Because who really wants to talk about football anymore. We know what we're getting from the Gophers every week. Lots of effort, but an eventual loss.
What we thought we knew:
Based on what he said, and what President Bruinnicks reiterated, we thought Joel Maturi might be fully in charge of the new hire.
What we have found out:
Based on how frequently Bobby B. has answered questions about the coaching search, it seems pretty obvious at this point that he has and will have his hands all over this hire. He, of course, has to say that the ultimate decision is Maturi's, and he might even want Maturi to be under the impression that it is actually his decision. But based on how close he is obviously keeping himself to the situation, Bruinnicks' say will be supremely important in this search.
What has been a bit lost in all of this is that while Bruinnick's is squarely in the cross-hairs of the coaching search, the University as a whole is squarely in the cross-hairs of the search to replace Bruinnicks. In fact, the committee who is working on finding Bruinnicks replacement has already narrowed their search down to a (private) list of four.
What we thought we knew:
We thought we should maybe get really scared that Marc Trestman was going to be the next coach of your Golden Gopher Football team.
What we have found out:
While Trestman's name is probably still most certainly in the mix, as several folks have mentioned that Trestman is (for some unknown reason) a booster-favorite, it's beginning to look more and more like the U understands that there are much better candidates available.
What we thought we knew:
We thought that the University of Minnesota job might be viewed as a career-killer in coaching circles.
What we have found out:
If Joel Maturi is to be believed (And really, why wouldn't he be? Maturi can be called a lot of things, but "liar" isn't one of them.) the Minnesota coaching position might be a more desirable job than we thought. Truthfully, if you think about it, it isn't so far-fetched. There are two handfuls of elite college football coaching jobs, and certainly Minnesota is not one of those. But beyond those 8-10 premium programs, you're still talking about a college football team in one of the 3 best conferences in the country, making it, arguably, in the top 35-40 coaching destinations in college football.
Gary Paterson (TCU) and Chris Peterson (Boise State) have spent the last 2-3 seasons finding out first hand how hard it is to get any real national prestige unless you are playing the very difficult weekly schedules in a BCS conference, and for that reason, the Minnesota job probably gets a little more cache just because it resides within the historically difficult Big Ten.