PJ Fleck signs new 7 year contract with Gophers

Good news for the Gophers IMO !

x2 Row The Boat! Ski U Mah! Go Gophers! To the curmudgeon’s don’t let some catch phrases get in the way of the best run Gophers Football program in my 39 years. Great grades, no off-field issues, the best season since a national championship in 2019, good recruiting and growing fan base.

The kids he brings in are easy to root for. I am so excited for where this program is headed and how far its already come. Hopefully they get a shot at the BigTen title game.

These Head Coach contracts are a joke as Fleck can easily get out of it if HE chooses to go elsewhere…all they did is add 2 additional years to his existing contract…

JoeMX1825 wrote:

These Head Coach contracts are a joke as Fleck can easily get out of it if HE chooses to go elsewhere…all they did is add 2 additional years to his existing contract…

Exactly. The contract means nothing.

The Gophs are between a rock and a hard place with him or any other coach that is successful. Once they have success they’ll jump ship and we’ll be back to square one and the cycle repeats itself until we go through another 4-5 coaches to find someone decent..

The way I read the article was contract through 2028. So, 7 yrs from now.

stout93 wrote:

Exactly. The contract means nothing.

The Gophs are between a rock and a hard place with him or any other coach that is successful. Once they have success they’ll jump ship and we’ll be back to square one and the cycle repeats itself until we go through another 4-5 coaches to find someone decent..

Perhaps, but I read somewhere that due to dual custody of his kids with his previous wife he is not allowed to leave the upper midwest. THat would obviously change when they turn 18 so maybe just sign him to a 12 to 15 year deal?

After trying to root for Scott Frost for the past few years I’d take PJ any day.

It’s true about the contract being kind of a joke but regardless he has done a good job here. They’ve been in the mix for the west all but last year the past few years.

Time to trade out my red and white for maroon and gold I think.

Matt Moen wrote:

After trying to root for Scott Frost for the past few years I’d take PJ any day.

It’s true about the contract being kind of a joke but regardless he has done a good job here. They’ve been in the mix for the west all but last year the past few years.

Time to trade out my red and white for maroon and gold I think.

That’s actually a good point, Fleck was hired at the same time as Frost and Brohm for Purdue, and generally was regarded as a distant 3rd choice to those 2, and PJ’s program is light years ahead of Purdue and Nebraska now. As far as the contract, you guys aren’t wrong, but that’s just the way it works. The U certainly isn’t going to be the program to buck that trend.

BigWerm wrote:

That’s actually a good point, Fleck was hired at the same time as Frost and Brohm for Purdue, and generally was regarded as a distant 3rd choice to those 2, and PJ’s program is light years ahead of Purdue and Nebraska now. As far as the contract, you guys aren’t wrong, but that’s just the way it works. The U certainly isn’t going to be the program to buck that trend.

I mean going through Twitter and reading the loyal Husker fans trashing on PJ with this announcement is certainly entertaining. Man, they just cant get over themselves and their hatred for him when they havent been relevant in years and their coach is trash and rips kids wearing hooded sweatshirts because he’s a “tough guy”.

CaptainMusky wrote:

Hopefully they get a shot at the BigTen title game.

As of right now they are in line to represent the west in the big ten championship.

They are 4-1 in big ten play. Iowa, Wisconsin, and Purdue are all 3-2.

Wisconsin beat Iowa so the badgers own the tie breaker there.
Purdue beat Iowa so the boilermakers hold the tie breaker there.
Wisconsin beat Purdue so the badgers have that tie breaker.

I kinda thought Iowa was over rated. I think Wisconsin is better than Iowa even though their overall record isn’t as good. The Badgers have played better opponents.

The Gophers remaining games are:
Illinois, at Iowa, at Indiana, Wisconsin.

The Badgers remaining games are:
at Rutgers, Northwestern, Nebraska, at Minnesota.

The Hawkeyes remaining games are:
at Northwestern, Minnesota, Illinois, at Nebraska.

Its very likely that the berth in big ten championship will come down the game against Wisconsin on Thanksgiving weekend.

Yeah these remaining games will be tough for the Gophers I think. I just hope they beat Wisconsin and Iowa. Man those are big rivalries we need to be on the winning end more often.

Can’t blame the U. With every college on Earth wanting to field a D1 team, competition for coaches is crazy and they basically have the universities over a barrel.

What can you say about Fleck? As a coach, he’s slightly above the long-term average for U coaches so they basically had to extend him or increase the risk of him jumping ship.

I will say that so far he has an additional benefit for the U, he has run a clean program with no major scandals or discipline issues that were not properly dealt with. IMO, in this day/age, this is probably what the U cares about more than anything with the exception of fund-raising ability.

gimruis wrote:

As of right now they are in line to represent the west in the big ten championship.

#20 in the college football playoff rankings too. I was SHOCKED when I saw that, couldn’t even crack the top-25 this week but CFP puts them at 20. If for some reason they do win the west they could very well be in the Rose Bowl if Ohio State gets a spot in the championship bracket, a greater possibility now with Cincinnati getting left out of the top 4 with no real way to improve their chances against a good team.

TheFamousGrouse wrote:

What can you say about Fleck? As a coach, he’s slightly above the long-term average for U coaches so they basically had to extend him or increase the risk of him jumping ship.

He is the 34th coach in Gopher history and has the 8th highest winning percentage and that includes some coaches who only coached a handful of games.
Glen Mason was regarded as one of if not the best coaches in my lifetime and he was .535. Fleck is over .600. People compare him to Brewster all the time, likely because of his personality, but he was 15 and 30. We have had some bad coaches for a long time.

Dan wrote:

If for some reason they do win the west they could very well be in the Rose Bowl if Ohio State gets a spot in the championship bracket

Ohio State isn’t even leading the east though. Michigan State is. So as of right now it would be Minnesota vs Sparty in the big ten championship. I’m assuming that Sparty would be in the college football playoff so then a committee would have to decide whether to send Minnesota, Ohio State, or Michigan to the Rose Bowl. Sometimes these decisions are based on who they think will draw better too and I am pretty sure both Ohio State and Michigan would be ranked higher in that category than Goldy.

I think Ohio state will end up beating Sparty and representing the east again. I don’t like it but OSU is the best team.

I believe Nebraska has an upset in them…they’ll beat Iowa or Wisconsin so the Gophers path gets a bit easier.

I think Fleck’s extension is great news for Gophers football. There’s a lot to be said for stability in a football program. The football program has been going in the right direction since he started at the U and he’s slowly but surely been making progress every year I think. Changing the culture of a football program isn’t an easy overnight thing to do but he’s doing it. Fleck is obviously a very good football coach.
Yes, it’s not impossible to get out of any coaching contract with enough money, but I think him agreeing to a 7 year extension is a very good sign that he wants to stay in MN and build upon what he’s started.
Other than the 7 year length of the extension have any of the other contract details been released yet that anyone has seen?

LOL!

Tanner Morgan looks like a JV quarterback..

The Gophers looks like straight garbage today. Shut out into the 4th quarter at home.

I guess it’s official. Can’t have anything nice in MN sports.

What a train wreck.
Gophers would have won if they paid PJ a little bit more money.

Win or lose, PJ is living very well for at least 7 years

Even with an embarrassing loss the Gophers are 6-3. Can anyone tell me who would be better off as coach?

Much better off directing that hostility towards M. Zimmer

lindyrig79 wrote:

Even with an embarrassing loss the Gophers are 6-3. Can anyone tell me who would be better off as coach?

Much better off directing that hostility towards M. Zimmer

The problem is they lose games where they should absolutely win in a fashion that makes teams embarrassed if we are such a great program. We get trapped.
Fleck is a great motivator and puts on a great show but something about the guy worries me. I think he can coach up motivation but cannot coach the X and O’s.

lindyrig79 wrote:

Can’t have anything nice in MN sports.

I texted some buddies something fairly similar, except it was “can we have one nice thing in MN sports?”

This loss really sucks for a lot of reasons. Minus the Bowling Green loss, the Vikings were on a downward trend and the Gophers were somewhat trending up this year. For all the Vikings failing to show up issues as well as Zimmer’s coaching, Gopher football was primed to take over as the most popular football team in this state. With what was obviously an over-ranked #20 in the CFP rankings combine with Fleck’s new deal, they were riding a big high this week and just gave it away. They could actually still win the Big 10 West, they have every opportunity out in front of them if they were to win out, but they screwed most chances at a halfway decent bowl game, at this point they’d be lucky to make the Walmart Garden Center Bowl.

lindyrig79 wrote:

Even with an embarrassing loss the Gophers are 6-3. Can anyone tell me who would be better off as coach?

Much better off directing that hostility towards M. Zimmer

I can’t say they could get a better coach but they should be 8-1. Their 2 losses are embarrassing…especially after PJ gets an extension. Those losses likely cost the U a couple million bucks as they are now destined for a third tier bowl most likely.