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University of Minnesota Athletics
Blog: Golden Gophers Ready to Gamble Saturday?
10/19/2010 12:00:00 AM | Football
Minnesota's interim head football coach Jeff Horton mentioned gambling twice during his first press conference as the new leader of the Golden Gopher football program Tuesday. Normally, the powers-that-be in the Minnesota athletic department and the NCAA would cringe when hearing a head coach talk about gambling.
But when taken in the proper context, Horton's comments from Tuesday were innocuous from a compliance standpoint, but certainly interesting from a football standpoint.
Horton lived and coached in the State of Nevada for many years. In fact he worked in Las Vegas and Reno, two of the biggest gambling cities in the United States.
When asked if he and the staff would be looking to open things up and maybe take a few more risks on offense, Horton gave an inkling that he might be willing to let it ridewhen the Penn State Nittany Lions visit Minneapolis Saturday.
"(I spent) 18 years in Nevada, I like to gamble," Horton said with a sly grin and a chuckle.
Of course, Horton isn't going to let the cat out of the bag as it pertains to game plan and he didn't elaborate. Maybe he's bluffing and there won't be any trickeration or deception attempted Saturday. But maybe, just maybe he's got an ace or two up his sleeve.
While Horton said he genuinely likes it here in Minnesota and had planned on staying for a long time if the opportunity arose, he had another good gambling reference when asked if he was auditioning for the permanent head coaching gig.
"I don't know what the odds are," Horton said. "If somebody posted (the odds) right now of me being the head coach here (next year), if you put $5 down, you could retire if that happened. I'm sure those odds are five million to one ... you'd make $25 million."
But he used that to line to then make his point that these last five games aren't about him or the rest of the coaching staff. Horton said that it is all about the young men who comprise the Golden Gopher football team.
"When the bottom line comes, it's about the kids," Horton said. "It's about having them having success and having something positive happen to them. Obviously up to this point that has not happened. Now is the time hopefully we can just rekindle all this energy and get it moving in the right direction, really rally around each other."
With Horton in charge, the atmosphere at the complex and at practice was loose. The interim head coach said his goal is to make things enjoyable for the team. He also said members of the staff were committed to giving their very best efforts as well.
"We're going to have fun over these last five games," Horton said. "I'm not going to feel sorry for myself and I'm not going to let anybody else. If anybody wants to be like that, we're not going to have them around. We want to have some fun, let the kids feed off our energy.
"As I mentioned to the coaches, our job as professionals is to prepare this football team to the best of our ability," Horton continued. "We owe it to this university, to this community, and more importantly to these kids, to give them every opportunity to be successful over these last five games."
With some of the pressure off this weekend and perhaps a bit of Horton's influence, maybe the Gophers will go all in and hit the jackpot ... a win over Penn State, with the bonus payoff of bringing the Governors Victory Bell to the trophy case at the Gibson-Nagurski Football Complex.
-By Andy Seeley, Associate Director of Athletic Communications
