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Glen Mason - Photograph courtesy of University Athletics

In between spring recruiting trips, Mason paused to talk about the challenges and pleasures of being head coach.

Q: Athletics Director Joel Maturi suggested to the Board of Regents recently that the football team is not far away from a Big Ten championship. Do you agree?

A: We’ve made a lot of progress. We’ve been a blink of an eye away from really being a serious contender on a number of occasions since we’ve been here. But until you do it, you haven’t done it. And the Big Ten is a pretty competitive conference. All you have to do is look at the money that people are investing in their programs in the way of football-related facilities and it’s almost mind-boggling. And that’s all because there’s an intense race to be in position to win Big Ten championships.

Q: When it comes to recruiting, are you hampered by anything inherent to Minnesota or the University?

A: I think that the biggest obstacle in recruiting is that we are forced to recruit a large number of players from a long distance away. We have some awful good programs and some awful good players in the state; however, we don’t have an abundance of them. There are some states that will produce six to 15 times the number of Division I players than we do on a yearly basis, and when you’re confronted with signing between 20 and 25 players per year, that dictates that you’re going to have to get on planes and recruit from a far distance away. I think the farther you go away from campus the more difficult it is to recruit.

Q: Just when you might have the powers figured out in a given year, along comes a Penn State last year. Is it frustrating playing in the Big Ten knowing that there really are few, if any, soft games on the schedule?

A: I don’t think the success that Penn State had last year surprised anybody that really knows anything about college football internally. But in saying that, there are no easy games in the Big Ten right now. When you look at maybe the change that you’ve seen in the Big Ten, the perennial powers are still the perennial powers, but the perennial doormats aren’t doormats anymore. On any given Saturday they can win.

Q: Do you feel any external pressure to win more games or put more fans in the stands, or is most of the pressure you may feel self-imposed?

A: At this level, if you’re a major college football coach, there’s always pressure to win. Let’s face it, major college football coaches are held accountable for a lot of stuff, especially out of season. Ultimately, unless you cheat, you’re fired because you lose. One of my favorite sayings is, for a football coach the posse is always out there. Sometimes you see the dust, sometimes you don’t, but they’re always there. But, that type of pressure and/or criticism doesn’t bother me. The only thing I worry about is putting a credible product out there on the field. We’ve not won a championship, but we’ve had a credible product; we’ve had the best offensive production that this school’s ever seen and was tops in the conference.

Q: Away from the field, away from the office, what do you do for fun and for release?

A: I’m an avid jogger—that’s because I love to eat . . . and it keeps me healthy. I love going on Lake Minnetonka with my family. I go out there as often as I possibly can—sometimes with my wife, sometimes with a kid, always with the dog. And then I enjoy playing golf. My favorite part of golf is playing with guys who are critical of my athletes and of pro athletes and everybody’s athletes, and on the 18th hole, when they have a three-foot putt, they can’t even hit the hole. And I let ’em know about it too.

—Rick Moore