Expectations Going Forward

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John Galt said:
It also happened 100% of the time in 2016 and 2003. You seem to be cherry picking results for some reason. Would love to hear the rationale for just picking those 4 seasons?

I also said in my initial post the threshold I used was winning 67% of games in a season, or winning at least 2 out of 3 games. We've only accomplished that twice since 2000, as 8-5 doesn't meet the criteria.
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He didnt pick some random four year stretch. He picked the four year stretch leading directly into PJ.
 

Bob_Loblaw said:
Huh? I never said it was impossible.

I was merely fleshing out the point that winning 7-9 games per year, for a decade, would be treated much differently if he mixed in just 1 Rose Bowl.

I was not predicting what I thought would happen.

That said, I'd take 8 wins per year and 1 Rose Bowl by 2030. I'd take it in a heart beat.
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By any reasonable measure, Gopher fans should be thrilled with this outcome. It would be far better than what most of us have seen in our lifetimes. I still wouldn’t take it though. I think we have the chance to be really good and that something special is happening.
 

bleedsmaroonandgold said:
He didnt pick some random four year stretch. He picked the four year stretch leading directly into PJ.
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4 years is pretty random. Why not 9? Or if he’s trying to make a comparison to the previous staff, why not all 6?
 

Bob_Loblaw said:
I never know quite how to rank bowl/championship game wins and losses.

Like, let's say we went 9-3 and played in the Big 10 championship game. Let's say we lost to Ohio State and then went on to lose a NY bowl.

We finished that season 9-5. That would not fit your criteria (winning 67% of the games). Same team goes 9-3 and doesn't make the Big 10 championship game and loses in the bowl, that team fits your criteria.

I completely understand picking something like winning percentages and I don't necessarily disagree with it, but it does seem to arbitrarily punish a team that loses in a championship game.
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Agree - it becomes harder to compare with the conference championships and CFP. Personally, I’d give any season an A if we made it, even if we went winless in the non-conference.
 



Expectations - always a tricky subject.

I think a good, sustainable level of success for Fleck - or any Gopher coach - would be an average of 7.5 regular season wins over (let's say) at least a 5-year period. 37 or 38 wins total. That is an average - so you could have a down year with 6 wins, but you could also have an up year with 9 or 10 wins. Again, I'm talking regular season. Obviously, a 9-win or 10-win season puts the team in a good bowl game - maybe even a conference title game with a 10-2 season if the dominoes fall into place.

Under this scenario, I assume the Gophers will go to a bowl game every year. 5 bowl games - let's say 3 wins. putting win total at 40 or 41 total over a 5-year-period. That would be an overall average of 8 or 8.2 wins per season.

I think that is possible. but, being me, I can also envision a scenario that isn't as positive - maybe one non-bowl season every 5 years, pulling the overall average down some.
 

Let me spell it out for everyone one more time. Neither Coyle nor Fleck came to Minnesota to win 7-8 games a year. Fleck came to win championships, define that how you will.
 

PJ Fleck took almost all heat off himself and the program by destroying Wisconsin in Madison, and winning the bowl game in similar fashion was icing on the cake. I think a lot of us would have been Okay with a 3-9 season with a road win at Wisconsin if you asked us a year ago.

Fleck cannot go 4-8 next year, but the heat as completely gone away and he is now credible with most Gopher fans now.

Would 9 or 11 wins be great yes, but 8 is fine too if we see some general progress.
 

I'm not expecting anything. Been a Minnesota Sports Fan too long.

I have hope for a 10 win season.
I was also hopeful the Vikings would beat Buffalo.
 




John Galt said:
I've heard posters say that they expect the Gophers to win 8-10 games every year from here on. I hope like crazy this can actually happen. If it does, I propose that we build a statue of PJ and crown him as the greatest Gopher coach of the modern era. To put this into context, we've been in the Big Ten since 1953, so we have had 65 seasons of football in what I'll call the "modern era" against our rivals. We played fewer games decades ago, but if we view an 8-4 regular season as successful, our winning percentage would be 67%. So if 8 wins is the baseline for what PJ needs to achieve, how many seasons have we pulled off a 67% winning percentage or higher since 1953? 8 seasons. Or 12% of the time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Minnesota_Golden_Gophers_football_seasons

I love that we are setting expectations higher than we ever have for previous coaches, but here's my question. Is it reasonable to expect PJ to win at least 8 games every season, given that in the past 65 years of Gopher football, that level of winning has historically happened 12% of the time?
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The Big Ten Conference was established in 1895
 

PJ has a much harder schedule than Kill ever had. I remember Kill would say how important it was to make sure the team was bowl eligible so they could have the extra 3 weeks of practice. He mostly scheduled fluff games for non-conference. Fleck has scheduled three teams that played in Bowls for next year. Minnesota's non-conference opponents had 2018 records of 10-3, 10-3 and 12-2. I won't say Kill was wrong in wanting those 3 extra weeks of practice. But I think PJ will be preparing the team to beat the best teams in the league. But playing this kind of non-conference schedule might not give us those automatic 3 wins every year.
 




John Galt said:
4 years is pretty random. Why not 9? Or if he’s trying to make a comparison to the previous staff, why not all 6?
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The previous staff didn't coach 6 years.

oak_street1981 said:
PJ Fleck took almost all heat off himself and the program by destroying Wisconsin in Madison, and winning the bowl game in similar fashion was icing on the cake. I think a lot of us would have been Okay with a 3-9 season with a road win at Wisconsin if you asked us a year ago.

Fleck cannot go 4-8 next year, but the heat as completely gone away and he is now credible with most Gopher fans now.

Would 9 or 11 wins be great yes, but 8 is fine too if we see some general progress.
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If he "cannot" go 4-8 next year, that means that the heat hasn't completely gone away.

Halsey Hall said:
The Big Ten Conference was established in 1895
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It was 1896, actually.

CoMn said:
PJ has a much harder schedule than Kill ever had.
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Wrong.
 

Hates Monikers said:
I don't think it's realistic to expect to have a run like Wisconsin has had over the past 15 years or even the past 30 years. They've been consistently very good, particularly in this century.
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Why can Wisconsin do it, but Minnesota can't. What's in their water??

Hates Monikers said:
But I do think it's realistic to be Iowa. Eight wins, seven wins, eight wins, ROSE BOWL. Eight wins, six wins, eight wins ORANGE BOWL. Lesser New Year's Day bowls mixed in. Iowa is more cyclical, but solid most years and an occasional down year.

Wisconsin and Iowa didn't have traditions that were any better than ours when they started winning. But that's what building a program is about.
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Going back to the 2008 season (11 seasons, 2008-18), Iowa has averaged 7.8 regular season wins. They had one dumpy year in 2012 going 4-8, and one amazing year in 2015 going 12-0. (again, regular season, not including conf championship games or bowl games).


This would be like Fleck having four 8-4 + one 7-5 over five seasons. Plus five bowl games, but no conf championship games. Would people accept that over 2019-2023 ??? It is an interesting question.
 

Based on that, I think my expectation for 2019 and 2020 regular seasons is that we should try to go 7-5 and 8-4 respectively, increasing the rank of the bowl game we're invited to each year, and trying to increasing recruiting each year.
 

oak_street1981 said:
Would 9 or 11 wins be great yes, but 8 is fine too if we see some general progress.
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I agree with this. Number of wins will vary depending on the schedule. Mason had some nice win totals, but the response to those were usually "but who did they beat". If the 2018 team would have beaten Illinois but gotten killed by Wisconsin would everyone be so optimistic with the same 6-6 regular season?

I don't know how many wins are in a good season, but I know what it looks like.
 

I expect 8 wins next year. When Fleck came here he set very high eventual goals. So based off of Fleck's aspirations and progress, I'm hoping for 9-10 win seasons once we get an 8 win season.
 

Clark W. Griswold said:
I agree with this. Number of wins will vary depending on the schedule. Mason had some nice win totals, but the response to those were usually "but who did they beat". If the 2018 team would have beaten Illinois but gotten killed by Wisconsin would everyone be so optimistic with the same 6-6 regular season?

I don't know how many wins are in a good season, but I know what it looks like.
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So we're back to arguing wins*...if we want to categorize weak and strong wins, can we do it with loses too?
 


PMWinSTP said:
So we're back to arguing wins*...if we want to categorize weak and strong wins, can we do it with loses too?
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Not to go down that rabbit hole again but yeah there are degrees in wins and losses, every win is good but some are more impressive or meaningful then others. For example, beating Fresno State carries more weight then beating New Mexico State. They count the same in the win loss record but only a fool would say there is no difference in the two wins.

Same can be said for losses. Getting blown out last year by Illinois was a bad loss. Losing a hard fought game at the Horeshoe still counts as a loss but losing a well played game, on the road, against the eventual conference champ, is not a bad loss.

There is more to evaluating a season then just looking at the record. Who you beat and how you beat them matters just as who you lose to and how you lose to them factors in as well.
 

PMWinSTP said:
Honestly can't believe (I really don't) you need this explained. He picked it because it immediately proceeded Fleck's hire. That was the baseline when Coyle made the change, and he made it very clear that he is expecting a higher level of success on the field with Fleck's hire. If Fleck continues along at 5-8 win range, recent recruiting success will quickly dry up, ST sales will continue to decline, as will TCF attendance.
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This post says it all.

Neither Coyle nor Fleck would be satisfied with seasons in the 5-8 win range. Not over the long term.
 

I think MN will always have down years, I'm hoping for Ferentz or Fitzgerald type tenure for PJ Fleck

I do expect a B1GW title in my lifetime

I do not expect a national championship, or even think it's in realm of possibility
 

RememberMurray said:
Neither Coyle nor Fleck would be satisfied with seasons in the 5-8 win range. Not over the long term.
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It depends what you mean by this.

Because literally, you're saying that if we went 8-4 every season over the next ten seasons, that wouldn't be good enough. But actually that would be pretty good.

But if you really meant averaging 6.5 regular season wins over the next X seasons, that is a different story entirely.
 

salzie said:
I think MN will always have down years, I'm hoping for Ferentz or Fitzgerald type tenure for PJ Fleck

I do expect a B1GW title in my lifetime

I do not expect a national championship, or even think it's in realm of possibility
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Would Ferentz / Fitzgerald type success increase attendance at TCF? Would it move the needle on season ticket sales? Would it help make the football program competitive in this market? Would it increase recruiting success levels?

Because if not... I'm not sure it will cut it. Mason was fired because of the reasons listed. So was Claeys (for those reasons, plus the scandal).
 


dpodoll68 said:
Claeys was fired because he wasn't hired by the current AD and the current AD thought he could do better. That's it.
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Absolutely correct....and yet still so many are unable to grasp the simple, basic, reality of the situation.
 

dpodoll68 said:
Claeys was fired because he wasn't hired by the current AD and the current AD thought he could do better. That's it.
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I agree, that was part of it.

But if I remember correctly, attendance was mentioned (by Coyle) as a reason as well.
 

Gophers_4life said:
It depends what you mean by this.

Because literally, you're saying that if we went 8-4 every season over the next ten seasons, that wouldn't be good enough. But actually that would be pretty good.

But if you really meant averaging 6.5 regular season wins over the next X seasons, that is a different story entirely.
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It was meant to be a range as stated...I used it as reference to what the win level was immediately proceeding Fleck's hire.
 

RememberMurray said:
I agree, that was part of it.
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That was all of it.

RememberMurray said:
But if I remember correctly, attendance was mentioned (by Coyle) as a reason as well.
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Yes, Coyle cited attendance and recruiting rankings along with some BS about "culture". Attendance has dropped, if anything, and the recruiting rankings are essentially on par with Claeys' one class. I honestly really like Coyle, but this was a case of him making sh1t up to try to justify his hire, when telling the truth would've been better and readily accepted by his constituents.
 

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