Gopher Nation coach atwitter about Twitter

Tim Brewster won himself a T-shirt for beating out Brian Cardinal in a Twitter contest.

By MICHAEL RAND, Star Tribune

Last update: June 18, 2009 - 7:00 AM

You can find out a multitude of things -- in 140 characters or less, of course -- about athletes, coaches and even agents from following them on the micro-blogging site Twitter.com. Sometimes you can find out hard news before anyone else (thanks, Kevin Love).

Plenty of local sports figures use Twitter. Two, in particular, were picked at random by the RandBall blog I write on StarTribune.com to participate -- unwittingly, at first -- in a race to 1,500 followers. The men in question: Gophers football coach Tim Brewster (Twitter.com/Play4brew) and Wolves player Brian Cardinal (Twitter.com/Cardinal_Brian).

Both Twitter users picked up on the contest, and it turned into a great race won narrowly by Brewster a couple weeks ago.

The prize? A RandBall T-shirt. It was presented to him in person Wednesday morning at his office. Due to a scheduling mix-up, Brewster had just returned from a workout and therefore is a little sweaty in the picture you see. But he answered questions about the contest, about Twitter and about a wording discrepancy over his coaching record on his official blog (brewcrewreport.com) that was discussed recently by several outlets (including RandBall).

• Brewster said some, but not all, of his "Tweets" actually come from him. The rest are from staff members. Why use Twitter in the first place? "I think Twitter is an innovative outlet for people to get a message out and talk about things that are fun and of interest to that particular person. ... I think we try to stay ahead of the curve. ... What we're trying to do is sell our program. I don't know that Minnesota football and Gopher sports have been as publicized or sold as well as they can be."

• About the coaching record flap, which centered around how victories amassed while Brewster was an assistant coach were being characterized in terms of his overall record: "I think that was an innocent deal that people made much more of than they should have. What we were trying to say is that I've been around some great coaches and programs. People like you and other people blew it up. ... It's unfortunate that it was taken out of context. ... I can also see where it can be misconstrued."

• Cardinal looked for a while like he was going to win, only to succumb to a late Brewster rally. He said: "You have to hate losing more than you love winning. That's the mantra I live by. I'm an extremely competitive person. ... It was really cool at the end how Gopher Nation responded and said, 'Let's get it over the top.' The message went out that we were in the fourth quarter and down two. We wanted to win."

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