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SI's Monday Morning Quarterback features a weekend long look at football in Minnesota, profiling an experience at a high school game in Cleveland, Minnesota, then the Gopher game and finally the Vikings game.
Per SI:
EVERYONE PULLING TOGETHER
Minneapolis
Saturday, 11:00 a.m.
From Cleveland we travel and hour and a half north, through wending country highways and fields of unending amber until we’re parked on the campus of the University of Minnesota. Every third student traipsing from dorm rooms and off-campus housing to a string of bars in the shadow of TCF Bank stadium is wearing maroon-and-gold striped overalls, purchased for $54.99 before tax at the school bookstore.
This is the hoopla Kopet was talking about. Minnesota Gophers football under wunderkind first-year coach P.J. Fleck is experiencing a marketing revival and an identity makeover.
When he became the first coach to win his debut at Minnesota since 1986, with the Gophers hosting and defeating Buffalo 17-7, Fleck accepted a game ball from athletic director Mark Coyle with a caveat and nod to a slogan popularized during his successful four-year run at Western Michigan.
“I was very honored, but that game ball was not for me,” Fleck said last month. “That game ball was for our players. That game ball was for our boosters. That game ball was for our fans, our student section, 10,000 strong are chanting ‘row the boat.’ That’s for everybody who believed in what we’re doing, not that it’s guaranteed to happen right now or this year. But that’s for that vision, and I just appreciated it and accepted it on behalf of everybody.”
Fleck brought the mantra “row the boat” from The Great Lake State (he spent four seasons at Western Michigan) to the Land of 10,000 Lakes, and the words quickly took off. He invited fans to donate oars inscribed with messages for the football team, to be hung high on a wall deep inside TCF Bank Stadium running down a ramp leading to the field.
"This team has had three head coaches in three years, so there’s been a lot of change, and I’ve come in here with Row The Boat, which is a big idea, a big culture shift,” Fleck told us. “The fans have been great in embracing it, and we’re going to keep our oar in the water and keep working to win.”
At Fleck’s side during Minnesota’s 3-1 start has been his wife, Heather, and five children from a previous marriage. On Saturday morning, with Fleck otherwise occupied, the Gophers cheer squad grouped around Mrs. Fleck in a corner of the field to sing her “Happy Birthday.”
“Anything that happens during the season, whether its Thanksgiving or Christmas or birthdays, we typically don’t celebrate on the day,” she says later. “But we celebrated on Thursday. Thursday’s our date night. So I had, like, three birthdays this week. He always makes sure that my birthday is important.”
On the field, the Gophers battled to the wire with Maryland, tying the game at 24-24 with less than four minutes to play. Led by redshirt freshman quarterback Max Bortenschlager in his first start, Maryland responded in the final 75 seconds with a 34-yard Ty Johnson touchdown run to seal it.
Before joining his wife after the 31-24 loss, Fleck was adamant in a post-game press conference that blame for the loss fell on him alone.
“I like to look at what I can control and what can I change,” Fleck said. “As a coaching staff we have to take them to a better place, and that’s what we’ll do.”
https://www.si.com/nfl/2017/10/04/football-america-minnesota
Go Gophers!!
Per SI:
EVERYONE PULLING TOGETHER
Minneapolis
Saturday, 11:00 a.m.
From Cleveland we travel and hour and a half north, through wending country highways and fields of unending amber until we’re parked on the campus of the University of Minnesota. Every third student traipsing from dorm rooms and off-campus housing to a string of bars in the shadow of TCF Bank stadium is wearing maroon-and-gold striped overalls, purchased for $54.99 before tax at the school bookstore.
This is the hoopla Kopet was talking about. Minnesota Gophers football under wunderkind first-year coach P.J. Fleck is experiencing a marketing revival and an identity makeover.
When he became the first coach to win his debut at Minnesota since 1986, with the Gophers hosting and defeating Buffalo 17-7, Fleck accepted a game ball from athletic director Mark Coyle with a caveat and nod to a slogan popularized during his successful four-year run at Western Michigan.
“I was very honored, but that game ball was not for me,” Fleck said last month. “That game ball was for our players. That game ball was for our boosters. That game ball was for our fans, our student section, 10,000 strong are chanting ‘row the boat.’ That’s for everybody who believed in what we’re doing, not that it’s guaranteed to happen right now or this year. But that’s for that vision, and I just appreciated it and accepted it on behalf of everybody.”
Fleck brought the mantra “row the boat” from The Great Lake State (he spent four seasons at Western Michigan) to the Land of 10,000 Lakes, and the words quickly took off. He invited fans to donate oars inscribed with messages for the football team, to be hung high on a wall deep inside TCF Bank Stadium running down a ramp leading to the field.
"This team has had three head coaches in three years, so there’s been a lot of change, and I’ve come in here with Row The Boat, which is a big idea, a big culture shift,” Fleck told us. “The fans have been great in embracing it, and we’re going to keep our oar in the water and keep working to win.”
At Fleck’s side during Minnesota’s 3-1 start has been his wife, Heather, and five children from a previous marriage. On Saturday morning, with Fleck otherwise occupied, the Gophers cheer squad grouped around Mrs. Fleck in a corner of the field to sing her “Happy Birthday.”
“Anything that happens during the season, whether its Thanksgiving or Christmas or birthdays, we typically don’t celebrate on the day,” she says later. “But we celebrated on Thursday. Thursday’s our date night. So I had, like, three birthdays this week. He always makes sure that my birthday is important.”
On the field, the Gophers battled to the wire with Maryland, tying the game at 24-24 with less than four minutes to play. Led by redshirt freshman quarterback Max Bortenschlager in his first start, Maryland responded in the final 75 seconds with a 34-yard Ty Johnson touchdown run to seal it.
Before joining his wife after the 31-24 loss, Fleck was adamant in a post-game press conference that blame for the loss fell on him alone.
“I like to look at what I can control and what can I change,” Fleck said. “As a coaching staff we have to take them to a better place, and that’s what we’ll do.”
https://www.si.com/nfl/2017/10/04/football-america-minnesota
Go Gophers!!