Brewster (Finally) Gets His Extension

Congratulations Gopher fans- Tim Brewster is all ours through 2013! Yep, the man who in three glorious seasons is 14-24 overall with a 6-18 record in the Big Ten, 0-9 in trophy games, 0-2 in bowl games, and has not beaten a single team ranked in the top 25 has been locked up!

Ok, ok so I'm not exactly excited about this, but we knew it was coming, and I do still believe a head coach- even Brewster- deserves four full seasons to prove his worth. While I'm slighly pessimistic (I know, what's new right?) about his chances of turning things around, it should be pointed out that Big Ten successes like Barry Alvarez at Wisconsin and Nick Saban at Michigan State each took four seasons to start really winning. Since Brewster is our guy, let's hope his fourth year is the magic season too!

Two questions I have about the extension, the first of which apparently won't be answered until Brewster actually signs it: how much are we on the hook for if things don't work out in 2010 and we have to can him and then hire Ken Sumlin? We know Brew had a base salary of $400,000 on his original deal, but I'm hoping the buyout- or payout- for firing him will be much less. We'll see how shrewd Maturi really is by giving an extension to a coach who did not deserve it.

My other question? What took so long?!? No really, why is he getting this extension done with five days left in the recruiting season instead of in November or early December? I didn't agree with the extension, but if Brewster was going to get it to keep continuity and keep recruits coming here, what good does it do to finally have him sign it now? As you no doubt know, the Gophs have lost nine recruits this year, and four in just the last month (three of which can be blamed on "instability" since James Green didn't qualify academically), and at least two of those three- RB Josh Huff and WR Chris Hawkins, who both incidentally chose TCU- could have been impact guys from day one. While I didn't love the idea of giving Brew an extension, if you were going to give it to him, why the heck did Maturi wait more than two months to do it?!?

I'm again worrying that the guy running our athletic department could be as big a problem as the guy running the football team. We'll have an even clearer answer to that when the contract extension details come out this week.