Why replacing Gophers' Brewster is tough
With Gopher football coach Tim Brewster sacked, the University of Minnesota will have to get creative to find someone to replace him, MPR's Tim Post reports.
It paid Brewster $1 million -- not a lot in today's coach market -- and doesn't have the budget to go all out, as Athletics Director Joel Maturi tells MPR:
"We can't compete with the $4 million coaches, we can't compete with the $3 million institutions. We can't go down that path, it's not the right thing to do for any institution and certainly not for the University of Minnesota."
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The U pays basketball coach Tubby Smith about $1.8 million a year, but even matching that would be a challenge. The U's athletics department doesn't cover its own expenses; it gets $2.3 million from the university this year to subsidize its $76 million budget -- support that will slowly phase out in coming years.
The U might get some more resources from the expanding Big 10, but it's unclear how much that will be. That means donations from bigwigs might have to take care of the rest, because as Post writes:
University of Minnesota Regent Dean Johnson said taking money from boosters is one thing, but no one should expect students to be lining the pockets of the next coach.
Read Post's article for details, and listen to his audio here.