At various times since the 1960’s- the last time Minnesota was a genuine powerhouse- the Golden Gophers have looked poised to join the likes of the Buckeyes, Wolverines, and Spartans as a team that needs to be taken seriously in the Big Ten year in and year out. Somehow, that transformation hasn’t actually taken place. Are the Gophers finally ready to take that next step?
The Golden Gophers: Trending Upward In The Big Ten?
Recruiting
In many ways, success in college football is a Catch-22: you need to win games to attract the top recruits, but you need good players to win games. To go from average to good, or good to great, you pretty much have to coach the hell out of your mid-range recruits and hope a lot of them overachieve. This isn’t impossible; evaluating a seventeen-year-old’s body type and skill set, and what both are likely to be in a few years, is far from an exact science. Plenty of two- and three-star high school players go on to excellent careers in college and beyond. Junior college transfers can be very helpful on these kinds of teams as well. At 20 or 21, they tend to come in with more physical maturity and strength than an 18-year-old freshman and can usually contribute immediately.
Having recruiting depth within your state helps, but that’s an asset Minnesota is lacking in comparison to, say, Texas or Florida. Locking up whatever desirable recruits the state does produce is key. New head coach Tracy Claeys and his staff seem to be on top of that; five of the Gophers’ six 2017 commits are in-state players, and freshman Carter Coughlin, a four-star linebacker out of Eden Prairie, is a player to watch this season. One thing that would making recruiting, both in- and out-of-state, easier? Upgraded facilities- which I’ll cover in more depth later on.
Coaching
I see a school’s coaching situation as having two components: quality and consistency. Quality, for Minnesota, is an unknown right now as this will be Tracy Claeys’ first full season at the helm. The program certainly looked to be moving in the right direction with the hire of Jerry Kill in late 2010, especially after he led the Gophers to 8-4 records in both 2013 and 2014. Kill’s health issues and subsequent resignation were unfortunate, as was the failure to keep him with the program in some capacity, but it’s too early to call it a death knell for the progress the Gophers have made of late.
Coaching consistency is, in many ways, as important as quality. Recruiting is hard enough- how do you recruit kids to a program with a recent history of changing coaches every three, four, five years? What good recruit wants to go to a team where the coach recruiting him probably won’t be there by the time he graduates? How successful is a team going to be when half of their players were brought in by a different coaching staff to play in a completely different offense/defense?
Tracy Claeys
In this aspect, removing the “interim” tag from Tracy Claeys so quickly was a smart move by Minnesota. Claeys and Kill have worked together for what passes as an eternity in coaching. Even the replacement of offensive coordinator Matt Limegrover (another longtime member of Kill’s staff) with Jay Johnson of Louisiana-Lafayette isn’t likely to result in huge changes to the scheme. Special-teams coordinator Jay Sawvel replaces Claeys as defensive coordinator, and I get the sense he plans to tinker rather than make significant changes. Obviously, there are times when a program has to blow things up and start over, but this isn’t one of them. I like the choices the university has made here.
Facilities
My father, a Minnesota alum, has said for years that facilities are a huge part of the Gophers’ problems as far as recruiting. Not anymore. This is an area where Minnesota has made an enormous step forward in recent years. On-campus TCF Bank Stadium opened to huge fanfare in 2009, replacing Minneapolis’ Metrodome (also the former home of the MLB Twins and the NFL Vikings) as the Gophers’ home. The jewel of the stadium- albeit something few people get to see- is the football team’s locker room.
It is the largest in football, including the NFL, and quite frankly I’m not sure why the guys ever leave the locker room and adjacent media rooms and therapy rooms. (Oh yeah, classes). The Vikings have used TCF Stadium (or, in Twin Cities parlance, “The Bank”) for their home games the last two seasons as their new stadium is built, and even they were impressed with the facilities.
Adding to the upgrades will be the new Athletes’ Village, for which ground was broken last October. Among the planned aspects of the village are an indoor practice facility for football, a new Football Performance Center, a Basketball Development Center, and academic and nutrition facilities that will be available to all varsity athletes. Additional private funding is still being sought, so I’m not sure when this will be completed, but the plans sound incredible. More info can be found here.
In summary, there are a lot of reasons for the Minnesota faithful to be optimistic heading into the 2016 season. One more reason? A far less rigorous schedule than last year. I’ll be covering that in more detail in the weeks to come.
Main Photo:
MINNEAPOLIS, MN – NOVEMBER 8: Maxx Williams #88 of the Minnesota Golden Gophers celebrates a touchdown with Drew Goodger #83 against the University of Iowa Hawkeyes during the third quarter on November 8, 2014 at TCF Bank Stadium in Minneapolis, Minnesota. (Photo by Adam Bettcher/Getty Images)
