P.J. Fleck set to bring Minnesota football back to relevancy
New Minnesota football head coach P.J. Fleck is bringing the Golden Gophers back to relevancy with his fresh approach.
Row the boat. The now-iconic phrase uttered by head coach P.J. Fleck at Western Michigan is following him to Minnesota, a program which hasn’t seen much success over the past 50-plus years.
OK, you may argue that the Golden Gophers have made 13 bowl games since 2000, one of the best marks in the Big Ten, to go along with two straight victories in postseason play, but the last time Minnesota played in a Rose Bowl was back on Jan. 1, 1962.
More than a half-century stands between the Golden Gophers and their last Rose Bowl appearance, an eye-opening statistic for a new head coach who has been dubbed one of the best hires of the offseason. Although Jerry Kill resurrected the program a bit, fans and alumni are expecting big things out of Fleck.
Are the expectations unfair? That’s very possible. Fleck has just four years of head coaching experience at the collegiate level and he competed in the MAC — not exactly a breeding ground for elite talent or programs.
What he did do, though, was create a winning atmosphere and excitement within a program that had been historically mediocre. In fact, he brought the Broncos to three straight bowl games from 2013-16 and the program had made just five before him. Fleck also led Western Michigan to the first bowl win in school history in 2015.
Anyone that can turn a bottom-dwelling MAC program into a New Year’s Six invitee in the span of four years can surely engineer a turnaround of mid-level Big Ten program like Minnesota, right?
Absolutely.
The culture is already changing in Minneapolis. The 36-year-old head coach’s dream was to take over a Big Ten program, and he’s been handed the reigns of one that is coming off a 9-4 season and which will become an easier program to recruit with than Western Michigan.
Moreover, Fleck is a fiery individual. He’s not going to be every player’s favorite guy to be around at all times. He’s going to be tough, boisterous, opinionated and sometimes controversial, but he will bring the wins with him.
In order for Fleck to succeed, the Minnesota faithful has to embrace what they have. And what exactly is that? The Gophers’ head coach can best be described, in my opinion, as a younger version of Jim Harbaugh. He will be loud, he will draw attention and he will wear his emotions on his sleeve.
Although it’s impossible to tell if he will have the success that Harbaugh has in his short time as a collegiate head coach, he is following a similar path.
Harbaugh began his career with San Diego, coached three years and put the program on the map with back-to-back 11-win seasons, then taking a job at a mid-level Power Five program in Stanford that hadn’t won anything in decades. He turned the Cardinal into a perennial winner and went to the NFL before taking the job at Michigan and bringing his alma mater back to the national spotlight.
Fleck was at Western Michigan for four years, starting at rock-bottom with a 1-11 mark in his first season, but putting them on the map in year four. He has taken a job at a mid-level Power Five program that hasn’t won anything in decades and has the potential and recruiting prowess to turn the Golden Gophers into perennial winners.
Minnesota has consistently been a middle-of-the-pack program in terms of recruiting prowess. It consistently ranks in the bottom-half of the Big Ten in terms of team composite rankings, according to 247Sports.
In fact, in 2013 the Gophers were ranked 14th, in 2014 they were 11th, in 2015 they were 13th, in 2016 they were eighth and the 2017 cycle finished 12th after Fleck salvaged a completely broken class with some former commits of his own at Western Michigan. That is going to change under the new head coach.
It’s tough to lure kids to the MAC, but Fleck put together one of the best stretches of any coach in conference history in terms of recruiting. He added the No. 1 class in the MAC for three straight years before finishing 2017 with the third-best class because he took some of his Western commits with him to Minnesota.
No, he can’t continue to recruit MAC-level players at Minnesota, but he knows that. He already has the right approach and he’s getting used to recruiting at a bigger program. His 2018 class for the Golden Gophers is already at four players, ranked seventh in the Big Ten and 25th in the nation, according to 247Sports. The momentum is already headed in the right direction.
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We already know he can recruit, but his coaching is on the same level, if not better. He commands respect and admiration from his players and that won’t change. He has a contagious personality that will change the culture of the program in the long run.
Minnesota better get used to winning because P.J. Fleck will be there for a while. Things are getting pretty Fleck-ing serious in Minneapolis.