BleedGopher
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per Sepic:
Gopher football coach P.J. Fleck has a lot of work ahead of him as he tries to turn around a program that hasn't won a conference championship in 50 years.
Fleck took over as head coach in January after the firing of Tracy Claeys, who'd voiced support for a team-led boycott when the U suspended 10 football players amid a sexual assault investigation.
Fleck, 36, was last at Western Michigan University, where his team finished the 2016 season 13-1 and secured a Mid-American Conference title. That was a major turnaround from Fleck's first year — 2013 — when his team lost 11 games.
The Gophers are not in as dire of straits. But Fleck said last Thursday's season-opening performance — a 17-7 win against Buffalo — was sub-par. The victory made Fleck the first Gopher football head coach since 1986 to win his debut game.
"Whether that's a W or an L, how you played is how you played. That's what we have to fix. So a result will not dictate how we practice, how we coach. We have to get better," he said.
Filling that stadium is another challenge Fleck faces. Last year average home game attendance hit a low not seen since 2002, when the Gophers played off campus in the Metrodome. Last week just over 43,000 fans turned out to see the coach's debut, a number below last season's seven-game average. However, Fleck says Gopher football was competing with the Twins, a Vikings preseason game and the State Fair that day.
Despite middling attendance at the home opener, the new coach appears to be generating excitement among fans on campus. Senior Danielle Abushanab was at Thursday's game and plans to go to more.
"Based on what I've seen so far and what I'm hearing, it sounds like he actually has plans for how things are going to go and his expectations laid out for players," she said. "I think that's a big thing that we needed."
https://www.mprnews.org/story/2017/09/06/fleck-tackles-struggling-football-program
Go Gophers!!
Gopher football coach P.J. Fleck has a lot of work ahead of him as he tries to turn around a program that hasn't won a conference championship in 50 years.
Fleck took over as head coach in January after the firing of Tracy Claeys, who'd voiced support for a team-led boycott when the U suspended 10 football players amid a sexual assault investigation.
Fleck, 36, was last at Western Michigan University, where his team finished the 2016 season 13-1 and secured a Mid-American Conference title. That was a major turnaround from Fleck's first year — 2013 — when his team lost 11 games.
The Gophers are not in as dire of straits. But Fleck said last Thursday's season-opening performance — a 17-7 win against Buffalo — was sub-par. The victory made Fleck the first Gopher football head coach since 1986 to win his debut game.
"Whether that's a W or an L, how you played is how you played. That's what we have to fix. So a result will not dictate how we practice, how we coach. We have to get better," he said.
Filling that stadium is another challenge Fleck faces. Last year average home game attendance hit a low not seen since 2002, when the Gophers played off campus in the Metrodome. Last week just over 43,000 fans turned out to see the coach's debut, a number below last season's seven-game average. However, Fleck says Gopher football was competing with the Twins, a Vikings preseason game and the State Fair that day.
Despite middling attendance at the home opener, the new coach appears to be generating excitement among fans on campus. Senior Danielle Abushanab was at Thursday's game and plans to go to more.
"Based on what I've seen so far and what I'm hearing, it sounds like he actually has plans for how things are going to go and his expectations laid out for players," she said. "I think that's a big thing that we needed."
https://www.mprnews.org/story/2017/09/06/fleck-tackles-struggling-football-program
Go Gophers!!