Souhan: Fleck has made this program all about him. His players have been asked to stand when he enters a room and are left to parrot his cliches

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I think some people are missing the point of the column. as I read it, Souhan is contrasting coaches with different approaches, and he is criticizing Fleck's approach or style.

Here are what I see as the key passages:

Those teams have something in common: A successful head coach or manager capable of displaying grace and humility.

Which reminds me of a story I heard about Miami Heat coach Erik Spoelstra, a future Hall of Famer. He said, to paraphrase, "This is never going to be about me. It's about our players.''

These are the modern faces of sports management.

Souhan's key point is that - in his opinion - successful coaches try to put the focus on the players - not on themselves - and Fleck does not do that. In his opinion, Fleck does not display "grace and humility."

bottom line - if Fleck wants to shut up the critics, he needs to win games like Illinois and Purdue.
 

short ornery norwegian said:
I think some people are missing the point of the column. as I read it, Souhan is contrasting coaches with different approaches, and he is criticizing Fleck's approach or style.

Here are what I see as the key passages:

Those teams have something in common: A successful head coach or manager capable of displaying grace and humility.

Which reminds me of a story I heard about Miami Heat coach Erik Spoelstra, a future Hall of Famer. He said, to paraphrase, "This is never going to be about me. It's about our players.''

These are the modern faces of sports management.

Souhan's key point is that - in his opinion - successful coaches try to put the focus on the players - not on themselves - and Fleck does not do that. In his opinion, Fleck does not display "grace and humility."

bottom line - if Fleck wants to shut up the critics, he needs to win games like Illinois and Purdue.
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PJ takes the blame when they fail… and talks up the players when they succeeded in every single press conference / story.


Nobody is missing anything here. The writer of the article is either willfully ignorant, or just ignorant. It is an ongoing pattern with that author.
 


Gophers7NatTitlesBadgers0 said:
It looks more like they're rowing a pirate ship. Whether or not RTB influenced this I have no idea.
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Historically speaking, it’s not unprecedented…. but it would be an interesting choice of imagery to gave people rowing a big sailing ship just from a sort of PR perspective.
 

A_Slab_of_Bacon said:
OMG STANDING UP

WHAT KIND OF PERSON DOES THAT?!?!?
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No coach would do that and I doubt very much Fleck requires that of players. It is notable Souhan, who is a known political hack pushing agendas, cites no source.
 


60's Guy said:
:) I agree with all of it with an edit... The Axe could and should still be a resident
There are lots of things to poke fun of PJ about but who would we hire, who could we hire that has any proven resume of being better?
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Fleck is going nowhere after this bad season. But the idea there is no one out there we could ever hire who would be better is crazy. There are good coaches who would take a Big Ten job. There are future good coaches most folks don’t know yet.

When the time comes, for whatever reason, there will be excellent candidates.
 


A_Slab_of_Bacon said:
Update:

Everyone survived the stand up. I was relived as I had no idea doing your job was so "problematic" for some folks ...
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Why do you assume that assertion to be true? Have any former players said they were required to stand when Fleck enters the room?
 




mngolf said:
Evidently we've never played a true B1G schedule before, why is he only telling us now? Guess I'm a little slow. What did he say when iowa, wisky, et al didn't play mi and osu in the same season?
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He was writing articles on why couldn't we be as good as they were.
 


BilldGopher said:
Even with this year's setbacks Floyd is home and The Axe is now almost a resident. That is progress.

But the question must be asked: Satisfied? No.

But a second question needs to be asked: Ready to jump ship...er...boat? Likewise, no.

Some things are predictable. Jim is one of them.
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Souhan has entered death and taxes as one of life's absolutes....
 




Dakota2 said:
Fleck is going nowhere after this bad season. But the idea there is no one out there we could ever hire who would be better is crazy. There are good coaches who would take a Big Ten job. There are future good coaches most folks don’t know yet.

When the time comes, for whatever reason, there will be excellent candidates.
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If you read my post....obviously there are coaches better than PJ. But, "proven" coaches better than PJ at this level are not likely coming here was my point. Statistics overwhelming point to choosing a rising star (someone unproven at the Power 5 level) who ends up a dud more often than the next Bernie Bierman.
If it was easy to identify "excellent candidates" everybody would have a good coach. How many of the present 14 Big Ten coaches would you rather have than PJ? For the broad argument I'll say he is preferable to more than half...so why don't these other schools have better coaches if it's easy to hire a new guy? Schools in many cases with advantages over Minnesota with worse coaches.
 

Mr. 131 said:
First off, respect to a 60's Gophers fan!

I am not in the "fire coach Fleck" camp...not one bit, I do think a season like this next year should absolutely warrant a very warm seat.

But, I just can't relate to the old "who could we hire" question as rationale for being afraid to make a move. It's not our job as fans to figure that out - it's our Athletic Director's job.

I can't tell you who we could hire, but I also don't believe it should be the reason we shouldn't try. There are extremely good coaches just waiting for their chance somewhere - historically, Black coaches have been showing this for years in both pro and collegiate level.

Fleck deserves the benefit of the doubt, but if we get to that space where we have to move on, it isn't a bare cupboard out there.
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I agree there are better coaches we could hire. I'm just not sure I have faith we would pick one that was.
BUT, unless PJ leaves on his own we will not be looking for a new coach. We can't afford to fire him. Minnesota football is not important enough to anybody funding the buyout.
 

60's Guy said:
If you read my post....obviously there are coaches better than PJ. But, "proven" coaches better than PJ at this level are not likely coming here was my point. Statistics overwhelming point to choosing a rising star (someone unproven at the Power 5 level) who ends up a dud more often than the next Bernie Bierman.
If it was easy to identify "excellent candidates" everybody would have a good coach. How many of the present 14 Big Ten coaches would you rather have than PJ? For the broad argument I'll say he is preferable to more than half...so why don't these other schools have better coaches if it's easy to hire a new guy? Schools in many cases with advantages over Minnesota with worse coaches.
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There are quite a few current Big Ten coaches who are better game plan and game day football coaches than PJ. Primarily because they hire and trust good coordinators. Fleck did that with Rossi but has not been able to let go control of the offense with the seeming exception of the 2019 season.
 

60's Guy said:
:) I agree with all of it with an edit... The Axe could and should still be a resident
There are lots of things to poke fun of PJ about but who would we hire, who could we hire that has any proven resume of being better?
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First off, I'm not advocating for firing PJ. Although, if he has another couple of 5-7 - 7-5 seasons over next two years I will. Now, to your, "Who could we get...?" As Chip Scoggins said yesterday in an interview that is a defeatist, stupid take. No, we shouldn't make a change now, but you don't avoid making a change because you might not be able to hire someone who would struggle as well as the current guy?

It's a Big 10 job that pays a ton of money with great facilities. There will be plenty of good coaches who think they are the one who will turn it around. Again, I don't think we should, nor do I want to, make that change now. However, if we continue to struggle we will have to and there will be plentyh of strong candidates.
 


As recently as this past mid-summer, many fans wanted Rocco gone. It didn't matter if he never complained, remained an accessible and endearing team spokesperson, and never asked for credit. Twins fans started seeing a familiar pattern that fortunately they were able to avoid this time.
 


laazrakit said:
There's no doubt that some players have left because they didn't buy into PJ Fleck's philosophy... but there have been many, many who've willingly drunk the Kool-Aid, so to speak. Antoine Winfield is still rowing the boat in the NFL, as his TD celebration yesterday shows. As Fleck has stated, repeatedly, his philosophy isn't for everyone... but those players who embrace it do so whole-heartedly.

Souhan has an agenda and is purely trying to stir up shit... but that's his job, so I guess it's to be expected. He does seem to love that job, too.

I don't think PJ has made it "all about him," but has more likely made it "all about his philosophy." I will say, from my perspective, that I love seeing his players hand the football directly to the officials instead of just flinging the ball (maybe) in their direction. Is it too much, these days, to expect students to rise when an instructor (or coach) enters the room? Probably... but PJ has been going out and finding kids who'll do just that. The key question is can he continue to find enough to field a competitive squad? Time will tell on that one.
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Is it though? Shitty local writer shiting on the local team cannot be good for the paper. I can tell you that I had my Strib subscription for about a year before cancelling it because of the terrible and lazy coverage provided by guys like Souhan.
 

BilldGopher said:
Even with this year's setbacks Floyd is home and The Axe is now almost a resident. That is progress.

But the question must be asked: Satisfied? No.

But a second question needs to be asked: Ready to jump ship...er...boat? Likewise, no.

Some things are predictable. Jim is one of them.
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What’s crazy is, fleck has been so successful that Wisconsin imploded their 1990-2022 program to do something completely different and so far it has not been successful.

He then beat Iowa and they fired the head coaches kid. There is a greater than 0 chance this is Ferentz last year because of it.
short ornery norwegian said:
I think some people are missing the point of the column. as I read it, Souhan is contrasting coaches with different approaches, and he is criticizing Fleck's approach or style.

Here are what I see as the key passages:

Those teams have something in common: A successful head coach or manager capable of displaying grace and humility.

Which reminds me of a story I heard about Miami Heat coach Erik Spoelstra, a future Hall of Famer. He said, to paraphrase, "This is never going to be about me. It's about our players.''

These are the modern faces of sports management.

Souhan's key point is that - in his opinion - successful coaches try to put the focus on the players - not on themselves - and Fleck does not do that. In his opinion, Fleck does not display "grace and humility."

bottom line - if Fleck wants to shut up the critics, he needs to win games like Illinois and Purdue.
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You are correct. If he won more games he would have fewer critics
 

Souhan can be as unpleasant as a cockchafer in your summer evening drink.
 

If the Gophers win 1 more game they will have met my preseason prediction...if they don't win 7 games then 2023 should be measured on competitiveness given tougher schedule and competing against teams with higher paid players.
 

FredCoxRocks said:
As recently as this past mid-summer, many fans wanted Rocco gone. It didn't matter if he never complained, remained an accessible and endearing team spokesperson, and never asked for credit. Twins fans started seeing a familiar pattern that fortunately they were able to avoid this time.
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Sounds like a good blue print for shutting the critics up. Take a major step forward.
 

Some guy said:
What’s crazy is, fleck has been so successful that Wisconsin imploded their 1990-2022 program to do something completely different and so far it has not been successful.

He then beat Iowa and they fired the head coaches kid. There is a greater than 0 chance this is Ferentz last year because of it.

You are correct. If he won more games he would have fewer critics
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Whoa, I’d say it is wishful thinking and maybe a bit narcissistic to think that Wisconsin’s and Iowa’s coaching moves were primarily because of Fleck. They were both declining and not seeing themselves competitive in the expanding Big Ten. While it is nice to associate Fleck finally beating Bucky and Herky with them firing coaches, I think it was really a small part. If they had both lost to Fleck but were still winning 10 games a year and putting up huge rushing numbers, they wouldn’t be firing their coaches.
 

Catechol said:
Whoa, I’d say it is wishful thinking and maybe a bit narcissistic to think that Wisconsin’s and Iowa’s coaching moves were primarily because of Fleck. They were both declining and not seeing themselves competitive in the expanding Big Ten. While it is nice to associate Fleck finally beating Bucky and Herky with them firing coaches, I think it was really a small part. If they had both lost to Fleck but were still winning 10 games a year and putting up huge rushing numbers, they wouldn’t be firing their coaches.
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I would say it’s maybe a bit narcissistic to think that Wisconsin is going to do better than the Alvarez tree
 

stocker08 said:
Is it though? Shitty local writer shiting on the local team cannot be good for the paper. I can tell you that I had my Strib subscription for about a year before cancelling it because of the terrible and lazy coverage provided by guys like Souhan.
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Well, Souhan is a columnist... not a reporter. He (like Patrick Reusse) has more latitude to expose his opinion... and doesn't have to pretend to be unbiased. They're shit-talkers, and are only employed to garner readership. Love 'em or hate 'em, it doesn't really matter. All the paper cares about is that you pay attention to them.
 

stocker08 said:
Is it though? Shitty local writer shiting on the local team cannot be good for the paper. I can tell you that I had my Strib subscription for about a year before cancelling it because of the terrible and lazy coverage provided by guys like Souhan.
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I’m surprised the Strib has survived after your cancellation. Kudos for using the “lazy” buzzword on gopherhole. Lazy= any article you don’t like
 

laazrakit said:
Well, Souhan is a columnist... not a reporter. He (like Patrick Reusse) has more latitude to expose his opinion... and doesn't have to pretend to be unbiased. They're shit-talkers, and are only employed to garner readership. Love 'em or hate 'em, it doesn't really matter. All the paper cares about is that you pay attention to them.
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I agree. I just don't understand how lazy columns bashing hometown teams is a positive for the strib?

GopherGod said:
I’m surprised the Strib has survived after your cancellation. Kudos for using the “lazy” buzzword on gopherhole. Lazy= any article you don’t like
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I read stupid takes on here all day. Why waste my time.....and pay for low quality content from the strib? No thanks.
 

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