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Minnesota's interim coach trying to keep team upbeat

JEFF HORTON and his eight assistants might be dead men walking, in a professional sense, but at least Minnesota's interim football coach is whistling a happy tune on his way to the gallows.

Minnesota interim coach Jeff Horton wil face Penn State this weekend. (AP Photo/The Star Tribune, Richard Tsong-Taatarii)
Minnesota interim coach Jeff Horton wil face Penn State this weekend. (AP Photo/The Star Tribune, Richard Tsong-Taatarii)Read more

JEFF HORTON and his eight assistants might be dead men walking, in a professional sense, but at least Minnesota's interim football coach is whistling a happy tune on his way to the gallows.

"We're not going to sit around here and be doom-and-gloom," said Horton, who replaced the fired Tim Brewster the day after the Golden Gophers lost their sixth consecutive game, 28-17, to Purdue on Saturday. "I'm not going to wallow in pity."

To liven the mood on the practice field as Minnesota (1-6 overall, 0-3 in the Big Ten Conference) readies for Saturday's hosting of Penn State (3-3, 0-2), Horton - in his first and most likely only season at the school - has set up loudspeakers that blare rock music. It isn't because he expects a high-decibel level from the home fans at TCF Bank Stadium, where sellout crowds are pretty much nonexistent, and contentment among those who do show up is in equally short supply.

If you're going to go down anyway, might as well do it while having a little fun, right?

"Everybody was flying around," linebacker Ryan Grant said of the first day of practice under Horton, who was hired by Brewster as Minnesota's offensive coordinator after spending the 2009 season as the quarterbacks coach of the Detroit Lions. "People were excited. We were having fun."

The Minnesota football program over the past few decades has been like one of those massive construction projects that never seem to get finished. Glen Mason, a close friend of Penn State coaching legend Joe Paterno, took a crack at restoring the Gophers' faded glory and never quite maneuvered them into the Big Ten's upper tier, although he won 64 games in 10 years and even landed berths in seven minor bowls in his last eight seasons.

That apparently wasn't good enough to satisfy athletic director Joel Maturi, who saw that Wisconsin and Iowa cracked the Top 25 rankings somewhat regularly and went to higher-visibility, better-paying bowls. Why not Minnesota?

The relentlessly upbeat Brewster, who was serving as the Denver Broncos' tight ends coach at the time, so wowed Maturi with his rosy vision of what would be that he got the job despite the fact he hadn't been a head coach since high school in the late 1980s.

Brewster had his moments, but they were few and far between, and when the Gophers began their downward spiral this season after beating Middle Tennessee State in the opener, Maturi decided he couldn't wait any longer to make a change.

"Those that wear maroon and gold are disappointed, embarrassed, frustrated, angry and hurt by a 1-6 football team and the lack of being really competitive in the Big Ten for a long while," Maturi said. "We're taking a step backward, and that's not what building programs do."

So Brewster, with his 15-30 overall record that included a 6-21 mark in Big Ten games (0-7 vs. Wisconsin and Iowa) was out, and Horton - who is 20-48 as a college head coach in one season at Nevada and five at UNLV - was in, at least for a little while. So sure is Horton that he won't be considered to stay on in 2011 that he already has announced his support for Scott Linehan, presently the Lions' offensive coordinator.

Paterno made no secret of his displeasure when Mason got canned, and he isn't keen on the in-season jettisoning of coaches who, he thinks, at least deserve the right to finish what they started.

"They had bad games as we all do, but overall, I thought he did a good job," Paterno said of Brewster.

"We have played a couple of teams whose coaches were fired [during the season]. Michigan State let a coach go in the middle of the year once [Bobby Williams, who was dismissed after the Spartans opened 3-6 in 2002]. Nobody really knows how [the players] are going to react. I don't know the new coach; I know of him. I know his background."

If Paterno isn't quite sure what to expect of Minnesota, neither are all of the Gophers.

"I love coach Brew," said senior Brandon Kirksey, a team co-captain. "He's the head coach, so he is on the front line and had to take the bullet. But he's not completely to blame for the success or failure of the team.

"I know some people are sad, some people are mad, and secretly some people might be happy."

Nit-picking

Former Penn State defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky will receive the American Football Coaches Association's 2010 Achievement Award on Jan. 10 at the AFCA Convention in Dallas. Sandusky played at Penn State from 1963 to '65, and returned to his alma mater in 1969. He remained on coach Joe Paterno's staff until his retirement following the 1999 season . . . Minnesota junior defensive tackle Jewhan Edwards (Roman Catholic High) has started six of seven games (and played in all seven) this season. He has 17 tackles and one sack. *