The game will feature 90 seniors from NCAA Division III teams

Six-foot, seven-inch Derek Boogaard is not usually the third-tallest player in a hockey game, but he was late last month when the Wild faced Boston’s Zdeno Chara, 6-9 and John Scott, 6-8.

Cottage Grove native Dan Sova was named the USHL’s Defensive Player of the Week after earning six points and a plus-eight rating for the Waterloo Black Hawks last week.

Former Wild forward Marian Gaborik, now with the Rangers, led the NHL with 21 goals through November, and was named the league’s third star of the month.

Rochester’s Raphael Butler and Joey Abell of Coon Rapids will fight for the Minnesota heavyweight title (first such bout since 1977) on tonight’s boxing card at Target Center.

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Like him or not, every sports fan in this town has known the name Patrick Reusse for decades.  Knowledgeable, opinionated and, yes, at times irreverent, Reusse has commanded attention for more than three decades but he told Sports Headliners his days at the Star Tribune and KSTP Radio could be ending in a couple of years.

Reusse, 64, talked last week about his career, writing style, feuds, addictions and more during a candid interview where he answered questions in detail, and often with self-deprecating humor.  For years a full-time columnist with the Star Tribune, he now writes two columns a week because of the opportunity to host a Monday-Friday morning radio show on KSTP-AM 1500.

“Patrick Reusse & Company,” which airs from 5:30 a.m. to 9 a.m., debuted in January. The show has Reusse out of bed by 3 a.m. work days and welcoming an occasional afternoon nap.  Writing Thursdays and Sundays for the Star Tribune, Reusse now only attends assigned sports events and often avoids night games.

“The hardest adjustment is only being a two days a week columnist because you kind of feel like you’re out of it a little bit, but there’s no way I could have maintained my newspaper schedule and do this radio,” he said.  “I am 64 years old. … Frankly, this radio is a lot harder than writing four or five columns a week. That had become such a habit.  It was just something I looked forward to.  The radio, it’s a grind.”

Reusse signed on for the Monday-Friday show knowing what he wanted the product to sound like.  “It turned into what I wanted it to be and if it works, fine,” he said. “If not, what the heck.  (It’s) a current events show, with numerous segments, lots of interviews and not taking phone calls. …A morning show, it’s got to be newsy, sportsy, and have traffic updates and stuff.  You’re changing topics every eight minutes.”

Just like his approach for years with the newspaper column, Reusse decided to make the KSTP show appealing to his No. 1 target demographic–himself.  “My audience is me and as I said when I took the job I want a show that I could listen to,” he said. “There’s nothing that I could listen to in town when I was in my car in the morning, which wasn’t a lot.  But I just don’t like wacky, completely wacky.  And I don’t like full blown promotional WCCO: ‘Aren’t the Gophers great? They made 201 yards against Iowa.  We’re so proud of them.’  That homerism in all things radio.  I just want a kind of candid, quick hitting radio (show) with sports and news and politicians.”

Reusse had logged air time on KSTP for years but nothing that commands the commitment of his new Monday-Friday show.  The faltering and uncertain economics of the newspaper industry impacted his decision as he pondered his future livelihood.  But he was also curious to see how he would do hosting a show like “Patrick Reusse & Company” and so he agreed to a three year contract with KSTP.

“When the contract is done, I am probably done, both here (Star Tribune) and there,” he said.  “I’ll be 66 and hopefully I will be able to retire then.  I don’t know.  I would like to keep writing in some form.  I enjoy the writing as much as I ever did but it’s certainly not the same job it used to be.”

Reusse didn’t say what his combined income is from KSTP and his part-time work with the Star Tribune.  The total is believed to be in six figures and Reusse said that despite less compensation from the Star Tribune his total income remains similar to when he was a full-time columnist and worked part-time on radio.

“I am doing okay, but somehow my wife (Katy) and I have managed to stay in a situation where I still have to work two jobs,” he said.  “I don’t know how we’ve done it, but it’s quite a feat.”

Awhile ago the Reusses remodeled their suburban Minneapolis home, increasing the mortgage and adding to another financial burden– the swimming pool that came with the house when Reusse bought it in 1988.  “That’s worse than having five kids,” he said.  “I can’t plead with people enough not to have a pool.  If you’re looking for financial well being, don’t have a pool.  That’s my advice.”

Reusse said his columns are often more oriented toward reporting and feature writing than they are opinion pieces.  He strives for reaction including a response from readers of “Gee, I didn’t know that.”

The columns do frequently have an “edge” to them.  Reusse doesn’t advocate soft approaches to opinions when he puts them in print. “Don’t pull a punch,” he said.

Reusse admits some readers see him as a “negative SOB.”  He writes what interests him and hopes for reader reaction, whether it makes you scream, laugh or just “feel good about some other human being.”

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Sometimes Reusse has used name calling in his columns. Does he have regrets about that?

“That’s always the big debate, whether it’s personal or whether it’s observation,” he answered.  “When I get attacked in return, I never take it personally.  I find it extremely humorous that people take a shot at somebody and then get offended when they take a shot back at you.”

Reusse said Twins relief pitcher Joe Nathan is upset with him.  Reusse criticized Nathan’s performance in the playoffs.  “I said ‘choked,’ and you looked at him on the mound against the Yankees and he couldn’t breathe,” Reusse said.  “Now is that personal?  Or is that observation of an athletic performance?  That’s what the debate becomes.

“He’s outraged, and that’s fine.  He should be.  He’s told guys ‘I am never talking to him again.’  I am not going to think any less or any more of him either way. People don’t believe that but really I don’t.  Somebody wants to say that ‘he’s a fat SOB,’ there’s no denying the fat part.  I am not very defensive at all about stuff I’ve written.

“Sure, there’s regrets.  A lot of them have been patched up.  Harvey Mackay (friend of ex-Gophers coach Lou Holtz) and I were mortal enemies during the Holtz era, and now I get along with him fine.  Louie Nanne (ex-North Stars president) is a former turkey of the year (Reusse’s annual Thanksgiving column) and I consider him a good friend, and a character.

“What the hell. You can’t write 250 columns a year for 30 years until the last year and not say, ‘God almighty, was I stupid.’  Of the feuds I’ve allegedly had, yeah, maybe the Holtz one (Reusse labeled him the “Music Man” after the character in the Broadway show).  He came in and he started bullshitting and I got kind of offended.  Now I look back at him and I should have adopted him as a unique character.”

Reusse recalled how he was critical of former Vikings coach Bud Grant and Twins owner Calvin Griffith.  His observation was that “everybody” was required to patronize Grant so much it drove Reusse nuts.  “So when I started writing columns, I would take some shots, whatever I could,” Reusse said.  “Then through the years I came to appreciate he’s one of the most unique Minnesota guys we’ve ever had. Calvin, too, I went from taking shots at him every chance to thinking he was one of the greatest characters of all-time. So I guess I regret some of the early observations I made of some people. …”

Reusse grew up in southwestern Minnesota and later graduated from Prior Lake High School.  He was a liberal arts major at the University of Minnesota but dropped out long before he could earn a degree.  His dad had a friendship with a Minneapolis Tribune writer and Reusse signed on as a teenager for an entry level part-time position in the sports department in 1963.

The Tribune was home almost at first sight.  “God, it took me about two weeks to say this is the greatest,” Reusse said.  “I just loved the hubbub and the crazed Friday nights, and the angry people, and the hard drinking people. (People) screaming at each other and taking calls.  You go to work and you were probably working a six-hour shift back then and it was over in 10 minutes. …”

At age 20, Reusse headed for Duluth and a job with the daily newspaper there paying $76.08 per week.  The work didn’t require a degree and journalism positions were easier to come by in the 1960s than they are now.  “Hell, it was between me and some wino off the street, probably for the job,” Reusse said. “Who are you going to hire for that kind of money?”

A few months later Reusse was writing sports for the newspaper in St. Cloud.  His salary increased to $110 per week for 52 hours in an “anything goes” sports department atmosphere.  Reusse’s memories include befriending a couple of St. Cloud State athletes with plenty of favorable publicity.  They were also old enough to buy beer for him when he wasn’t of legal age.

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