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The performance of the football Gophers last Saturday in a 30-7 loss at Texas Christian was the closest a college athletic team can have to a no-show. The reason for this surely wasn't the Texas heat, since it was 68 degrees at game time, and it wasn't the Horned Frogs' résumé, since they were 2-7 in the Big 12 a year ago.
From the distance of a TV den in Golden Valley, the Gophers' disengagement appeared to start with head coach Jerry Kill. The fact he had his offense trying to run out the closing minutes of the first half to protect a 24-0 deficit was mind-boggling, at best.
Kill made no secret of his unhappiness with having this game on the schedule. The coach's publicly stated reason was that he didn't want to coach against his close friend, TCU's Gary Patterson. The real reason was that Kill didn't want to play a nonconference game where there was a decent possibility of defeat.
We don't have to go through the buyout-of-North Carolina saga once again, just know this: As with Glen Mason before him, Kill feels as though his athletic director's main motive in finding nonconference opponents should be to have the Gophers go into the Big Ten schedule unbeaten.
Mason had a 17-game winning streak against a variety of nonconference chumps when the Gophers played the Cal Bears in Berkeley on Sept. 9, 2006. Mason was miffed after the 42-17 loss — not so much with the way his team played, but the fact AD Joel Maturi had put him on the road against a team featuring Marshawn Lynch and DeSean Jackson (to name two Bears).
Rather than the usual unblemished record entering the Big Ten, the Gophers were stuck with a loss, finished the regular season at 6-6, and Mason was fired after a bowl defeat.
Kill had one of those lovely 4-0s to start the 2012 season. He would have another in 2013 against UNLV, New Mexico State, Western Illinois and San Jose State.
Country Jer figured this was the way it would be until 2016, when the Big Ten schedule expands to nine games and there will be three nonconference games.
A curveball was tossed at Kill between that pair of 4-0s: In May 2013, the Gophers and TCU announced a home-and-home series for 2014-15.
Athletic director Norwood Teague celebrated this both as a needed schedule upgrade and a financial boon that would make up for the $800,000 payout to North Carolina.
There was one road bump in this. Kill did not feel as if he was properly consulted before the series was finalized and announced.
Kill's lingering bitterness was easy to detect with this money quote even before the game: "I didn't want to play it, but we have a new administration and, again, I'm not the boss. I'm the football coach.''
Yes, Kill has done good things here in four years, but he barely seemed to be coaching last Saturday. The Gophers' putrid effort and Kill's indignant response should have been topics of football conversation around here this week, but then came the Adrian Peterson melodrama and all other issues succumbed to that avalanche.
There have been rumors that Kill and Teague are less than buddies, and the coach's snide "new administration'' quote adds to that speculation. I did ask Teague about his relationship with the football coach a while back and he said: "We're good.''
They should be good, since Teague executed university President Eric Kaler's edict to give Kill a better contract — and it turned out to be a $900,000 raise to $2.1 million.
Kill might try to get over this notion that the path to a successful program is a serving of nonconference cupcakes.
Even Bill Snyder, the godfather of that theory during his first term at Kansas State, found himself playing Auburn on Thursday night. The Wildcats gained more respect in a 20-14 loss than they did in the 76-0 beatings of Ball State in Snyder's background.
TCU is a step down from Auburn as a challenge, obviously, but it was also exactly the type of opponent Kill's program should be facing as part of the nonconference schedule.
Too bad the Gophers didn't show up. They might have learned something.
Patrick Reusse can be heard 3-6 p.m. weekdays on AM-1500. preusse@startribune.com
