Souhan: It's a losing play for P.J. Fleck to tout his Gophers "culture" over talent

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BleedGopher

BleedGopher

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Per Souhan:


Fleck is, objectively, a good coach. He's winning again this year, and despite a historically bad loss to Bowling Green, could build another impressive season.

If Fleck did nothing at the podium but answer questions and compliment his players, plenty of other people in Minnesota would be happy to praise him, and he might even get points for humility.

The Minnesota fan base and media are filled with people who love kissing up to the Gophers head coach. They don't even need to be asked.

Instead of concealing his ego and accepting the always-plentiful bouquets, Fleck begs for praise and insults everyone - his opponents, his players and the intelligence of the listener.

It's a self-serving strategy that doesn't serve anyone all that well. Not even Fleck himself.

m.startribune.com

Star Tribune

Your source for Minnesota news today. Read articles, view photos or watch videos about news in Minneapolis, St. Paul, Duluth, St. Cloud, Rochester, and beyond.
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Go Gophers!!
 

Souhan is a dink! This is such a bad take on his part, as far as I can tell, he is just jealous of Fleck. It's easy in life to point out successful people's flaws and failures, it's harder to assess our own shortcomings and improve ourselves. I suggest Souhan look in the mirror and strive to be half the human Fleck appears to be. Go Gophers!
 

BleedGopher said:
Per Souhan:


Fleck is, objectively, a good coach. He's winning again this year, and despite a historically bad loss to Bowling Green, could build another impressive season.

If Fleck did nothing at the podium but answer questions and compliment his players, plenty of other people in Minnesota would be happy to praise him, and he might even get points for humility.

The Minnesota fan base and media are filled with people who love kissing up to the Gophers head coach. They don't even need to be asked.

Instead of concealing his ego and accepting the always-plentiful bouquets, Fleck begs for praise and insults everyone - his opponents, his players and the intelligence of the listener.

It's a self-serving strategy that doesn't serve anyone all that well. Not even Fleck himself.

m.startribune.com

Star Tribune

Your source for Minnesota news today. Read articles, view photos or watch videos about news in Minneapolis, St. Paul, Duluth, St. Cloud, Rochester, and beyond.
m.startribune.com m.startribune.com

Go Gophers!!
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The local media is filled with people who kiss PJ's ass? LOL. Souhan's such a dink, he can snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. IMO, he had a little bit of a point. It's certainly not what I would have written about after an awesome day at a football game, but he might have had a point if he didn't also try to talk about how everyone kisses PJ's ass. That's absurd.

If it makes anyone feel better. I once saw Jim Souhan at casino in the middle of the night. He is the kind of guy who gets mad at a dealer when the cards don't work out. Seriously.
 


TruDomGopher said:
I'm 62 years old and the most tiresome thing in my years is how regularly most of the cynical hacks that pass for sports writers at the Star Trib regularly mistake the University football program for a urinal.
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Yep. It's one thing to not care. It's another thing to care and to be critical. Being both at the same time is pathetic. Local sports writers have always had this bizarre notion of self-importance and I'm glad they're going the way of the dinosaur.
 




great cultures raise middle talents to great, great talents to supreme.
 

Bob_Loblaw said:
Yep. It's one thing to not care. It's another thing to care and to be critical. Being both at the same time is pathetic. Local sports writers have always had this bizarre notion of self-importance and I'm glad they're going the way of the dinosaur.
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Who is this Souhan?
 



His first paragraph shows how out of touch he is. Yes Jim things are done a little different than they were forty years ago when Woody and Bo prowled the sidelines.
 
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I make a point not to get overly worked up about the crap guys like Souhan and Reusse spew because they are not journalists, they are opinion columnists whose sole purpose is to be negative and try to piss people off most of the time. That is what their audience feeds off of. Anyone looking to their stuff for any sort of actual analysis or fairness is wasting their time because that is not what they are paid to do. They are paid to be jacka$$es and they are good at their job.

But in this case Souhan is basing his whole bit on the first 10 seconds or so of the press conference. I finally watched Fleck's post game comments. He comes out, takes a sip of the soda which was probably something different than usual and makes a comment mostly to himself about it. If he was as concerned as Souhan wants to think he is about product placement he sure as heck wouldn't have put the bottle back down with the label facing the wrong way. And then the whole "Culture vs. Skill" thing was a throw away line, right at the start and yes it was a direct shot at Frost.

Fleck then spends the rest of his time enthusiastically talking about his players and the way they played. Again, I get what guys like Souhan and Pat are trying to accomplish, but in this case Souhan is working really hard to make 10 seconds into something way bigger than it was.
 





MNVCGUY said:
I make a point not to get overly worked up about the crap guys like Souhan and Reusse spew because they are not journalists, they are opinion columnists whose sole purpose is to be negative and try to piss people off most of the time. That is what their audience feeds off of. Anyone looking to their stuff for any sort of actual analysis or fairness is wasting their time because that is not what they are paid to do. They are paid to be jacka$$es and they are good at their job.

But in this case Souhan is basing his whole bit on the first 10 seconds or so of the press conference. I finally watched Fleck's post game comments. He comes out, takes a sip of the soda which was probably something different than usual and makes a comment mostly to himself about it. If he was as concerned as Souhan wants to think he is about product placement he sure as heck wouldn't have put the bottle back down with the label facing the wrong way. And then the whole "Culture vs. Skill" thing was a throw away line, right at the start and yes it was a direct shot at Frost.

Fleck then spends the rest of his time enthusiastically talking about his players and the way they played. Again, I get what guys like Souhan and Pat are trying to accomplish, but in this case Souhan is working really hard to make 10 seconds into something way bigger than it was.
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Is it possible Souhan wasn't even in the press room and only watched the ESPN clip? I wouldn't put it past him.
 


MNVCGUY said:
I make a point not to get overly worked up about the crap guys like Souhan and Reusse spew because they are not journalists, they are opinion columnists whose sole purpose is to be negative and try to piss people off most of the time. That is what their audience feeds off of. Anyone looking to their stuff for any sort of actual analysis or fairness is wasting their time because that is not what they are paid to do. They are paid to be jacka$$es and they are good at their job.

But in this case Souhan is basing his whole bit on the first 10 seconds or so of the press conference. I finally watched Fleck's post game comments. He comes out, takes a sip of the soda which was probably something different than usual and makes a comment mostly to himself about it. If he was as concerned as Souhan wants to think he is about product placement he sure as heck wouldn't have put the bottle back down with the label facing the wrong way. And then the whole "Culture vs. Skill" thing was a throw away line, right at the start and yes it was a direct shot at Frost.

Fleck then spends the rest of his time enthusiastically talking about his players and the way they played. Again, I get what guys like Souhan and Pat are trying to accomplish, but in this case Souhan is working really hard to make 10 seconds into something way bigger than it was.
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Bolded is the whole basis for his column.

Agree with you that it was a throw-away punch line, and not at all meant literally.

Souhan's column is mostly a "shame on you" for Fleck supposedly insulting the talent level of his players, because of that line.


Souhan is not that stupid. He knew exactly what it was. His column is exactly the same as the masterful trolls on GH taking a post and purposefully misframing it.
 


MNVCGUY said:
I make a point not to get overly worked up about the crap guys like Souhan and Reusse spew because they are not journalists, they are opinion columnists whose sole purpose is to be negative and try to piss people off most of the time. That is what their audience feeds off of. Anyone looking to their stuff for any sort of actual analysis or fairness is wasting their time because that is not what they are paid to do. They are paid to be jacka$$es and they are good at their job.

But in this case Souhan is basing his whole bit on the first 10 seconds or so of the press conference. I finally watched Fleck's post game comments. He comes out, takes a sip of the soda which was probably something different than usual and makes a comment mostly to himself about it. If he was as concerned as Souhan wants to think he is about product placement he sure as heck wouldn't have put the bottle back down with the label facing the wrong way. And then the whole "Culture vs. Skill" thing was a throw away line, right at the start and yes it was a direct shot at Frost.

Fleck then spends the rest of his time enthusiastically talking about his players and the way they played. Again, I get what guys like Souhan and Pat are trying to accomplish, but in this case Souhan is working really hard to make 10 seconds into something way bigger than it was.
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I get it, Fleck wanted to make his point but it wasn't "10 seconds". Fleck talks culture throughout his presser.
 

PMWinSTP said:
I get it, Fleck wanted to make his point but it wasn't "10 seconds". Fleck talks culture throughout his presser.
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But the basis for Souhan's article, even the headline of it, was entirely about "culture over talent".

That was one line, which was just a joke and not at all serious.


Do you really think that Fleck thinks Nebraska has superior talent to Minnesota?
 

MplsGopher said:
But the basis for Souhan's article, even the headline of it, was entirely about "culture over talent".

That was one line, which was just a joke and not at all serious.


Do you really think that Fleck thinks Nebraska has superior talent to Minnesota?
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Fleck made the analogy differently several times throughout. It was his theme at that presser, don't really understand why folks can't see it. Souhan got exactly what he was wanting out of it.
 

Who from the U of M has Souhan every liked (at least for football)? Kill - obviously "no" with the rant he had to apologize for. Not sure Claeys was there long enough to get slammed, and now this stuff. PJ's presser does come off a little bit as a sales pitch - "this is what I can do for your program". While I don't think he is going anywhere, that sales pitch is there. PJ wins.... What happened at the presser was PJ telling the critics to shut up and look at how something is done right. Souhan jealous? Maybe. Souhan kind of a dink.... Yep.
 

PMWinSTP said:
Fleck made the analogy differently several times throughout. It was his theme at that presser, don't really understand why folks can't see it. Souhan got exactly what he was wanting out of it.
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Bolded we agree, because that's his (Souhan's) job.

What were examples throughout the presser where he made that analogy? The analogy is one thing .... simply talking about culture, with no additional reference to something else, is another thing.
 


PMWinSTP said:
I get it, Fleck wanted to make his point but it wasn't "10 seconds". Fleck talks culture throughout his presser.
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Culture is a buzzword for Fleck has been a buzzword for him throughout his entire tenure. He is always talking about Culture and he uses it to mean a lot of different things.

The Culture vs. Skill line was 100% for Frost and it absolutely was a throw away line right at the beginning of his remarks.
 

And it wasn't even necessarily him (Fleck) commenting about the skill of his team. It was a general comment.

Like, you know the general saying "hard work beats talent, when talent doesn't work hard" ?

It was like that.
 

salzie said:
he was taking shots at Frost and I loved it
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This was the whole point of PJ's words on culture. He was taking a shot at Frost, answering Frost's "sloganeering" (i.e. team culture) jabs. PJ didn't say the Gophers were untalented. Let me repeat: PJ didn't say the Gophers were untalented. He essentially said that the Gophers amplify the collective talent level of its recruits with a solid, positive team culture, implying that Frost reduces the collective talent level of his recruits with a negative team culture. It is a fact that, on paper, Nebraska recruits a more "talented" class each year than Minnesota. And it is a fact that despite our supposed talent level deficit, PJ is 3-1 against Frost ... and has a materially better winning record than Frost at Nebraska ... and has been to bowl games with the Gophers while Frost hasn't yet at Nebraska. End of story. Souhan, who is paid actual money to write about sports, apparently doesn't get this simple historical relationship (and personal rivalry) ... or he is cynically taking a statement out of its greater context in order to rile up people. Either way, I have no time for him. He is irrelevant.
 
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I quit the Tribune because of Pat and Jim. I didn’t need to donate dollars to Glenn Taylor and his merry bunch of Gopher haters. How about you?
 

Pete smith said:
I quit the Tribune because of Pat and Jim. I didn’t need to donate dollars to Glenn Taylor and his merry bunch of Gopher haters. How about you?
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The TC market has a good number of people who are not fans of the U of MN and in fact would like to see the Gophers fail.

I think it's because TC is a regional job hub, and so we get a lot of Iowa/Iowa St/Wisc/etc grads. Households who grew up rooting for other teams. And so on
 

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