Bob Sansevere: Tim Brewster's firing leaves the U with a big train wreck to clean up

Published Oct. 18, 2010 10:08 a.m. ET

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Wipe those sweaty brows, Gophers fans, and let out a mighty sigh of relief. The scary rumors are false. Tim Brewster will not get to coach the University of Minnesota football team until the end of yet another dismal season.

That cockamamie story was circulating on a few websites Saturday night: Brewster had been fired but would be allowed to finish the season.

Phew, right?

The problem with dumping a coach during the season is not much changes when one of his assistants takes over, which is the deal here.

To his credit, offensive coordinator Jeff Horton, the guy who gets the interim nod, did not once say during a Sunday news conference, "Gopher Nation," the term that made some of us nauseated every time Brewster used it to describe the university's paltry fan base.

Over the final five games, the Gophers face three nationally ranked Big Ten teams. So Horton gets to do what Brewster made a habit of doing: lose more games.

" Football is the engine to every athletic program," Gophers athletics director Joel Maturi said Sunday, just hours after telling Brewster he was history. "And our engine is sputtering."

Brewster was the engineer of this train wreck, making Maturi the one in charge of the rail line. They both messed up: Brewster for failing to win and Maturi for hiring Brewster in the first place.

Rather than go with someone with more credentials, Maturi plucked Brewster from anonymity. That was Maturi's first imprudent decision related to Brewster.

Brewster had no r?sum? that screamed he was the guy to run what is supposed to be a major college football program. Brewster was the tight ends coach with the Denver Broncos, and he apparently wowed Maturi with his rah-rah, over-the-top, Gopher Nation-spewing enthusiasm.

Another imprudent decision was extending Brewster's contract through 2013 following a 6-7 season in 2009. To make it look as if he was protecting the university in the likely event Brewster continued to screw up, Maturi reduced the buyout. So, instead of being paid his full base salary through 2013, Brewster gets paid half of it.

That's still $600,000! And that's ridiculous.

Even more ridiculous: The buyout would have been $800,000 if Brewster were fired after the 2009 season. When he was hired, Brewster was a nobody with no leverage and desperate to be a head coach. Maturi should have gone into hard-line mode in the beginning and offered Brewster a minuscule buyout.

"When we redid the contract last year," Maturi said, "I believed it was important to give Coach Brewster more time."

Swing and a miss on that one.

"We're a 1-6 football team," Maturi said, "and quite frankly, nobody expected us to be a 1-6 football team."

Quite frankly, nobody expected Brewster to have the job past this season, anyway.

Maturi said firing Brewster now allows him a chance to get right to work looking for a new coach.

"In reality," Maturi said, "we hope that this timeline, we'll have more very good quality, recognizable, achievable, experienced coaches."

In other words, just the opposite of Brewster when he was hired.

Maturi receives a lot of credit for hiring Tubby Smith as the Gophers basketball coach. That's an easy hire, a no brainer. Tubby had a r?sum?, an impressive one. And he was looking to get out of Kentucky and land in a less demanding job before Wildcat alumni shoved him out the door. So, let's be honest here: Tubby picked Minnesota. It wasn't the other way around.

Maturi claims that, ultimately, he will hire the new football coach.

If you're a Gophers fan, you must be hoping Maturi won't get to pick a new coach on his own. He does need help, and is likely to get it.

Maturi made a point of saying, before anyone could ask, that he has talked to Gophers alum and former NFL coach Tony Dungy and Dungy isn't interested in the job. However, Maturi added, Dungy "is willing to do everything that he can to help us find the right leader for this program. I've also spoken to others influential to Gopher athletics and especially to Gopher football, and they, too, have committed their time, their willingness to meet, their willingness to solve the problem that has been here for quite some time."

At the top of anyone's list should be two names: Marc Trestman and Leslie Frazier.

Trestman, a former Gopher, is coach of the Montreal Alouettes, a team he has led to back-to-back Grey Cups and one Canadian Football League championship. Alumni pushed for Trestman the last time there was an opening -- and that's before he began tearing up the CFL -- but Maturi ignored them and went with his guy, Brewster. Meantime, Frazier was Dungy's suggestion when Brewster was hired. The Vikings' defensive coordinator would make a terrific college coach.

Whoever comes in, the bar isn't exactly high.

Even Maturi admitted, "You're not following Vince Lombardi here."

Bob Sansevere can be reached at bsansevere@pioneerpress.com .