Scott Strasemeier said he had just walked out of Ken Niumatalolo's office five minutes earlier. "I can say this unequivocally, directly from the coach," Navy's associate athletic director said. "Coach has not been interviewed by Minnesota, nor by any other school. And we have not been contacted by anybody about interviewing him."
And so ends Friday's installment of Rumor Roulette, the coach-du-jour craze sweeping radio shows and internet message boards all over Minnesota. Dan Mullen, Larry Fedora, Al Golden and now Niumatalolo have all been contestants this week, and judging by the silence from Joel Maturi's office, the game has been held over for another Twitter-teemed week.
"I'm not surprised that this would happen. We've been very successful for eight years," Strasemeier said of Friday's rumor, which came and went before I could memorize how to spell Niumatalolo. "It happened every year with Paul Johnson (who left Navy for Georgia Tech in 2007), and with Coach Niumatalolo ever since he took over. It means we are winning games and we are going to continue to win games."
Every coach in Division I seems to be in demand by the Gophers, judging by cyberspace chatter. But the rumors have a shelf life of about 12 hours before being discarded or discredited.