Let me start by saying how much I hate myself for choosing that story headline.
And let me follow that up by saying that this piece is not about my opinion of Jerry Kill. That's partially because I haven't fully decided how I feel about the fact that Jerry Kill is now the head coach of the Golden Gophers, and partially because I'm still just a little bit in shock.
The University of Minnesota football coaching search started 7 weeks ago when Tim Brewster was fired by the University. On that day Joel Maturi claimed that his goal was a "Tubby Smith-type hire." This either meant that Maturi wanted to hire a big-time college football coach to completely change the culture of the program and take over for the last disaster of a coach he had hired for the position, or that he was expecting somebody to fall into his lap.
By hiring Jerry Kill, Joel Maturi accomplished neither.
Now again, this isn't about Jerry Kill. Because based on what I know of Jerry Kill he is a very good football coach, he might very well be successful at Minnesota, and let me be the first to say that I absolutely hope that he is.
We may never know how this coaching search went down behind the scenes. We heard every name from Phil Fulmer and MIke Leach to Al Golden and Chris Peterson. We don't know if those individuals said no, we don't know if they just didn't mesh with Maturi, and we don't even know if they were even contacted. But names like those are exactly why Gold Country is scratching its collective head tonight. We aren't pissed that Jerry Kill is our coach as much as we are creased that our new coach's name isn't Leach, Fulmer, Golden, Peterson, Patterson, Hoke, Mullen, Fedora, etc.
So to Jerry Kill, we sincerely welcome you. We support you and we wish you the greatest success at Minnesota because we are absolutely dying for some gridiron success...
But please excuse us for a few moments while while the ire that we had for Tim Brewster, that transformed into hopefulness for our programs future, transforms back to ire for the man responsible for this search, before we pour everything we have into supporting you.
UPDATE: In case you needed some evidence, Gopher fans are in complete meltdown mode over this hire. The Daily Gopher has a poll going tonight and as of this posting only 9% of the 350 responses think this is a great hire, 27% think it's a complete FAIL, and nearly 50% think that Kill deserves a chance but that Joel Maturi should be fired immediately.