Building trust key to building team

By: Larry Fitzgerald
Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder
Originally posted 09/07/2007

An interview with Gophers Football Coach Tim Brewster

   Last week, Minnesota Gophers Football Head Coach Tim Brewster (TB) talked with Larry Fitzgerald (LF) about instilling confidence and building relationships with players. This week’s column concludes that conversation with talk about building trust between Gopher sports and the community.

 LF: After your spring game situation, you invited every high school football coach in the state to come and look at your program and watch your practices. Afterward, you had your players line up and shake hands with them. Talk about what you’re trying to establish with this.

 TB: We want to build relationships, and that’s how you do it. We have an open-door policy, and every high school in the state of Minnesota is welcome at the U anytime. We love talking ball, we love football, and we love coaches. After the game, we had a fish fry and after [that] we sat around and had great fellowship. We got to meet coaches from inner city Minneapolis and guys from the outstate areas.

 As we move forward, we are trying to build trust and that’s what it’s all about. Once we gain the trust of the people in the state of Minnesota, there will be no stopping us. We are going to do the things that we want to get done. You can’t ask for somebody’s trust — you’ve got to earn it, and that’s where we’re at. Trying to earn trust.

 LF: Over the years, there has not been a lot of trust of the U of M in the inner city communities of North and South Minneapolis and St. Paul. There has been misunderstanding, a lack of trust, and no connection. There have been some local high school players who have gone to the university, but there have been many local players who have felt snubbed by the university, including my sons Larry Jr. and Marcus and others in basketball. These are long-standing issues. How are you going to change that perception?

 TB: Watch what I do. I’m going to be in the community. My staff is going to be in the community. We went — my staff and I — into every high school in the entire state of Minnesota, and we’ve reached out to every coach and the people of the great state of Minnesota, trying to build trust. Talking to you now, I want people to read what I say and know what I’m about. I’m a people’s coach. I want to be a coach of the people here in the state of Minnesota. And the way that happens is we have to have accessibility. You have to meet people, and that’s what I’ve done and will continue to do.

 We are going to work each and every day to earn the people’s trust. I’ve faced your son in the National Football League; I know how great a player he is. We can’t, I can’t stay here as the head football coach at Minnesota unless the great players in this state stay at home… I don’t know what the deal was before I got here.

 I do know this: I’m committed to [getting] every football player in the state of Minnesota to stay here and represent the U. And if they will, we will win. People say you can’t win a National Championship [by] recruiting [in] the state of Minnesota. I say this: If we get every good player in the state of Minnesota, we are going to win a lot of football games. And then we are going to go out and supplement the state of Minnesota across the nation. We are going to go across the nation and recruit the finest football players in America today.

 Make no mistake about it — it all starts at home. We’ve got to go back to being great, and the only way for us to reach back and find that greatness again is to keep Larry Fitzgerald Jr., Dominique Byrd and players like that at home. I am going to be absolutely relentless in my pursuit of these players in the state of Minnesota.

 LF: The first Black major college football All-American quarterback went to the University of Minnesota: the late, great Sandy Stephens. The Gophers won a National Championship in 1960 and went to the Rose Bowl in back-to-back years. I’m happy to hear from you that you are about bringing change.

 TB: …I was talking to [College Football Hall of Famer] Bobby Bell when he was here at our practice. And he was afforded and opportunity to play at the University of Minnesota. There is a special bond that the Black athlete has had with the University of Minnesota, and it is very special.

 And I think that is just one of the things that make so many guys feel so strongly about the U. All we have to do is continue on what was once done. And that is to recruit the best players to come to the U — keep the best players in the state of Minnesota at home — and sell this great university in a special way each and every day, and I’m telling you we can reclaim our greatness.

The motto that our seniors have this year is “We will make history again.” My saying is all I want the Golden Gophers to do is reclaim there rightful place among the elite teams in college football. [With] everybody together in the state of Minnesota coming together as one, we can get it done, without question.