He won 13 games and ended the Cotton Bowl within one score of Wisconsin at Western Michigan.
Fleck achieved more in 3 years at a bad MAC school than Minnesota has in the last decade.
For all the ragging I like to do over his systems, he managed to guide the team to 5 wins and close competitions in several games despite years of sub-par recruiting classes and a complete reconstruction of our offense and defense.
It's safe to say that he is one of the best young coaches in the country.
I'm still more worried about him leaving us after a successful year than us firing him after an unsuccessful year.
We'll see. After year one, I didn't see a team developing under the new coach. I saw no glimpses of how things will improve.
I don't disagree if he has a successful year that he's a flight risk. For two reasons if he pulls a rabbit out of his hat, I would be surprised if he bolts for two reasons: 1. He hasn't shown he can develop sustained success. 2 Given the "culture" of the administration at the U, he'd be stupid not to jump at an offer from a school that provides better and more stable leadership to work under.
As to his coaching ability, he admits himself he's not an X's and O'x guy. He's selling something, and it's culture, not coaching. It worked at WMU when he used that to get the best MAC Players available. When he had better players than nearly everyone they played, they won. When he didn't, he didn't win.
His recruiting has certainly been more interesting to pay attention to than we're used to, but it has not led the Big Ten or even the Big Ten West. When your philosophy is to recruit players who are better than your competition and you don't do that, what next?
The coaching last year was abysmal at times and average at best. Fleck made his strategy work at WMU, but it wasn't his coaching strategy that drove the success. Oh, and as a reminder, Daryl Hazel was also a hot young coach coming out of the MAC at one point to. So was a litany of other coaches who left the MAC after a few seasons without proving sustained success. How'd WMU do last year again?
As Fleck says, in four or five (or is it 6 now? i forgot if this is year zero 2.0 or year one) years we'll have our answers. If he's successful, I'll be surprised. If he's not, we're rebuilding again with a roster full of players who bought a culture that didn't work/no longer exists. When the rest of the world is still playing football, where does that leave us, and our "nekton mentality"?