Commentary: Mason getting popular in Minnesota

? In taking over the Gophers program, in dubbing the sparsely populated mud-hut hamlet containing jaded Minnesota football fans “Gopher Nation,” Tim Brewster promised to accomplish the impossible, and the impossible is what he has wrought.

Brewster has made Glen Mason the most popular football coach in town.

“I don’t know if that’s a compliment or not,” Mason said with a laugh. “If it is, thank you.”

Former Kansas University coach Mason sounded like he was in fine spirits, and why not? In the last year he’s gone from hearing “Fire Mason!” chants at Minnesota to getting fired after the first year of a five-year deal to having Brewster’s 1-7 start make him look like a genius in exile.

Last September and October, Mason’s Gophers lost five consecutive Big Ten games and avoided an upset to North Dakota State by blocking a field goal as time expired.

He heard “Fire Mason” chants. He responded by questioning the sobriety of the student section.

“A lot of drinking goes on in there,” Mason said then of the Metrodome. “We serve alcohol in that stadium – not a lot of (college) stadiums do that. I was at one game, and I thought, ‘Where’s Fox News?’ Because there’s a lot of underage drinking going on out there, because I know that guy’s not 21!’ Right?”

That got Mason into trouble. In retrospect, that’s an awfully good one-liner about Fox 9’s shocking discovery that college athletes drink beer.

Just when you thought that season couldn’t get worse, Mason seemingly saved his job, winning three consecutive Big Ten games by a combined 128-68 and earning a berth in the Insight Bowl.

At the promotional events leading up to the game, Mason railed against his critics – including the Star Tribune – and angered his bosses. Then the Gophers set a record by blowing a 31-point third-quarter lead to Texas Tech, and his bosses had seen enough.

Thursday, Mason called 2006 a “survival year” for the program, a transition season, and said a bad official’s call against Penn State and the blown Insight lead kept him from an 8-5 record and continued employment.

“I can only speak for myself, and I’ve said this from the start, and I mean this as honestly as I can – I wasn’t happy with the decision that my superiors made, but I respected it,” Mason said. “That’s their prerogative. In saying that, I also have to admit that there are members of my organization and my family who are joyous that the Gophers aren’t doing well.

“I can’t say that. I recruited those kids, I know those kids, I know what they put into it, and I put 10 years of my life into this program, trying to make it better.”

Mason is working as an analyst for the Big Ten Network. He raved about the joys of spending time on campuses, exploring quadrangles and libraries and chatting with fans who, he says, have been uniformly gracious.

He says he’s thrown himself into his new profession, but that at heart he’s still a coach.

Mason refused to take any shots at Brewster or the current state of the program.

He doesn’t have to. Unless Brewster starts winning, he’ll be known as the man who transformed Mason in the minds of many Gophers fans from rockhead to Rockne.