Fleck is fired up on KFAN

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I didn't hear the segment, but it sounds like PJ, like many of us, is overly emotional after a gut-wrenching loss. Life will move on, PJ will have to deal with the resources he has, fans will cheer for the team Saturday, and we will have more ups and downs as a program for years to come.
 

disco said:
Then you're naive, because what you describe has been happening for 50-60 years or more. People deify John Wooden, but he had a bag man just like all the others.
Difference is, it's all in the open now.

This is big time, big money entertainment and I'm in the camp that you do whatever it takes to win. Period. End of story.

Columbus and Ann Arbor aren't Oxford or Fayetteville. Neither are Eugene or Austin. Not every big time football program is in some southern backwater.
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No not all but many.

Naive is different than unwilling. If the Gophers become a losing program because regular fans won’t pay enough to kids, many of whom are already privileged, then I am OK with whatever direction they go.

I guess I am not in the camp that you do whatever it takes to win because University football is not important enough for me to go against what feels right as an individual.

If corporations want to pay or some type of salary cap is introduced or there is a removal of middleman groups then maybe the equation shifts but it’s a no-go as-is.
 

WindyCityGopher said:
We're one year away from the start of an 18-team conference, with at least 8 of those schools (Michigan, Ohio State, Penn State, USC, Wisconsin, Iowa, Washington, and Oregon, and a case could be made for UCLA) having experienced sustained success over the last 30 years (and much longer in several cases). We're already destined to be at a AAA level in our own conference! If the definition of success is playing your way into the top 10 in the conference every few years, that's pretty bleak. I'm not convinced that changes, even with a robust NIL program.
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We've worn more games than Wisconsin the last 5 years. We've won 2 fewer games than Iowa the last 5 years. We've won more games than USC the last 5 years. We beat a top 5 Penn State team just a few years ago.

Will we ever be the class of the big ten? No, but I don't buy this idea that we are going to become an FCS level school just because a few new programs are joining the conference.
 

Breakin' The Plane said:
It's pretty gross when the head coach of a college football team has to go on the radio and urge people to make donations to a 3rd party so he can pay his players. They might as well go ahead and remove the "C" from NCAA. It's no longer applicable.
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The "C" in NCAA never had to imply no compensation.
 

Gophers1992 said:
We've worn more games than Wisconsin the last 5 years. We've won 2 fewer games than Iowa the last 5 years. We've won more games than USC the last 5 years. We beat a top 5 Penn State team just a few years ago.
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You've got a point with WI and Iowa, especially WI with how things are starting for them this year. But remove those two from @WindyCityGopher 's list and it still looks bleak. As far as what you say about USC and Penn State, that's the past. Comparing us to USC before Lincoln Riley and the recruits (esp. QB) that he's getting now is just wishful thinking. And the PSU game was a result of the past too. Going forward with NIL, it's hard to believe we'd have kept guys like Bateman and such like we did. We needed EVERYONE to step up that game for us to win. Just one of the top guys being bought with NIL and leaving and we lose that game. I mean, just like Darius Taylor is gonna leave after his freshman year with us. That could have been Bateman/Faalele/Johnson etc.

That's the new reality and why we'll never crack the top half of the new Big Ten.
 



Gophers1992 said:
The "C" in NCAA never had to imply no compensation.
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It all comes down to if people prioritize their fandom on college sports being amateur sports. Some people care, some people don't (I think there are some here that also believe that amateur sports should be illegal, but that's another conversation). I am in the camp of that one reason I paid more attention to college football, basketball, and hockey is the amateur side of it.

Now that it's pro/minor league I won't pay as much attention (I'll just watch the major leagues). I'm not quite at the "give up" point, but every story I get about how the only way you can be good is with more money, I lose a little more interest.
 

BT West has been a best of the losers from the jump. Still, I want MN to win and Coyle needs football to be decent. Coyle fooled around and found out with bball.
 

BleedGopher said:
Without hearing the segment (which I hope will be made available to listen to) this was my reaction as well. Now, if he was baited into the question that's one thing, but this isn't the week to bring up NIL.

That being said, I do agree that NIL poses a very big threat to us and I don't think it's getting enough local attention. I have a buddy that is a moderate to high level NIL donor for TN Vols and he laughs that we are trying to raise $250K at a time. Granted, TN is in the belly of the beast at this level.

But Coyle doesn't have a vision for this at all, and some will point to the Fortune 500 companies we have here, but that is now where NIL dollars come from. Coylel's response to this was a year after NIL really took off, he appointed Jeremiah Carter into the liaison role. Carter, while a former Gopher, came from Compliance, so he's inherently trained to mitigate risk That's not bold thinking on Coyle's part.

The ability to compete with NIL money will be as important for coaches as the facilities arms race that we worked so hard to just get our head above water.

Go Gophers!!
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I don't remember if this was posted here. If it was, I missed it.

247sports.com

College sports top donors: Ranking the most generous athletics boosters

Data suggests lopsided giving in college athletics.
247sports.com 247sports.com

We are 48th at $199 million.
Oregon is number one at almost one billion dollars.
Texas A&M football players have signed NIL deals worth collectively over $10 million.

247sports.com

A&M AD says his athletes have about $10 million in NIL deals

Texas A&M's AD says that Aggie athletes have or will benefitted to the tune of about $10 million in NIL deals...and here's how it's benefitted Aggieland in return.
247sports.com 247sports.com

This is reality.
 




Gophers1992 said:
We've worn more games than Wisconsin the last 5 years. We've won 2 fewer games than Iowa the last 5 years. We've won more games than USC the last 5 years. We beat a top 5 Penn State team just a few years ago.

Will we ever be the class of the big ten? No, but I don't buy this idea that we are going to become an FCS level school just because a few new programs are joining the conference.
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In those 5 years we've still finished behind Iowa in the BTW standings 4 times and Wisconsin 3 times. And to compare our program in any way to USC, even before The Heisman Whisperer arrived there last year, is silly. They're a national brand, the bluest of the football blue bloods, despite the win totals of the last 5 years.
 

Word said:
It all comes down to if people prioritize their fandom on college sports being amateur sports. Some people care, some people don't (I think there are some here that also believe that amateur sports should be illegal, but that's another conversation). I am in the camp of that one reason I paid more attention to college football, basketball, and hockey is the amateur side of it.

Now that it's pro/minor league I won't pay as much attention (I'll just watch the major leagues). I'm not quite at the "give up" point, but every story I get about how the only way you can be good is with more money, I lose a little more interest.
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But amateurism as pertains to big time college football and basketball has been in name only for years. When the star of the football team is driving a Range Rover it's not hard to see what was happening even before NIL.
 

theTurning said:
We missed our window. Having an easy path in the B1GWEST was our chance to jump up a rung and we didn’t capitalize.
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NW, Purdue, and Iowa have won the West recently and what jumps did they make? NW and Purdue have gone backwards, Iowa remains stagnant.
 



GopherTheJugular said:
At this point I'd write off football and just take the huge payday and spend on basketball and hockey. Just put out a collection of 85 walk-ons and lose big while getting PAID.
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Hockey is niche and doesn't take money to get the kids to come here. I like it a little bit, but it has as much pull as womens cross country on a national stage.
 


GopherTheJugular said:
I'd like to see us compete with NDSU, SDSU and the like. Those would be nice rivalry games, the road trips would be easier, etc. And we could actually win something. But that would require dropping down in other sports are well, except hockey. We'd need to keep that up. But I'd be fine with even the basketball teams moving down significant levels.
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Jeepers, come on. This is such a loser's mentailty.
You know if you "drop down" as you call it. Then the interest will "drop down" too. FCS football or mid major basketball is great and all, but it isn't close to the same game athletically.
 


Breakin' The Plane said:
After talking about Darius Taylor, Fleck basically implied he's not going to be here next year. He then said they had a guy who used to play here, that's doing well someplace else because they couldn't afford to pay him (Irving, of course).
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Two things on this I guess, assuming this is the reality facing Dinkytown...

First, let's make the best use of him while he's here. Not sure literally running him into the ground is the right answer though.

Second, if we are going to be a farm team for the NIL-Max teams then again takes us to the first point. Use'em before we lose them.

I guess this is a back-handed compliment though to Coach and the Gophers recruiting...finding gems that others can pay for. Unless we can join in realistically in the evolving NIL wars then we're going to have to adjust our expectations.

Finally, speaking of adjusting, maybe we can have some development there too in playing not-to-lose versus playing-to-win.
 

GophersInIowa said:
What was the context? Trying to blame the loss on not having NIL money?
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No, basically they were pumping up our freshman running back and he said guys like him will be hard to keep around with the NIL that we don't have and others do and urged for more support.
 

GopherTheJugular said:
I'd like to see us compete with NDSU, SDSU and the like. Those would be nice rivalry games, the road trips would be easier, etc. And we could actually win something. But that would require dropping down in other sports are well, except hockey. We'd need to keep that up. But I'd be fine with even the basketball teams moving down significant levels.
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I really don’t care much for this idea.
 

Go Gophs said:
He's on right now.

Says we are going to be a AAA club for somebody else if we can't get some NIL money.
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He is right, its all about money. Huge NIL deals will automatically make it easier to coach and win. Look at Texas A&M, one of the big NIL schools. They will be #1 any day now.
 

BilldGopher said:
Two things on this I guess, assuming this is the reality facing Dinkytown...

First, let's make the best use of him while he's here. Not sure literally running him into the ground is the right answer though.

Second, if we are going to be a farm team for the NIL-Max teams then again takes us to the first point. Use'em before we lose them.

I guess this is a back-handed compliment though to Coach and the Gophers recruiting...finding gems that others can pay for. Unless we can join in realistically in the evolving NIL wars then we're going to have to adjust our expectations.

Finally, speaking of adjusting, maybe we can have some development there too in playing not-to-lose versus playing-to-win.
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You build offensive and defensive lines that are elite. Offensive lines here have been good for quite some time. I can't remember them ever having a really good D line though.

These corn-fed dudes aren't going to cost a ton to bring in here. But it's the way to compete and basically what has been the only way to any kind of success here in football.
 

disco said:
But amateurism as pertains to big time college football and basketball has been in name only for years. When the star of the football team is driving a Range Rover it's not hard to see what was happening even before NIL.
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This arg has gone both ways and there are valid sides to both. Yes, "it happened before, now it's just out in the open", is correct. But did the transferring happen at this rate?

I don't doubt that Jameis Winston probably had a pocket full of cash and a nice car to drive, but did anyone from a different school dare to make him a firm financial offer to transfer? I highly doubt it.

So while the helmet schools were always out recruiting us and paying people, I don't think they could poach players like Bucky as easily as they can now. And I think that's the real fear/complaint from people here, that we can go through all the effort to recruit and get a commitment from a game-changer like Darius Taylor, only to easily lose him a year later once he showed his skill. In the past a player like that would have stayed with us. In this day and age, even Tyrone Carter wouldn't have finished his career here.
 



Is there anyone on these boards that honestly has the same passion/outlook for college football and hoops since NIL became legit compared to 10-20 years ago? Sure..illegal payments have always occurred but now it's become a systematic game of capitalism.

I still have the same passion for our college hockey, wrestling, volleyball and softball programs but we're already seeing the effect NIL is having with those sports (OU in softball, Penn St. in wrestling, NE in volleyball, etc.).

I'm a Gopher fan down to my very core but I just don't care about college sports as much as I used to and we've only gotten a small taste of the consolidation of potentially viable programs annually in college athletics.
 

Go Gophs said:
Jeepers, come on. This is such a loser's mentailty.
You know if you "drop down" as you call it. Then the interest will "drop down" too. FCS football or mid major basketball is great and all, but it isn't close to the same game athletically.
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I’d have more interest not if we dropped down, but if we broke away from the conference. Fewer and larger conferences just creates more and more irrelevancy across a greater number of programs.
 

Slim Tubby said:
Is there anyone on these boards that honestly has the same passion/outlook for college football and hoops since NIL became legit compared to 10-20 years ago? Sure..illegal payments have always occurred but now it's become a systematic game of capitalism.

I still have the same passion for our college hockey, wrestling, volleyball and softball programs but we're already seeing the effect NIL is having with those sports (OU in softball, Penn St. in wrestling, NE in volleyball, etc.).

I'm a Gopher fan down to my very core but I just don't care about college sports as much as I used to and we've only gotten a small taste of the consolidation of potentially viable programs annually in college athletics.
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I'd venture to guess that if the gophers were deep into NIL and had some huge donors and were top 10 in football and basketball because of it that you would have just as much or more interest. But maybe I am wrong...
 

disco said:
But amateurism as pertains to big time college football and basketball has been in name only for years. When the star of the football team is driving a Range Rover it's not hard to see what was happening even before NIL.
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This is correct and the #1 reason why MN is where they are.

Do you think Ohio State, Michigan of the 90s, Michigan State a few years ago weren't paying their guys?
Do we think that there are ANY of these studs in the SEC that do their homework?

I have news for everyone, none of them ever have. And the one time in the recent history of this school that we won anything(Clem-Final Four), we crucified him for it.
 

this gets back to the debate - and misunderstanding - over NIL.

Having Rich Uncle Pennybags pay some kid $500,000 to attend Directional State is not what NIL was intended to be. But people found an opportunity to exploit the situation and essentially operate with 'legal' pay-for-play.

the only thing that could stop all of this - or at least control it - would be national legislation approved by Congress.

from what I understand, the Gophers are doing OK with the intended form of NIL - where players actually benefit from marketing their Name, Image or Likeness. that is what Dinkytown Athletes is doing.

It's the 'outlaw' version of NIL where the Gophers are falling behind - because they don't have the type of rich boosters who throw around millions of dollars.

here's the catch-22. If a program wants the big media money, they need to be in a power conference. but if you don't have the 'outlaw' NIL money, it's much harder to compete in a power conference.
 

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