Unless the University of Minnesota football team can surprise everyone, the season will end with a school record 11th loss. The Gophers could finish at 1-11 overall, 0-8 in the Big Ten Conference with a loss to Wisconsin in the Metrodome on Saturday.
This would be the first time since 1994 that Minnesota has finished alone at the bottom of the conference standings, although the Gophers shared bottom finishes in 1996 and 2001. In the previous 10 seasons, all under coach Glen Mason, the Gophers’ Big Ten finishes were ninth, seventh, fourth, fourth, 10th, seventh, fourth, eighth, seventh and sixth.
Last year the Gophers’ conference record was 3-5 (6-7 overall). As recently as 2003 the Gophers were 5-3 in the Big Ten, finishing in fourth place, with a 10-3 overall record. Mason and his staff weren’t able to better or equal the annual records beyond that. During his career at Minnesota, Mason’s conference record was 32 wins, 48 losses. When Mason was let go after last year’s Insight Bowl collapse against Texas Tech, the talent he and his staff had on campus was below that of more recent seasons.
This season that talent met a new coaching staff with new ideas and systems. Coach Tim Brewster and his staff talk about creating a new culture, partially based on attitudes, behaviors and strategies. The results will have a lot to do, too, with how physically gifted the next group of players are that they bring to Minnesota. The staff’s reputation as superior recruiters is on the line as an impatient public and cynical media watches, and as a new $288.5 million stadium and the expectations that go with it are being readied for 2009.
Coaches in the Big Ten and elsewhere who have turned around programs often have started their projects at ground zero, experiencing bad first year records and sometimes close losses like the Gophers who have lost five games by six points or less. What follows are the tales of other places and coaches.