4 big ten winning seasons in 6 years

[Married@SiebertField]

Difference between the Cal Stoll years and the PJ Fleck years is that PJ is putting lots of guys into the NFL, the team's academic performances are phenomenal and PJ hasn't lost a single bowl game.

Also, PJ took over a program with relatively little success in his lifetime, whereas Stoll took over for a Natl Title and Rose Bowl winning coach. Minnesota was still considered a blue blood at that time. If you switched Stoll and Fleck, Fleck would have made us competitive with UM/OSU, while Stoll would have us doing worse than Rutgers. Stoll was an alum with some minor success with small programs. He was the beginning of the end for Gopher Gridiron Greatness. He wasn't a bad coach, but a great coach would have done much more and got us back on track. Instead he was just successful enough to convince the admin to bring in another alum with minor success at small programs, and the cumulative long term effect of less than typical pre-mid 60s recruiting led to the U becoming a has been program.

Now I'm not saying PJ was much more than Stoll or Salem were, but PJ was THE hot up and coming coach, whereas neither Salem or Stoll came into the job with as much buzz, so I'm only arguing that Fleck, with UMn still being seen as a fb blue blood in the late 60s, could have done really well recruiting. Stoll, having to deal with Fleck's situation, would have struggled mightily.

You make many interesting & valid points. In terms though of the University’s commitment to football the middle Warmsth years might as well have been 100 years ago. Meanwhile, OSU & Michigan were locking-in their football dominance. (Michigan’s AD Don Canham was revolutionizing college sports by turning everything into revenue streams and running their athletic department like a business.). The year Cal Stoll was hired the support of Midwest Federal for a new basketball scoreboard at Williams Arena and the new mustard good football uniforms was the big development news. Paul Giel hiring Bill Musselman and Herb Brooks brought tremendous excitement back to campus with their quick success—which helped mask the disinvestment in the football program. Cal Stoll was a good football coach but he had no chance to compete with Hayes & Schembechler.