Maturi met with Badger offensive coordinator

He's not a sitting head coach, but he runs an offense that scored more points than all but three teams in the NCAA this season. So Paul Chryst, Wisconsin's offensive coordinator and a personal friend of Minnesota athletic director Joel Maturi, is the latest candidate to be contacted by the Gophers, as WCCO reported and the Star Tribune's Chip Scoggins confirmed.
Chryst, 45, has been in coaching since graduating from Wisconsin in 1988, and has been the Badgers' offensive coordinator since 2005, one of the few assistant coaches to remain on the staff when Bret Bielema was hired as head coach the following year. He and Maturi, who was associate athletic director in Madison when Chryst was quarterbacking the Badgers, met in Wisconsin Dells for a formal interview on Thursday, Scoggins reports from a source with knowledge of the meeting.
Chryst is a prime candidate to move up to a head coaching position, but he doesn't fit the Gophers' stated goal of hiring a coach with head-coaching experience. His inclusion could mean the Gophers have altered their criteria, or it could reflect Chryst's impressive resume, after the Badgers averaged 43.3 points and went 11-1 this season.