Denver Broncos tight ends coach Tim Brewster will become the new head coach at Minnesota, replacing the fired Glen Mason.

Gophers players were told of the hiring early Tuesday. The university scheduled a news conference for Wednesday.

"He is the guy," associate athletic director Tom Wistrcill said Tuesday.

The 46-year-old Brewster spent the last two seasons with the Broncos, after three years as tight ends coach for the San Diego Chargers. Before that, he was an assistant at Texas and North Carolina.

Mason was fired Dec. 31, two days after Texas Tech rallied from a 38-7 deficit to complete the biggest comeback in major college bowl history with a 44-41 victory over Minnesota in the Insight Bowl.

When the Gophers hired Mason in 1997 to take over a program that was at the bottom of the Big Ten, they chose a head coach who had proven himself at Kent State and Kansas.

In contrast, Brewster never has been a head coach at the collegiate or professional level. His coaching career started as a graduate assistant at Purdue in 1986 before he became the head coach at Central Catholic High School in Lafayette, Ind., for two seasons.

Brewster then spent nine years as tight ends coach, special teams coach and recruiting coordinator at North Carolina before following head coach Mack Brown to Texas from 1998-2001.

Brewster helped the Longhorns become one of the top recruiting teams in the country during his stay there, luring quarterback Chris Simms and the talent that built the 2005 national championship team, including quarterback Vince Young.

"He's a pretty well-respected guy," said Bob Lichtenfels, a regional manager for national recruiting Web site Scout.com. "I think it's a nice hire. He's going to be able to do some things."

Learning under Brown, who is regarded as a master recruiter, and having two highly recruited sons in high school right now will help Brewster, Lichtenfels said. His son Clint is a senior quarterback at Mullen High School in Denver and has verbally committed to Illinois.

Enthusiastic and energetic, Brewster comes to a school that needs a salesman. The university is set to open a new on-campus football stadium in 2009, but still needs to raise plenty of money to support that effort. The Gophers also consistently have lost top recruits to other schools in the Midwest.