This is a fireable offense

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It’s not just today.

It’s consistently getting out coached by more experienced staffs. It’s PJ hiring Assistant coaches that have very little experience in the roles they are in and then talking about how he develops coaches.

I get it, it’s awesome that he has a huge heart and wants to give guys opportunities OR is it that guys don’t want to work with him because he doesn’t let them do their job? Either way - the Big Ten ain’t the place for it.
 

howeda7 said:
Exactly. Minnesota can be a 7-8 win team that once a decade makes a 16 team play-off. That's basically what PJ has done. If there had been a 16 team play-off in 2019, we'd have been in it. Sure it's getting deep into the 10 year wait for the next one but that doesn't mean Random MAC Coach A is likely to bring it about any faster.
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Fleck inherited a lot of the players from the 2019 season from Kill. With Fleck recruiting in the bottom half of the Big 10 each year he's been at Minnesota, there is no way he'll ever make the playoffs.
 

howeda7 said:
Measuring a coach's success on one rivalry is dumb. And why many OSU fans wanted their coach fired the same year they won the National Championship.
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How do you measure a coach's success? Recruiting? Record against Bowling Green? # of trophies? In each of these instances, Fleck is a failure.
 

MZBKA1 said:
Fleck inherited a lot of the players from the 2019 season from Kill. With Fleck recruiting in the bottom half of the Big 10 each year he's been at Minnesota, there is no way he'll ever make the playoffs.
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It was year 3. It was his QB, Bateman was his recruit, etc. I don't buy that argument.
 

MZBKA1 said:
Fleck inherited a lot of the players from the 2019 season from Kill. With Fleck recruiting in the bottom half of the Big 10 each year he's been at Minnesota, there is no way he'll ever make the playoffs.
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In 2019 Fleck also had a very good Offensive Coordinator.
 


MZBKA1 said:
Fleck inherited a lot of the players from the 2019 season from Kill. With Fleck recruiting in the bottom half of the Big 10 each year he's been at Minnesota, there is no way he'll ever make the playoffs.
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Stop it. This is completely ignorant of what happened 2016-2017.
 

MZBKA1 said:
How do you measure a coach's success? Recruiting? Record against Bowling Green? # of trophies? In each of these instances, Fleck is a failure.
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How do I measure it?

Fleck is 63-42 and 37-38 in the B1G.

Jerry Kill was 29-29, 14-21

Tim Brewster was 15-30, 6-21

Glen Mason was 64-57, 32-48

Jim Wacker was 16-39, 8-42.

Calling Fleck a failure given where this program has been is just ridiculous and absurd. You can be disappointed but get some perspective.

If he's fired, the person that replaces him is far more likely to have a record like the other 4 names on this list than be the next Curt Cignetti. Unless you have a specific person in mind to replace him who is a clear upgrade, firing him would be incredibly expensive and foolish.
 

Lou Brown said:
It’s not just today.

It’s consistently getting out coached by more experienced staffs. It’s PJ hiring Assistant coaches that have very little experience in the roles they are in and then talking about how he develops coaches.

I get it, it’s awesome that he has a huge heart and wants to give guys opportunities OR is it that guys don’t want to work with him because he doesn’t let them do their job? Either way - the Big Ten ain’t the place for it.
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I think it’s two things.

1. Like PJ says he isn’t for everyone, including coaches.

2. He doesn’t have the money to hire elite coaches. Most elite coaches have a dream of being a head coach but to do that they need elite talent to put up stats for the side of the ball they are coordinating. Elite players require money especially in the world of NIL
 

GopherGod said:
Do you really want to fire him with the jobs already open or likely to be open by seasons end. How many of those open jobs are worse than the gophers from a financial/NIL and in-state talent standpoint. Not many are worse which means the gophers aren’t likely to get a proven winner as a replacement
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Exactly, Minnesota High School football is terrible.
 



Fleck isn’t Cignetti. But then, nobody knew Cignetti would be so successful. He didn’t get a big school job until he was in his 60’s, which means everyone had multiple opportunities to hire him and passed. Similar to Tom Brady not getting drafted until the 6th round. Who knew.
 



GopherVotary said:
Fleck isn’t Cignetti. But then, nobody knew Cignetti would be so successful. He didn’t get a big school job until he was in his 60’s, which means everyone had multiple opportunities to hire him and passed. Similar to Tom Brady not getting drafted until the 6th round. Who knew.
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Also, to date Cignetti has only had to play like 5 total tough games in 2024 and 2025.

Yes, it is true, there is something to be said about winning all the rest of the "you should win these" games. But they are still "you should win these" games.
 



I guess Indiana should have kept their prior coach or just gave up instead of hiring Cignetti. The point is, you will never know if you don’t try. Isn’t the whole football theme, next man up? That includes coaching.
 

Joe Hardy said:
Wow, this looks like the Nebraska page from last week.
We’re fine.
Looks like an average 8-4 season.
Floyd is awol for another year.
On to the ax.
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Floyd isn't awol. He's basically been in the same spot for most of the last half century.
 

GopherGod said:
At some point you have to face reality. Little to no in-state talent, poor fan support and no big money donors. You have to fix those issues first otherwise you’re just shuffling the deck chairs on the titanic. There isn’t a Nick Saban walking into Huntington Bank stadium that could overcome those challenges and fix them by his name alone. You can also change coaches every 3-5 years looking for that next Cignetti and the odds of you hitting on one here in the next 50 years is close to zero
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It's recruiting - Emmett Johnson "Mr. Football" from Minneapolis, playing for Nebraska, was leading the B10 in rushing before today's games and had 124 yds today. If we had him this year, backing up Darius, we'd have won at CA and done better today, though still losing. Fleck has won 60% of his games, better than any coach since pre-WWII Bierman, and better than post WWII Bierman - that's better than 13 previous coaches in a row. With better talent, he's a winner here - so we need to hire super recruiters in the staff, regardless of whatever else they're doing - and now, in a new corrupt football era, they need bags of money.
 

We will be okay. Hell, if PJ sticks around at Minnesota for another 5-10 years like I think he probably will Ferentz will probably retire and he’ll do fine against the new guy. Remember that he has also recently dominated Iowa’s rivalries with Nebraska and Wisconsin as well. Meanwhile, PJ has a chance to win 4 of 5 against sconnie this year and has owned Nebraska. Nothing’s perfect and nothing should be viewed in a vacuum.
 


Joe Hardy said:
Wow, this looks like the Nebraska page from last week.
We’re fine.
Looks like an average 8-4 season.
Floyd is awol for another year.
On to the ax.
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8-4 with a decent bowl game (Music City, for example) is "average"?

You need to seriously recalibrate your expectations, particularly in the new Big Ten.

College football is rigged.
 




People need to drop these knee jerk reactions. Fleck isn't getting fired while continuing to produce winning seasons. That's just a fact (at this point in time).

Does anyone remember what the Bank was like in those early seasons? We had only two seasons with a Big Ten record over .500 out of the first ten in the now no longer "new" stadium. Attendance was downright dismal for large stretches. So as long as the team remains mostly competitive.....and the gameday environment is lively more often than not.....a change isn't going to be made.

Look....it's another ho-hum season. But all five wins have come at home. All have been entertaining games. In the end.....that's what our athletic department (and most around the country) cares most about.....getting people to the games. I do think that if Fleck plans to stay long(er) term.....there will probably be a time in the mid to late 2030s where enough people may grow sick of this same old conservative, revert to the mean, philosophy. But we're not there at this point. Beating up on Nebraska and winning the Axe at a decent clip are enough.
 

Tlsbhansen said:
THIS! The U of M Administration is more concerned about being in the Woke 100 top ten than caring about any of their athletic programs. It is what we have become, it is who we are…athletic mediocrity is our ceiling.
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Athletics at the University of Minnesota has been mediocre for 60 goddamn years. It didn’t start with this administration and isn’t because of the woke boogeyman.
 

WindyCityGopher said:
Athletics at the University of Minnesota has been mediocre for 60 goddamn years. It didn’t start with this administration and isn’t because of the woke boogeyman.
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Agree. The Administration is the least of our problems compared to the past administrations.

Got to give I-O-W-A credit where due...Ferentz has a model that works...at least against us. Good for them.
 

stocker08 said:
People need to drop these knee jerk reactions. Fleck isn't getting fired while continuing to produce winning seasons. That's just a fact (at this point in time).

Does anyone remember what the Bank was like in those early seasons? We had only two seasons with a Big Ten record over .500 out of the first ten in the now no longer "new" stadium. Attendance was downright dismal for large stretches. So as long as the team remains mostly competitive.....and the gameday environment is lively more often than not.....a change isn't going to be made.

Look....it's another ho-hum season. But all five wins have come at home. All have been entertaining games. In the end.....that's what our athletic department (and most around the country) cares most about.....getting people to the games. I do think that if Fleck plans to stay long(er) term.....there will probably be a time in the mid to late 2030s where enough people may grow sick of this same old conservative, revert to the mean, philosophy. But we're not there at this point. Beating up on Nebraska and winning the Axe at a decent clip are enough.
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Loved this post ... except the "ho hum" crap.

Going 8-4 is not a "ho hum" season. You aren't realistic if you really expect a 10, even 9, win season to be a regular thing in the new Big Ten.
 



FlaGopher23 said:
I guess Indiana should have kept their prior coach or just gave up instead of hiring Cignetti. The point is, you will never know if you don’t try. Isn’t the whole football theme, next man up? That includes coaching.
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Previous Indiana coach was a bit less successful than Fleck, kind of easy to switch it up when you aren’t risking getting worse.
 

GopherGod said:
At some point you have to face reality. Little to no in-state talent, poor fan support and no big money donors. You have to fix those issues first otherwise you’re just shuffling the deck chairs on the titanic. There isn’t a Nick Saban walking into Huntington Bank stadium that could overcome those challenges and fix them by his name alone. You can also change coaches every 3-5 years looking for that next Cignetti and the odds of you hitting on one here in the next 50 years is close to zero
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Little to no in-state talent? You mean talent that comes here. There's plenty of talent that goes elsewhere like Nebraska, Wisconsin, Iowa, Notre Dame, Iowa State, etc.

Changing coaches after nine years is not the same as "every 3-5 years". We have climbed up a rock wall thinking we were going up a mountain only to find it is a Mesa. We have plateaued, again.

Poor fan support is code for giving the media adequate access to the program and its players at the risk of being savaged on talk shows, which is where "fans make up their minds" about the team.

Fleck's Modus Operandi (M.O.) is to have the team psyched to play, but poorly prepared with the hopes that halftime changes can be made. Today we saw Ferentz had his team disciplined and ready to beat us from the get-go. We gave them an insurmountable thirty-one point lead at the half by not being prepared at the start. I don't think there is any scouting of the opponent done by Fleck because if there was we would start the game prepared.

I was watching this with my father-in-law, a Hawkeye fan who hates Fleck as much as Ferentz does, and I felt his pity for me supporting this team from him start mid-second quarter. We both knew Fleck didn't prepare the team, one of us was ecstatic, the other was embarrassed.

Quit embracing mediocrity and start pursuing excellence.
 

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