Jerry Kill told Sports Headliners some of his position assistants were offered jobs with other programs during the off-season, including as defensive coordinators, but his staff remained intact when the Gophers opened spring football practice this week.
Kill didn’t identify the assistants who were offered jobs but did confirm that staff members have received salary increases since arriving here with the head coach in December of 2010. Sources indicate the Gophers’ salaries for assistants have moved up from near the bottom of the Big Ten to the middle.
“If you can keep the core group together then that’s a good thing,” Kill said. “Continuity has been a problem here at the University of Minnesota.”
Offensive and defensive coordinators sometimes changed annually under head coach Tim Brewster, Kill’s predecessor. Kill came to Minnesota with a reputation for holding his staff together at Northern Illinois and other schools where he’s coached. Defensive coordinator Tracy Claeys has been with him for 17 years.
Staff continuity is one of four factors Kill listed as imperative to making the Gophers a winning program. Other requirements are not losing players because of school work, having a successful strength program, and being given time by the administration to build the program.
“I think everyone wants our program to be at the top,” Kill said. “We gotta find a way to get it to the middle and then we’ve gotta go another step. We’ve got work to do but we’re certainly a heck of a lot farther along in knowing what we need than we were a year ago. So we just need to keep making progress.”
Dave,
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