Coyle - Discuss

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He needs to find the money to pay a competent coaching staff around PJ.

I recognize that’s a tall task in the midst of finding $22 mil to pay players but we aren’t going anywhere without both of those things.
 

The current UMN AD and all ADs are dealing with the greatest change over the shortest period of time since desegregation gained hold in the late 1960s into the 1970s...that is NIL and The Portal.

While desegregation involved "only" racial fairness and shifted football power to the South, NIL and the Portal involves "fairness" to the individual athletes in the face of insane amounts of money being generated in the last throws of the current network, cable, and now streaming platform model of income generation. And now private money too. None of this is sustainable and butts-in-the-seat can't cover the bill.

Coyle's first job should be to ensure Minnesota athletics is at least competitive and gets its fair piece of the B1G+ $$$ pie, not only for football but for the main revenue sports. He's earned mostly a B in that regard.

His next job should be to do everything the University of Minnesota can do to keep the B1G+ viable as one of probably 2 superconferences, again across all sports. I'd rather be in the show than top of the show, at least while it lasts. He appears to be managing that too pretty well.

While we as fans may not be happy, PJ's performance across the board does not compromise those 2 goals as of yet. That said, the AD should be watching how the HC addresses what appears to be problems in the boat. He is paid very well to do that. Whether it's a change in assistants, going to The Portal, or recruiting Florida harder who knows? We'll just have to see including next Saturday. Defecating the bed at home this weekend will not be good.

To the original point, just not sure the AD is necessarily the problem. And this is from a GHer who called him "The Snake" when he first arrived. Greatness assigned to him? Nope. Burned in effigy like Murray? Nope to that too. Just an opinion.
 

DarrenTheGreek said:
Football has treated water. Every other sport has regressed.
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Volleyball is showing signs of life

Granted ... I would guess Mark Coyle had almost zero to do with that hire, and would guess it was almost entirely Hugh McCutcheon (the former coach) who vetted Cook (the current coach).
 


All this said .... I honestly don't know what it is that an AD does, that is so important.

In all serious ... what do they do all day? Deal with fires? Deal with kids who did stupid stuff on the weekend? Glad hand wealthy boosters?
 

GopherGrit said:
All this said .... I honestly don't know what it is that an AD does, that is so important.

In all serious ... what do they do all day? Deal with fires? Deal with kids who did stupid stuff on the weekend? Glad hand wealthy boosters?
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Good question.

The Dynamic Role Of The Modern Day College Athletics Director

The future leaders of college athletics in this country are equally intelligent and forward-thinking as they are bold and shrewd.
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Part of an A.D.‘s job is to be the communicator on behalf of athletics at the university. Coyle can barely speak English. He’s probably better than any A.D. we’ve had in my lifetime which isn’t saying much. We have just a historic run of poor hires in that job. He will never hold PJ accountable for better results. PJ and his agent play him like a drum.
 









FinnGopher said:
Coyle is a poor man's Maturi.
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That't not fair. Macturi did exactly what he was sent here to do - dismantle the athletics department.

The best you can say about Coyle is thanks to Norwood Teague.

Q: What do you think of Coyle?
A: Well, he hasn't sexually harassed any employees, so, it was a good hire?
 


BilldGopher said:
The current UMN AD and all ADs are dealing with the greatest change over the shortest period of time since desegregation gained hold in the late 1960s into the 1970s...that is NIL and The Portal.

While desegregation involved "only" racial fairness and shifted football power to the South, NIL and the Portal involves "fairness" to the individual athletes in the face of insane amounts of money being generated in the last throws of the current network, cable, and now streaming platform model of income generation. And now private money too. None of this is sustainable and butts-in-the-seat can't cover the bill.

Coyle's first job should be to ensure Minnesota athletics is at least competitive and gets its fair piece of the B1G+ $$$ pie, not only for football but for the main revenue sports. He's earned mostly a B in that regard.

His next job should be to do everything the University of Minnesota can do to keep the B1G+ viable as one of probably 2 superconferences, again across all sports. I'd rather be in the show than top of the show, at least while it lasts. He appears to be managing that too pretty well.

While we as fans may not be happy, PJ's performance across the board does not compromise those 2 goals as of yet. That said, the AD should be watching how the HC addresses what appears to be problems in the boat. He is paid very well to do that. Whether it's a change in assistants, going to The Portal, or recruiting Florida harder who knows? We'll just have to see including next Saturday. Defecating the bed at home this weekend will not be good.

To the original point, just not sure the AD is necessarily the problem. And this is from a GHer who called him "The Snake" when he first arrived. Greatness assigned to him? Nope. Burned in effigy like Murray? Nope to that too. Just an opinion.
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I think your B is generous and maybe this is in part in how you define “ competitive “. I support PJF but the football program has been stagnant in recent years. I am not a hockey person but read their forum and that program has gone downhill. The woman’s hockey is back towards the top. Men’s basketball is awful but it’s too early too tell if Medved will eventually be successful. Coach P has the woman’s basketball team trending upward. VB team is definitely competitive. I would give him a C-. He is a terrible communicator and I really ? if he has done much positive in the NIL space.
 

GringaGopher said:
I think your B is generous and maybe this is in part in how you define “ competitive “. I support PJF but the football program has been stagnant in recent years. I am not a hockey person but read their forum and that program has gone downhill. The woman’s hockey is back towards the top. Men’s basketball is awful but it’s too early too tell if Medved will eventually be successful. Coach P has the woman’s basketball team trending upward. VB team is definitely competitive. I would give him a C-. He is a terrible communicator and I really ? if he has done much positive in the NIL space.
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I give him a D on communicating in public. He may be more effective behind the scenes but your ? is valid.
 

Funny timing, I was just working on a summary of Coyle's results as he approaches his 10th anniversary as AD when you posted this, so I figured I'd post it now. He was hired in May 2016, so I broke down each team sport's records starting in Fall 2016, running through Spring 2025, except for sports that have played games in Fall 2025 (football, men's and women's hockey, basketball, soccer and volleyball). I didn't include sports like Track & Field, Swimming & Diving, Cross Country, Golf, Wrestling and Tennis because they're more individual, with team accomplishments more difficult to determine.

In short, Coyle's decade as AD has been one of mediocrity, as many Gophers fans know all too well. Men's sports have been mediocre-to-bad, while women's sports (except basketball) have generally fared better. Revenue sports have been very good (men's hockey) to good (football) to downright awful (men's and women's basketball). Several sports that were at peak performance when he started (volleyball, baseball, softball and women's hockey) have fallen a notch or several. I think it's fair to say no sport has markedly elevated its performance since Coyle took over.

Men's Team Sports
2016-25
Overall Record​
Overall Win %Conference RecordConference Win %Conference TitlesNCAA
Tourney		National TitlesCoaches Hired
Baseball206-225.47891-117.4381101
Basketball148-145.50560-115.3430102
Football73-49.59843-45.48906 bowls01
Hockey209-120-27.599128-67-21.5934601

Women's Team Sports
2016-25Overall RecordOverall Win %Conference RecordConference Win %Conference TitlesNCAA
Tourney
National TitlesCoaches Hired
Basketball160-129.55461-97.3860102
Hockey247-80-20.712160-52-19.6932800
Soccer90-66-32.56445-43-19.5091301
Softball282-128-2.684131-46.7401602
Volleyball231-74.757149-46.7641901
 

mnsportsgeek said:
He needs to find the money to pay a competent coaching staff around PJ.

I recognize that’s a tall task in the midst of finding $22 mil to pay players but we aren’t going anywhere without both of those things.
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PJ hasn’t used all of his allotment of coaching salaries for a couple years now. He had enough money to pay a credible DC (especially with him cheapening out at a number of positions) and instead he hired Collins. He is also the one negotiating his contract. If he wanted to reduce his salary or keep his salary stagnant year over year to increase his assistant pool, I can’t imagine they’d have a problem with that. But he hasn’t.
 

WindyCityGopher said:
Funny timing, I was just working on a summary of Coyle's results as he approaches his 10th anniversary as AD when you posted this, so I figured I'd post it now. He was hired in May 2016, so I broke down each team sport's records starting in Fall 2016, running through Spring 2025, except for sports that have played games in Fall 2025 (football, men's and women's hockey, basketball, soccer and volleyball). I didn't include sports like Track & Field, Swimming & Diving, Cross Country, Golf, Wrestling and Tennis because they're more individual, with team accomplishments more difficult to determine.

In short, Coyle's decade as AD has been one of mediocrity, as many Gophers fans know all too well. Men's sports have been mediocre-to-bad, while women's sports (except basketball) have generally fared better. Revenue sports have been very good (men's hockey) to good (football) to downright awful (men's and women's basketball). Several sports that were at peak performance when he started (volleyball, baseball, softball and women's hockey) have fallen a notch or several. I think it's fair to say no sport has markedly elevated its performance since Coyle took over.

Men's Team Sports
2016-25
Overall Record​
Overall Win %Conference RecordConference Win %Conference TitlesNCAA
Tourney		National TitlesCoaches Hired
Baseball206-225.47891-117.4381101
Basketball148-145.50560-115.3430102
Football73-49.59843-45.48906 bowls01
Hockey209-120-27.599128-67-21.5934601

Women's Team Sports
2016-25Overall RecordOverall Win %Conference RecordConference Win %Conference TitlesNCAA
Tourney		National TitlesCoaches Hired
Basketball160-129.55461-97.3860102
Hockey247-80-20.712160-52-19.6932800
Soccer90-66-32.56445-43-19.5091301
Softball282-128-2.684131-46.7401602
Volleyball231-74.757149-46.7641901
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Excellent picture you provide. This is the report card I was envisioning.

Give a reasonable grade in hockey though the Men’s team win percentage surprises me it is not higher. Hockey should have high standards in MN and there are less schools to compete against. The Men’s team was minutes from a national title recently. In hockey, I don’t think it is unreasonable to aim for a national title once a decade (if DU can). I might give Coyle little credit for hockey success, it should be hard to screw it up at the U. Grade B

Basketball - extremely poor results. As many teams that make the Dance, the expectation should be 5 dances per decade (Wisconsin, Iowa, and Illinois did in last 10 years). Grade F

Football, below .500 in conference. One season finishing top 25. Not sure how you rate that meh result better than a C.

Volleyball - he inherited Hugh McCutcheon. Nice that he managed to keep McCutcheon involved as Hugh should get credit for the decent replacement hire. Grade A-

All else: Don’t get me started on baseball. From class of Big Ten to very poor. Softball has been a bright spot. Soccer decent. Wrestling continues to be highly competitive. B minus to B overall for these?

If past performance is the best predictor of future performance, should we be okay continuing with these results for the next 5-10 years.

I vote no. The U of MN should get new athletic leadership. Coyle has at best held the value of Mn athletic department to neutral results. There is too much money in college athletics now to be okay aiming for meh.
 

Hey guys, maybe sell off 10% of future department revenue to institutional investors via expensive middlemen?






 
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Every time there’s an opening across the country you hear Coyles name being mentioned, somebody likes him
 

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