ND Coaching Situation & Gopher Crap

This seems to be top of mind for the world of College Football, and even though Chuck has a giant buyout I really think they'll be looking for a coach this offseason. So here are the names being floated around, thoughts?

1. Urban Meyer
Proven his worth in a big way at FLA, has said that ND is his dream job, cupboard won't exactly be bare at UF after this year but he'll be "re-loading" in 2010 and really what does he have left to prove? We'll see how the year turns out for the Gators (i'm guessing a NC Game loss) but I think this might be the guy as crazy as it sounds.

2. Bob Stoops
Rumors are that he would listen and be interested. His OK run has been great, but I could see him leaving for a gigantic payday. Does it happen if Meyer doesn't work out...I doubt it.

3. Kirk Ferentz
This is a legit rumor once again since iOWA won 9 games this year. He would instantly climb my "most hated ever" list if he coaches both iOWA and ND in his career, but I would be pulling for this one because he's a good coach so he doesn't belong at iOWA.

Speaking of coaches, here's who else I have on deathrow right now:
ACC
Bowden
Friedgren
Groh

B12
Hawkins

Big EAST
Kragthorpe

B10
Zook
DickRod

P10
Wulff

SEC
Spurrier

MICH would be the biggest job available outside of ND. Spurrier would likely have to retire and not be fired. DickRod would get another chance as early as next season, but he needs to find more of a nitchey progrum like WV to succedd. I don't think he cares for the pressure that he's faced at MICH. COL maybe?

I've gone over some stats for the Gophers under Brew...here's what I discovered:

- If you can believe it, our offense is actually BETTER this year than in 2008 while the D, in terms of points allowed, is slightly worse

- Unless we run for another 250 yards this year it will be our worst rushing performance of the Brew tenure...Pound the Rock!

- Unless we throw for another 650 yards in the final 2 games it will be our worst passing yards performance under Brew in 2009

- TD:INT is 14:14 this season, even in AWEB's freshman year when he threw 19 picks he made up for it with 25 TD's. If he breaks 20 this year we'll be 8-5.

- In Brew's 1st year we were 2nd least penalized team in B10, last year and this year we have the most penalties in the entire conference.

- 2007 we were a -15 in TO MGN...last year we were +12, kind of fluky...this year we are -2 so far...is this improvement? Kind of? Less lucky and less opportunistic I guess.

- Remember how horrible our D was in 2007, well opponents converted 44.3% of the time on 3rd down against them....2009 = 47.3% wow. We were epically bad in 2007 and this year is actually worse on 3rd dwn. 38.9% LY

- Offensively we've gone from 42.6% to 34.6% to 37.4% in 2009. Horrible.

- 2007 we were obviously 11th in total D, last year we moved to 10th, this year we ae 8th. This is progress! Woo-hoo! Next year we crack top 5! But if you can't score what does it matter.

- Offense has gone from 6th in 2007 to 10th to 11th in 2009. YPG was 407 to 323 to an embarassing 304 this year...worst in the B10 by far.

- Finally in 2007 we only allowed 12 sacks! wow, best in the B10! Last year we allowed 29, 11th in B10. This year we have already allowed 33...again, worst in B10.

Our OL sucks a lot. YPC, SACKS, RUSH YDS have all gone steadily down hill throughout his tenure. I think our D has been steadily improving throughout the Brewster regime, and even though we are replacing 9 starters next season I think we can continue our upward trend...but we have to get some offense. At the beginning of this year I said that the offense was a mystery but it couldn't possibly be any worse...I think I may have misspoke. An improved offense in 2010 (hell, even the last 2 of 2009) could really help our D rankings and make this a better team. I don't think it's a revelation that this is the problem, but it's kind of surprising how much we've continually regressed over the last 3 years. I guess we are stubborn to let #8 play out the season...isn't this the definition of insantiy?...doing the same thing over and over again even though it isn't working. Is Brew holding Gray back because he can't play? Well, he can't be worse than AWEB. Is he holding him back to hold on to some hope for the fans so we all continue to believe that it will get better? How can you literally put your career on the line by NOT playing "your guy" who you recruited and continuing to sputter on offense as bad as we haved in 10 of our 11 games this season? Optimist guy says, new OC will for sure be better in Y2 once every one is familiar with the system and the kinks have been worked out. I'm not sure I can buy that. The OL might be completely made over...again. It's full of Jr's, but they clearly don't get it so I don't know if you can keep rolling with this pathetic unit for the 3rd year in a row. I definitely have hope, but I fully expect 2010 to be Brew's last year with the squad. But that's a discussion for another day - I need to figure out what the hell we're going to do against iOWA and maybe the Clones in the Bowl Game. Nothing to lose this weekend, so if you don't let it all hang out and play better this weekend somebody might come up with the necessary funding to end the Brew experiment before the calendar hits January. Stay tuned.