Former Minnesota State Mankato coach Todd Hoffner hired at Minot State
Todd Hoffner, the coach who lost his job at Minnesota State Mankato after he was wrongly charged with possession of child pornography, has been hired as Minot State's coach.
The school announced the hire on Thursday.
"The biggest thing for me was there needed to be a mutual want for both parties, Minot State needed to want me to be their next head coach and I needed to want to be the coach here," Hoffner said Thursday. "I really think that happened here. It was important for me to get closer to my roots, my family is only 90 miles away and I wanted to stay at the scholarship level that we are at. Those were all important factors for me."
Hoffner was suspended from Minnesota State in August 2012 and subsequently charged. At issue were videos on his school-issued cell phone. After the phone broke, Hoffner took it to the school's IT department. There, a worker found a 92-second video and a 10-second one of Hoffner's three children, all under the age of 10, naked and playing around after a bath.
In November of 2012, the charges against Hoffner were dropped. The judge wrote in the decision that "The videos under consideration here contain nude images of the defendant's minor children dancing and acting playful after a bath. That is all they contain."
While the school was doing its own investigation, Hoffner had been reassigned to a different position. Despite the dropped charges, he was subsequently dismissed and never coached for Minnesota State again.
At Minnesota State, Hoffner compiled a 34-13 record.
"It's a good feeling to put the hat and whistle on again," he said. "I was able to watch conditioning this morning and one of the coaches gave me a whistle and I told him, 'you don't know how that feels.'
"Life is about second chances and I feel I've given some coaches and student athletes those chances and now I get that chance. That is refreshing."
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