Anyone who has been a fan of the Golden Gopher football team the last 40 years knows that the head coach position has been a revolving door of unsuccessful candidates. Some coaches take one spin and others just go around in circles for what seems like forever. Regardless of the length of the ride, the coaches leave Dinkytown with their tail between the legs for one reason or another.
With that in mind I thought I'd do a Stock Watch on the tradable commodity that is Jerry Kill. I'll adjust his stock value based on team competitiveness, win/loss record, recruiting, staff retention/replacements and to a lesser degree, fan chatter.
I figure that the max the stock can valued at is 100 where Kill just won the BCS Championship game and is named Gopher Coach For Life all the way down to 0 which is where Tim Brewster found himself last fall. Here are the in between values:
90 - The Gophers are Rose Bowl bound!!!
80 - BX West (I don't use Leaders & Legends) Champs or the pre-season favorite
70 - January 1 Bowl Game bound; consistently an 8-4 team with one quality out of conference opponent (danger of coach leaving here)
60 - Consistently an 8-4 team playing four directional schools in OOC games
50 - Perennial 7-5 team (bowl game expected pre-season) playing four directional schools in OOC
40 - Fringe Bowl Team (5-7 win range expected for 2nd year in a row)
30 - Warm Seat (4-6 win range expected for 2nd year in a row)
20 - Hot Seat (missing the postseason in back to back years, coach needs to win NOW)
10 - Dead Man Walking (started the season on the hot seat and isn't meeting expectations this year)
0 - Finish Him!!! (You just lost to a team with the word Dakota in their name...again)
Coach Kill came out of the blocks a little rough. He was named HC and the fanbase went nuts for a day. Talk of not renewing season tickets was rampant on message boards. Then they got a chance to listen to the introduction presser and all was forgiven. He's the anti-Brewster so that must be good, just like Brew was the anti-Mase which was good, and so forth. My initial expectations for a coach with Kill's background fall somewhere between perennial fringe bowl team and perennial 7-5 team so coach's initial offering is 45.
December update - Coach Kill essentially brought in the entire NIU staff, save for Matukewicz, retained the Gopher's best recruiter from the prior staff and added a well respected LB coach with strong South Florida ties. I wasn't thrilled at the thought of the entire staff coming from NIU as none of them have BCS experience, but their familiarity with one another and the recruiting acumen of Miller and Hammock made up for that so I bumped them up a point to 46.
January update - Recruiting really limped to the finish line as we ended up going to the senior prom with, in my opinion, some pretty homely girls. We had some shy librarian types that would clean up nicely and an out of town hot girl was into us too. But that was short lived as those girls got asked out by hotter guys and said yes while we were left scrambling to find dates. Even the girls that were not good enough for us a month ago were saying no. We went to the prom, but weren't proud to take those photos. Bumped down to 43.
February update - Just after senior prom I was feeling pretty down about our prospects, but out of the blue the juniors starting taking an interest in us. Yeah, there was a ginger that agreed to date us, but so did the attractive girl that everyone thought was going to date a guy in the next town as well as an even hotter girl that many of the guys in school wanted to get with. With this fresh perspective we bump up a few points to 46.
March update - My favorite wingman started running with a new group of friends which is a big bummer. Yeah, we replaced him, but the new guy is just a sophomore, isn't as good looking and his stories don't hook the girls as well. Wishing my wingman would come back. Bumped back down to 44.
I'll be updating the Stock Watch on a monthly basis (roughly) and on a weekly basis during the season. Let's hope we have a few "Blue Horseshoe loves Jerry Kill" moments.
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