Well We Have that Going For Us, Which is Nice...

Howdy. Hope you've got your air conditioner out of storage, since we're expecting 90+ degrees here in Minnesota starting Sunday. Like the weather, Gopher news is starting to really heat up too...ok not so much, but we did get some much needed good news around our beloved football program:

Graduation rates are up!

Ok so it doesn't fix our offensive woes or Brewster's problems keeping his kids off the police blotter, but at least this is something good to talk about. As Myron Medcalf notes in the Strib, the U's football program achieved record gains in the NCAA's 2009 Academic Progress Report. I know some people still love the idea that Div 1 football players are "student athletes" but let's face it: this is a business. The U and every other D1 football program really only care about winning games and meeting whatever minimum graduation requirements they have to.

Well with this new-fangled APR, if teams don't meet the minimum standards, like the U did not in 2008, it means a loss of scholarships, and obviously at this point in Brewster's tenure here, we need all the scholarship players we can get.

Check the link for Medcalf's article and more information on the vast improvements the team made academically, but the bottom line for football fans is that we'll get some scholarships back, and whatever your thoughts on what Brewster has done at Minnesota, this is definitely an improvement we needed.

Now if he can just work on the on-field winning and off-field trouble-makers, we'll be in even better shape.