Patrick Reusse: Journey starts, and U quickly loses its way

No quality is harder to attain than humility. That's what I've been told, anyway.

And we're now going to find out if humility is something to be found in the arsenal of a new, huge personality on the local sports scene.

Tim Brewster has spent 8½ months telling us all the things he would bring to us as football coach at the University of Minnesota. He would bring dedication, discipline and an energy that would not be outdone by any other coach in big-time college football.

He would take us back to the glorious days of Murray Warmath in the early 1960s, and perhaps Bernie Bierman in the '30s and '40s. For sure, he was going to take us to the Rose Bowl.

He did not wait to build a Gopher Nation fan base. He declared that one already existed, even if this football program had spent four decades achieving nothing better than high mediocrity.

Saturday night, after those months of rhetoric, after those nonstop pep talks to any Rotary Club or street corner gathering that would listen, Minnesota had a chance to see a Brewster-coached football team.

Well, sort of.

You either had to be in the crowd announced at 49,253, and numbering 10,000 fewer at a minimum, or you had to be a subscriber to DirectTV. If you were in the cable-buying majority, the Gophers' presence on the Big Ten Network was merely a rumor.

And all you maroon-and-gold types who have been aiming insults at Comcast and friends, you owe an apology. The cable giants did you a favor by not providing the chance to see Game 1 for Brew's Crew.

In fact, if you're a real loyalist, that new big screen with HD wouldn't have made it through the first half. You would have put a heavy object through the screen.

Bowling Green arrived for Brewster's debut with this résumé: A) The Falcons were picked to finish fifth in the seven-team East Division of the Mid-American Conference; and B) Bowling Green lost 28-14 to Temple last season — and Temple lost 62-0 to Glen Mason's final group of Gophers.

It seemed odd before the kickoff that the Gophers were only 14½-point favorites. It didn't seem that way after Bowling Green had run its first eight plays, scored two touchdowns and accumulated 167 yards.

The Gophers trailed 21-0 at halftime. They left to numerous boos and disgusted shakes of the head.

There were also thousands who simply left, figuring no matter what happened after intermission could not make up for the embarrassment of what occurred in the first two quarters of the Brewster Era.

Shucks, our guy Tim could fulfill his promise to take the Gophers to the Rose Bowl a few years from now, and those who were witnesses on Saturday night will be saying:

"Yeah, but remember that first half against Bowling Green."

Mike Dunbar, the alleged guru of the spread offense, had X-ed and O-ed his way to a first-half shutout. He had bunches of receivers, but the dinking, dunking approach to passing was right out of Brad Childress' West Crawl offense.

Then, in the second half, the Gophers went to the approach that was successful for Mason: banging forward with talented runners behind a strong offensive line.

The Gophers did the running from a shotgun formation, but it was an attack based on the smashes of Amir Pinnix. It produced a comeback that put the Gophers in a 24-21 lead with 2:12 remaining.

And then Brewster, Dunbar and Co. stole another tactic from the Mason days: stealing defeat from the clutches of victory.

The Gophers allowed a Bowling Green offense that seemed to be cooked to drive 63 yards for a tying field goal with three seconds left. And they allowed quarterback Tyler Sheehan to squeeze in a two-point conversion pass for a 32-31 overtime victory.

Afterward, Brewster was offering platitudes about the second-half comeback and the pride he felt in his team -- pride, apparently, in losing by a single point to a team that lost by only two touchdowns last fall to Temple.

Yes, Coach Brew, these lads lost to Temple ... so let's stop tossing the hogwash and try some humility.

Better yet, why not try some quiet? Yeah, that's it. Shut up and coach, and maybe your Big Ten athletes will be able to win a home game against a MAC opponent next week.

Patrick Reusse can be heard weekdays on AM-1500 KSTP at 6:45 and 7:45 a.m. and 4:40 p.m. • preusse@startribune.com