Gophers Lose Two Recruits

First of all, happy blizzard day! Safe travels to you on your drive home work tonight, be it hours, days, or even weeks. I think we'd all secretly been missing a good blizzard, right? Right? No? Just checking.

Well the Gophers football team will be missing two pretty good recruits from its 2010 class, as the Strib's Kent Youngblood reports two players have decommitted from the Gophs. Defensive back Antoine Lewis of Illinois will be attending Purdue, and definitely could have helped our secondary depth, but even more devasting is the loss of four star HB Josh Huff from Texas, who will be going to TCU.

The GopherIllustrated article Youngblood references has a quote from Huff saying Brewster's contract situation "definitely played a factor." Really? You don't think it's perhaps because TCU head coach Gary Patterson is building a juggernaut down in Ft. Worth, or because Purdue head coach Danny Hope beat Ohio State with a solid offense and had a very good first season? I'm going to go ahead and bet that the Gopher's performance on the field, as well as those at TCU and Purdue, were the main reasons these two left, and not because they were worried that Brewster doesn't have a contract extension THREE YEARS INTO A FIVE YEAR DEAL despite doing absolutely nothing to deserve it. Oh sure, his recruiting has improved, but his teams haven't proven anything in the actual games to warrant an extension.

Brewster does not deserve a contract extension and should not get one unless he wins beats Wisconsin or Iowa next year AND gets us to eight regular season wins. That's what we hired him to do, and Four years into his time at Minnesota that's what should be possible now that he'll have recruited just about every player on his roster by 2010.

either Huff or Lewis truly are leaving for that reason, then that's too bad, but it's not worth giving Brew a cushy extension, because judging him by what his team has done on the field so far there's no possible justification for a raise and more job security. The man has next fall to prove his value to us as the head coach, and if recruits are scared off by that, so be it. Extending Brew just to coddle a few recruits would cutting off your nose to save your face. So what if you get a few more kids in your recruiting class but then continue to underwhelm and underperform on game days? You then still have to fire Brewster but are now locked into even more money, which is going to hurt Minnesota's chance to hire a replacement.

Brew's contract status should not change even if we beat Iowa State, and should not be addressed until the end of year four, which would be next fall at about this time. Recruits aren't staying away from Minnesota because of Brewster's contract, they're staying away because so far Brewster hasn't been able to put a decent product on the field.