MINNEAPOLIS — Minnesota players shuffled up the stairs of the Glenn and Kay Hasse meeting room carrying spiral notebooks as they found their seats. At exactly 10:05 a.m., everyone fell silent.
As coach P.J. Fleck took the floor, the Golden Gophers rose and offered a quick and heavy round of applause before retreating to their chairs. The clapping wasn’t for Fleck, who enters his eighth season as Minnesota’s football coach.
“That’s how we go about our business every day,” said preseason All-American offensive tackle Aireontae Ersery. “It’s just another way to get us going, get our blood flowing.”
Fleck didn’t waste a second. He asked players and staff for reasons why they are thankful. After the sharing concluded, Fleck displayed a motivational quote, then a photo of Italy’s famed Leaning Tower of Pisa.
Although the tower was considered an architectural mistake, it’s now a masterpiece, Fleck explained. Then, Fleck dug into his message of the day using the tower as his entryway.
“Mistakes do not define you; they refine you. Our job is to get you to fail every day … and come back hungry to improve.” Players let the team down only if they allow one mistake to affect the future. It’s the response to the mistake “that is special.”
To the 43-year-old Fleck, every interaction contains purpose with positivity. And that combination could come in handy as his Gophers begin play in an 18-team Big Ten set to challenge every league member’s definition of success and progress.
In seven seasons with the Gophers, Fleck is 50-34 overall, with the third-highest winning percentage in Minnesota history behind Hall of Famers Bernie Bierman and Henry Williams. He was named Big Ten coach of the year after an 11-2 season in 2019 and has won all five bowl appearances. Yet he’s three games under .500 (29-32) in Big Ten games, and the Gophers never won a West Division title under the Big Ten’s now-defunct divisional structure; their last co-league championship was in 1967. Starting this year, Big Ten teams mired in the gap between mediocrity and College Football Playoff contention have nowhere to hide.
Some may scoff at his “Row The Boat” mantra or his players’ commitment to responding to small-talk questions that they’re having an “elite” day. With his limitless energy, Type A personality and frank assessment about changing Minnesota’s culture upon his arrival, Fleck has drawn the ire of fellow coaches, especially former Gophers coach Jerry Kill, for whom Fleck worked at Northern Illinois from 2007 to ‘09.
He tweaks his biggest rivals — Wisconsin and Iowa — by bringing their traveling trophies to his home after victories. He once said on a podcast that he and his wife took Paul Bunyan’s Axe to bed with them after beating Wisconsin in 2018. He corrected the story of his first night with the trophy to The Athletic: “Everybody took that quote a little too seriously when I said that it slept with us. But it was in the room.”
But Fleck’s eccentricity is not an act — if it was, his commitment would have slipped at some point in the past seven seasons as he rose to become the Big Ten’s third-longest-tenured coach.
Meanwhile, his players swear by him, and Minnesota’s roster attrition rate ranks among the Big Ten’s lowest. Quarterback Max Brosmer, who transferred from FCS New Hampshire last winter, described his move as “culture shock” but added, “What Coach Fleck does with the culture is something that can’t be recreated anywhere else without him.”
“The ability to thrive around people who constantly want better, want to change, want to grow, that’s uncomfortable for people, and that’s why I think I’m not for everybody,” Fleck said. “If you’re within my presence, I want to make you better, and if you’re not willing to grow or change or adapt and make yourself better, we probably won’t understand each other.
“Nick Saban said this a long time ago. Elite doesn’t understand average. Average doesn’t understand elite, and they’ll never apologize to each other. There’s nothing wrong with that.”
Fleck’s approach has stabilized a program that had employed five head coaches in the previous 12 years when he arrived in 2017. He has resisted overtures to leave, including one from a Big Ten competitor this offseason. Fleck and his wife, Heather, spent more than two years building a home in the southwest suburbs and just moved in last week. But there are long-term questions, both for Fleck’s Minnesota future and for the program, on which the season ahead will shed light.
“I don’t really think about where I am going to be next,” Fleck said. “Even I think the times my name gets thrown out just kind of proves that, too. I just really love being where I’m at, and really love the life that we’ve created here. I don’t take that for granted.”
Fleck’s methods draw eye-rolls from outsiders but have found an audience in his roster and fan base. (David Banks / USA Today)
Once a college football dynasty, Minnesota has floated almost aimlessly since winning its last national title in 1960. Only twice since 1905 have the Gophers won more than nine games in a season.
“Football generates 90 percent of the revenue for every athletic program at the Big Ten level, the SEC, the Big 12,” athletic director Mark Coyle said. “It’s a big part of what we needed to do. We needed somebody who could carry that message of what Minnesota was going to be about.”
After firing head coach Tracy Claeys for supporting a players’ boycott over suspensions from a sexual assault investigation during the 2016 season, Coyle wanted someone who could establish a program and sustain community interest. With professional teams in every major sport competing only a few miles from campus in the Twin Cities, the Gophers battle for attention every day.
“This is a long-term play for us. It takes time to build it,” said Coyle, citing the stability at Wisconsin and Iowa.
Throughout Fleck’s rapid rise in the industry, his “Row The Boat” motto underpinned his vision for that build. The phrase serves as a metaphor for resilience that Fleck constructed in the wake of his son Colton’s death from a heart condition in 2011, six hours after he was born. Oars are mounted throughout the Bierman Athletic Building and Huntington Bank Stadium, and Fleck sends them to fans, hospital patients, even opposing schools going through difficult times.
“Everybody can relate to it. Everybody can see it,” Fleck said. “When you make it through your darkest day in your life and you become better because of it and more inspired because of it and more motivated by it because it has nothing to do with you. It has to do with living Colton’s life out for him. Then you can create anything.”
Rival fans frequently mock the motto; opposing players often imitate a rowing gesture. Still, to Fleck and his athletes, the message transcends football. Minnesota linebacker Cody Lindenberg described the boat as the sacrifice for yourself and others. The more you sacrifice, the larger the boat grows to weather bigger storms. The compass provides life’s direction.
“The oar is the energy that you bring to your life,” Lindenberg said. “To have energy within your life is not that you have to go around jumping up and down and yelling and screaming all the time. But it’s having that energy, having that purpose toward the things that you love and things that you truly want for your life.”
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Developing a college program means more than just constructing a competitive football team. A former academic All-American wide receiver at Northern Illinois, Fleck is as much of an academic stickler as he is a football coach.
Players are required to wear collared shirts to class, without hats or earrings. They must arrive early, put away their phones and sit in the first two rows. In 2018, Fleck left multiple starters home on a trip to Ohio State after they were late to class. Every recruit knows his standard in advance.
“I kind of just embraced it. I didn’t fight against it,” former running back Mo Ibrahim said. “It worked out in my favor a few times being on that C-plus range, and you talk to the teacher every day. You’re early to class, you’re not coming in five minutes late, 10 minutes late. You’re in the front row, you’re creating conversations with the teacher, and then you get one extra assignment, and you’re back in the B range.”
“If I sit in the first two rows, I’m more likely to pay attention,” said Fleck, who also serves as a lecturer each spring in Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management. “If I’m wearing a collared shirt, I feel more important. When we dress up, it makes us feel better about ourselves, more awake, more alert, more important. Plus, it’s that professor’s Super Bowl.”
It paid off for the Gophers last year. Minnesota finished 5-7 but received a bowl bid only because its Academic Progress Rate (APR) was the best among potential fill-in candidates.
“He’s old-fashioned values packaged high-def,” Coyle said.
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Ohio State coach Jim Tressel’s impact on those values is evident, from the ties Fleck wears on the sidelines to the time he invests in his players. Tressel still sends game-week texts to his former 2006 graduate assistant, all of which include a “Row The Boat” emoji.
“It just makes you feel really special,” Fleck said.
Fleck mentions Tressel’s poise under pressure as a trait he tries to emulate. That doesn’t mean Fleck lacks swagger. Last year, the Gophers beat Iowa 12-10, the program’s first victory at Kinnick Stadium since 1999. Hanging on an office wall across from his desk is a picture of Fleck smoking a cigar with his players in Iowa’s notorious pink visitors locker room.
“That’s one of my greatest photos that I’ll have for the rest of my life,” he said.
Afterward, Fleck drove Floyd of Rosedale to his home, wanting his neighbor who “flies the Iowa Hawkeye flag very proudly” to see the 98-pound bronze pig trophy through his Ring camera.
In 2018, he handed each player a bottle of Axe Body Spray before stepping on the bus for a game at Wisconsin. After a 37-15 win to claim Paul Bunyan’s Axe for the first time in 14 years, the players flooded the locker room air with the scent.
“Life’s about moments and memories,” Fleck said. “It’s about capturing those in all five of your senses. I do believe in that.
“It’s all about the experience, and I think you have to be ready to capture those experiences when they happen. Everybody in 2018 remembers the win, but they all remember the smell of the locker room.”
Fleck’s recruiting methods also invite scrutiny. At Western Michigan, one story went, he flipped over an hourglass and told long snapper Wyatt Pfeifer he had that long to commit. Fleck confirmed it did happen. The reason? Another long snapper sat outside the room, and Fleck said he wasn’t leaving the building without a long snapper on scholarship.
There are rumors that he rode in an elevator with two recruits and said the first one to step off would get the scholarship.
“That one’s not true,” he said. “We don’t need to use the elevators.
“These stories are like fish stories. They get bigger over time.”
After a breakthrough freshman season, running back Darius Taylor hopes to lead the Gophers to their fourth straight bowl. (Lon Horwedel / USA Today)
On the right side of Fleck’s desk sit a national championship trophy replica and a chalice resembling the Holy Grail from “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.”
The miniature crystal football is pristine and contains no fingerprints. The carpenter’s cup is imperfect and grimy. To Fleck, one represents the quest; the other, the destination.
“If we ever get to that point or we ever win a Big Ten title, it’ll be because of that cup, not because of the reward,” he said.
At a place like Minnesota, a national title seems unrealistic. Even a College Football Playoff appearance most seasons is out of reach inside the expanded Big Ten. But as at most programs, every year without a title can’t be considered a failure. Not when an NFL team has selected at least one Minnesota player in the first or second round in each of the last five drafts. Not when the program boasts its highest GPA ever (3.4).
Fleck fumbled around his desk and found an old Franklin Covey binder bursting with papers. He pulled out two hand-written pages with nary a millimeter of space. It’s his bucket list. He began constructing it in high school and completed it at Northern Illinois.
One by one, Fleck read off the items. Become the youngest Division I head coach. Check. Build a cabin on a lake. Check. Learn how to ski. Pay for his kids’ college tuition. Become a father by age 30. Spend one Christmas in New York City. Coach a major college program. Run a marathon. Own a John Deere lawn mower, write a best-selling book, go to Disney World, take in Phantom of the Opera on Broadway. Checks across the board. The realization brought a smile and almost amazement.
“These are dreams,” he said. “But this is how I’ve always lived. For this to happen, I have to be who I am with energy and focus and outwork people.
“I have no idea what the next 20 years will bring, nor do I really think about it. I know what I want to do, and I want to coach, and I want to influence young people, and I always want to be around the game. I know that because the game has done so much for me and created a life beyond my wildest imagination.”
In the sport’s new and uncertain era, motivation and self-awareness are rewards to themselves. Perhaps it might not lead to national titles, but only one team claims the ultimate prize each year. The rest win in their own ways.
“When you look at the new world of college football, what’s a successful season?” Fleck asked. “Did I get the most out of my football team that year academically, athletically, socially and spiritually? … Wins and losses, they will never define success to me.”
(Top photo: Grant Halverson / Getty Images)
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Publish date : 2024-08-28 22:00:00
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