Stadium Blog Post

The Gophers athletic director since 2002 is now in position to see through his biggest project to date: bringing the school's football team back to campus.

September 22, 2006
StarTribune
Jeff Shelman

The initial to-do list was a daunting one when Joel Maturi was hired as the University of Minnesota athletics director.

The Chisholm native arrived from Miami (Ohio) in the summer of 2002 just in time to oversee the merger of the previously separate and fiercely independent men's and women's departments; he inherited a department that was millions of dollars in debt and on the verge of eliminating three sports teams; and he was going to lead a department that was still negatively impacted by an academic fraud scandal in the men's basketball program.

A little more than four years later, most of those problems have been solved. The separate athletic departments -- groups that didn't always like, or trust, each other -- have become one; the athletic department is fiscally in the black; and there has been only one significant NCAA rules violation, in men's tennis.

In addition, ground will soon be broken on TCF Bank Stadium and the Gophers football team will return to campus in the fall of 2009.

For the full text of this article, go to http://www.startribune.com/512/story/693683.html