Just ask Kill to run a program that steers clear of the NCAA

It's difficult to run into a Twin Cities sports fan these days without hearing the following sentiment repeated as if read off a cue card: "I like that Jerry Kill. I think we got the right guy."

The fans with whom I've spoken believe Kill will win at the University of Minnesota.

I beg fans to do Kill a big favor and not give him too much credit.

If he returns the Gophers to the glory days when Glen Mason was bringing home gift guitars from the Music City Bowl, Kill will have done fine work.

In fact, predicting that a coach can win big in big-time college football is almost the same as accusing him of cheating.

Look at the college football landscape these days. It's hard to read a story without seeing mention of illicit tattoos and prostitutes. Many of the Top 25 teams put the "win" in "swindle."

According to USA Today, only four of the 65 programs in BCS conferences, plus Notre Dame, can say that they have never been sanctioned by the NCAA: Boston College, Northwestern, Penn State and Stanford. And Northwestern and Boston College have dealt with point-shaving scandals.

Even those of us who value the University of Minnesota as a fine school in a dynamic setting know that the Gophers will never have a chance to land someone like Luck, a top recruit and valedictorian at a Texas high school.

Neither is Penn State a realistic model. Penn State is the dominant program in a state known as a football hotbed, one with a legendary coach, exceptional facilities and the ability to dominate an entire region for decades at a time.

If you want to believe the Gophers can win big without cheating, you must compare them, then, to Boston College and Northwestern. BC and Northwestern, like Minnesota, are good schools in urban settings that compete for the discretionary sports dollar with professional teams. Northwestern and Boston College dream of cracking the Top 25, not rising to the top of it. So should the Gophers.

If you really like Kill, ask him to run a competitive program that stays clear of NCAA investigators. If you expect Minnesota to become a fixture in the top 10, you should also expect to find at some future date that a Minnesota version of Nevin Shapiro has been restaging "Caligula" with a bunch of Gophers players on Lake Minnetonka.

Consider the two NCAA revenue sports that are constantly marred by scandal: men's basketball and football.

The Gophers have won six national titles in football, most recently in 1960, when Murray Warmath took advantage of a largely segregated sport by recruiting elite black players to Minnesota. Lacking that advantage, Minnesota has not won even a Big Ten football title since 1967.

While Gophers fans dream of potentially unobtainable titles, they would be wiser to fear the worst. Two ambitious college football programs based in urban settings provide cautionary tales. Arizona State, just outside of Phoenix, leads all BCS schools with nine NCAA penalties, and SMU, based in Dallas, remains the only college football program to receive the NCAA's death penalty.

So if you want Kill to succeed, choose carefully your definition of success. If you want him to play by the rules, you shouldn't expect to see him coming any closer to the Rose Bowl than he will on Saturday, when his Gophers play USC at Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.