The golden goal

Sporting News, The, Oct 9, 1995 by Rachel Bachman

It is days before Minnesota opens the season, and Coach Jim Wacker should not be so chipper. He is teetering on a 9-24 record for the Golden Gophers, and he is about to enter the penultimate season of his five-year contract. Still, there is nothing uptight about this pink-faced, pleasant man as he settles his doorway-height frame in his office chair, as if to nap before supper. As always, there is the grin, which comes easily and can make even the fiercest of alumni forget their gripes and tell him to give 'em hell on Saturday. He talks like a soft-sell Southern pitchman, and today he is selling the positives about his team. "We had a 54 percent graduation rate last year," he says, with his trademark enthusiasm, "and well double that."

Lately, mathematical impossibilities aren't so impossible; last season, the Gophers flushed 11th in the Big Ten. Wacker and the Gophers ended up winning this years opener and open the Big Ten season this week against Purdue with a 2-1 record, but they haven't won the conference since 1967 and have finished higher than fifth only once since 1976. But Wacker has reason to feel optimistic, because he has something on his side. It's called the Blue Ribbon Football Panel.

After last season, university President Nils Hasselmo and vice president for student development and athletics McKinley Boston brought together 18 people with connections to the university: Wacker, senior associate athletic director Mark Dienhart and former Gopher and current Minnesota Vikings defensive coordinator Tony Dungy, as well as professors, alumni, and business and civic leaders. Their mission: Find a way to revive a program that won four Associated Press national championships, all before the Kennedy administration.

Football and other "turnaround" committees are fairly common around the country but usually are smaller in scale and scope. Dennis Labissoniere, a spokesman for the Big Ten Conference who has worked there for 10 years, says he hasn't heard in recent times of a committee such as the Gophers', which is unique because it encompassed so many different groups within the university. The fact that the coach was involved was also unusual.

In the offseason, the panel spent eight months scrutinizing every factor that might hinder the football program. Every factor, that is, except one. Dienhart says that for 30 years, when blame fell, it usually landed on the coach. "We reached the point where we got a little bit tired of that response," he says. So instead of pressuring Wacker -- there are no demands for "significant improvement" as at Georgia -- panel members examined Minnesota's predicament. Then they hit the road.

They hired former NCAA executive director and current United States Olympic Committee President Dick Schultz as a consultant. And at his suggestion, he and nine members of the panel, including Wacker and Boston, went on trips to three schools. They visited Nebraska because of its outstanding walk-on program and because, like the Gophers' program, it's in a low-population state. They went to Tennessee to see its facilities, and visited Kansas State, to find out how it has become one of the greatest turnarounds in recent history.

Although the panel didn't find any secret formulas, it found inspiration, along with one important link: All three schools show an uncompromising commitment to their programs, from the president down. At Kansas State, panel members could see how football had changed not only the landscape of the university (football facilities have been upgraded by more than $10 million), but the behavior of its community.

"The most noticeable thing is at basketball games," Kansas State Collegian sports editor Dan Lewerenz says. "The whole student section waits for (football Coach) Bill Snyder. When he shows up, they do the We're-not-worthy' bow. We're a great basketball school, and we're immortalizing a football coach."

But Snyder says his program, which has become the rebound model for the country, did not merit such a visit from the panel members. "They wanted (the visit) to be magic," Snyder said in July. "But it's good people who care and worked real hard at what they did (that, saved Kansas State's program). To me, there's no other answer." Recently, the committee submitted its final report to the Board of Regents. Some of the panel's work has already resulted in changes; some suggestions still need approval. But there are three areas that are in transition:

Recruiting. For Minnesota to succeed, it must successfully recruit outside the low-population states of the upper Midwest. This is where Wacker's job security factors in. His recruiting base in Texas was built upon 18 years of coaching there. That would be difficult for a new coach to reestablish. In 1992, his first season, there were three players on the team from Texas. This year, there are 24, including running back and long-shot Heisman Trophy candidate, Chris Darkins. "If Wacker were fired," former Gophers coach Cal Stoll says, "it would absolutely kill the program." Past coaching turnover also has led to countless local recruits leaving the state. For example, tailback Carl McCullough from St. Paul now plays for Wisconsin, and safety Steve Rosga from Roseville picked Colorado. To help gain a foothold for the best local talent, the Gophers in the offseason hired Mark Tommerdahl, who grew up in Fergus Fahs, Minn., as recruiting coordinator and assistant coach.