BleedGopher
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per Borzi:
Tuesday, Fleck spoke at length about how his friendship with Gophers athletic director Mark Coyle convinced him to sign the extension. Fleck’s bottomless reservoir of slogans and jargon can be confusing, but his reasoning here was unmistakable. He and Coyle trust each other, and trust goes a long way. “He’s a man of his word,” Fleck said. “I love working for Mark Coyle. I mean that wholeheartedly.”
Coyle, in turn, envisions Minnesota as a destination for coaches, not a layover on the way to a legacy job. That’s a new one for Dinkytown, and a tough one to sell. Coyle already lost two coaches to better opportunities: softball’s Jessica Allister to Stanford, her alma mater, and women’s basketball’s Marlene Stollings to Texas Tech. Fleck is the test case of Coyle’s vision. “We feel like it’s an important step for our program,” Coyle said.
If Fleck does leave in a year or two, everything he said about loving his players and establishing Minnesota as a national brand in athletics will be thrown back in his face. He’ll be a fraud, like so many of them are. If that happens, he couldn’t row out of here fast enough to escape the people he hurt and disappointed.
We would like to believe Fleck and Coyle mean what they say. We would like to believe loyalty still exists, not as an abstract, but as something real and tangible. We would like to believe there’s still a place for it.
But loyalty can be a movable feast, and sometimes the banquet shuts down without warning. Circumstances change. Things happen that you never see coming. It could end that way for Fleck. Or maybe he and Coyle will surprise us all.
https://www.minnpost.com/sports/201...ty-when-it-comes-to-big-time-college-coaches/
Go Gophers!!
Tuesday, Fleck spoke at length about how his friendship with Gophers athletic director Mark Coyle convinced him to sign the extension. Fleck’s bottomless reservoir of slogans and jargon can be confusing, but his reasoning here was unmistakable. He and Coyle trust each other, and trust goes a long way. “He’s a man of his word,” Fleck said. “I love working for Mark Coyle. I mean that wholeheartedly.”
Coyle, in turn, envisions Minnesota as a destination for coaches, not a layover on the way to a legacy job. That’s a new one for Dinkytown, and a tough one to sell. Coyle already lost two coaches to better opportunities: softball’s Jessica Allister to Stanford, her alma mater, and women’s basketball’s Marlene Stollings to Texas Tech. Fleck is the test case of Coyle’s vision. “We feel like it’s an important step for our program,” Coyle said.
If Fleck does leave in a year or two, everything he said about loving his players and establishing Minnesota as a national brand in athletics will be thrown back in his face. He’ll be a fraud, like so many of them are. If that happens, he couldn’t row out of here fast enough to escape the people he hurt and disappointed.
We would like to believe Fleck and Coyle mean what they say. We would like to believe loyalty still exists, not as an abstract, but as something real and tangible. We would like to believe there’s still a place for it.
But loyalty can be a movable feast, and sometimes the banquet shuts down without warning. Circumstances change. Things happen that you never see coming. It could end that way for Fleck. Or maybe he and Coyle will surprise us all.
https://www.minnpost.com/sports/201...ty-when-it-comes-to-big-time-college-coaches/
Go Gophers!!