Zulgad: Here’s what P.J. Fleck really needs to change: the fan base

BleedGopher

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per Judd:

P.J. Fleck’s continued references to changing the culture of the Gophers football program has proven to be irksome for those who feel that Jerry Kill did all the heavy lifting in this area.

That frustration is justified given the mess that Tim Brewster left behind. While Fleck is inheriting a program that needs work, the biggest shift doesn’t involve the players.

The real change needs to be with the fan base.

In his first year as Gophers athletic director, Mark Coyle saw far too many empty seats in TCF Bank Stadium. Tracy Claeys’ only full season as Gophers’ coach produced nine wins, including a victory over Washington State in the Holiday Bowl, but failed to create sufficient excitement.

On a gorgeous Saturday afternoon in early November, the Gophers recorded their seventh win before an announced crowd of 42,832 in a stadium with a capacity of 50,805. The Gophers even fell short of being able to sell out against rival Iowa in early October.

Minnesota played its final Big Ten home game of the season before an announced crowd of 38,162 that appeared to be far less than that. The 29-12 victory over Northwestern came on a frosty November day — the exact type of weather that Minnesota fans love to claim they are capable of braving.

This meant that while the 2016 season might have been good for Gophers football, it wasn’t good for the business side of the program.

The brief walkout by Claeys’ players last winter, after the university handed down suspensions in the midst of a sexual assault investigation, provided an opportunity to fire the coach, but Coyle had to be thinking about making a change before that. Claeys was a good fit as Kill’s defensive coordinator but that didn’t make him a Big Ten head coach.

Enter the Energizer Bunny that is Fleck.

Coyle has to be looking at Fleck as a guy who can generate excitement with students and recent graduates who a year ago made other plans on Saturday afternoons. Coyle likely isn’t concerned about the older fans who don’t trust Fleck’s enthusiasm, given that if they have stuck around this long they aren’t going to leave now.

Kill did an excellent job of selling his down-home, aw-shucks act to students, but many of them seemed to lose interest when Kill stepped down during the 2015 season because of health issues.

In fairness to Claeys, it didn’t help that former athletic director Norwood Teague’s “scholarship seating” program caused some season-ticket holders to cancel and ultimately resulted in Coyle pulling the plug on the price increase for 2017. (The Gophers had gone from 27,885 non-student seasons tickets in 2015 to 22,706 as of last August.)

In an overserved sports town like the Twin Cities, Coyle wants to see Fleck’s enthusiasm capture the attention of a young crowd who will remain Gophers fans for years to come. That’s been a challenge for every Gophers coach, in large part because the program has struggled to sustain success for so many years.

Here’s the tricky part.

If Fleck were to come in and be too frontal about changing the Gophers fan base, he would stand to alienate the team’s current supporters and the university can’t afford to lose those people and their donations. Thus, it’s easier to talk about changing the culture within the team.

Ultimately, Fleck can talk about rowing the boat all he wants but what’s really going to matter is victories. Fleck knows this but in the short term he’s as much of a salesman as he is a football coach.

Some of that has to do with selling recruits on playing for him. Much of it has to do with capturing the interest of a potential fan base that to date has had no issue ignoring the football program at Minnesota.

http://www.1500espn.com/gophers-2/2...ck-really-needs-change-comes-gophers-program/

Go Gophers!!
 

Not going to happen overnight. Further more the average Gopher fan disappears very quickly unlike Viking fans. We'll see what happens.
 

So much of the enthusiasm in a stadium comes from the students. And students show up if the game day atmosphere, particularly the tailgating, is exciting and fun.

I go to 4 or 5 Iowa State home games a year (my next door neighbor has corporate tickets and is very kind). The Cyclones have been one of the worst P5 teams for a long time, but they still need to implement a lottery system for student tickets because demand is so high. The pregame atmosphere in the parking lots around the stadium is phenomenal.
 

Remember folks.... This is authored by Zulgad.... I'm not sure what his forte is, but it ain't Gopher football.

The existing fan base does not need to be "changed".... We just need a few more of us, and to get another few thousand of those kids out of the dorms
...
 

Remember folks.... This is authored by Zulgad.... I'm not sure what his forte is, but it ain't Gopher football.

The existing fan base does not need to be "changed".... We just need a few more of us, and to get another few thousand of those kids out of the dorms
...

"A few" more of us...
 


The fan base does need to be changed, from a bunch of old fuddy duddy's reminiscing about B1G titles from before my parents were born and considering seasons with our best win over a 6-6 Northwestern team to be great seasons, to actually caring about wins over teams in the top 1/4 of the conference.
 

The fan base does need to be changed, from a bunch of old fuddy duddy's reminiscing about B1G titles from before my parents were born and considering seasons with our best win over a 6-6 Northwestern team to be great seasons, to actually caring about wins over teams in the top 1/4 of the conference.

Your bit is so, so tired. They're the ones who currently pony up for the seats between the 40s...the most expensive. Thank God you are nowhere near the marketing or ticket sales departments at the U.
 

Your bit is so, so tired. They're the ones who currently pony up for the seats between the 40s...the most expensive. Thank God you are nowhere near the marketing or ticket sales departments at the U.

Closer than you think. It's not a bit when its reality. The good news is Fleck will infuse a new generation of fans over the next several years to replace those ticket holders when they die off.
 

I've believed since early on that this was one of the more important parts of the culture change. Not only getting folks to show up, but the whole fan experience once they're on site that will hopefully keep them coming back.

It's like one of the things PJ said about recruiting. As much as he recruits outside athletes to come into the program, he also recruits the athletes that are already on campus, so that they want to stay a part of the program.

Fleck can be a tad divisive, but I think the hope is that those who aren't enamored with his personality can buy into the program and the culture change once the wins start rolling in.
 



Closer than you think. It's not a bit when its reality. The good news is Fleck will infuse a new generation of fans over the next several years to replace those ticket holders when they die off.

Your reality, alone.
 

Your reality, alone.

Nah, If I lived in your reality Kaler and Coyle would have been fired this summer (you still claim they will be) and the BoR would run the entire show. Kevin Sumlin would have also taken a 1.5 million dollar per year paycut to leave a SEC job and return to Minnesota after he wanted nothing to do with the Minnesota job while he was at Houston. PJ Fleck would also remain a terrible coach at Western Michigan because good coaches don't win 1 game their first season, and no one wanted to hire a coach like that.

So who's really living in a fantasy world?
 

The fan base does need to be changed, from a bunch of old fuddy duddy's reminiscing about B1G titles from before my parents were born and considering seasons with our best win over a 6-6 Northwestern team to be great seasons, to actually caring about wins over teams in the top 1/4 of the conference.

Your parents were born after 1967? How old are you - 20?
 

Get more students at the bank and earn back the fans who dropped season tickets during the Norwood donations. That would be a good start.

Sent from my SM-J700T using Tapatalk
 




People in the seats requires lower ticket prices. At present upper deck tickets are $40 and up. The typical fan watching a minor league AA baseball game where some of the players will make it to the bigs isn't going to pay those prices. Clearly the average fan in the Twin Cities isn't going to drop 40+ on tickets to watch kids who for most will not progress beyond D1 college ball.
Drop prices to get people in the seats. Once you are selling out every game, then think about raising prices.
 

Not going to happen overnight. Further more the average Gopher fan disappears very quickly unlike Viking fans. We'll see what happens.

You haven't been in Minnesota long, have you? Since 1982, the Vikings have consistently had problems selling tickets when they do not win. If it weren't for ticket buy-outs, a huge number of games would have been blacked out. The honeymoon in the new digs will end soon if they suck.

It's about winning.
 

I've believed since early on that this was one of the more important parts of the culture change. Not only getting folks to show up, but the whole fan experience once they're on site that will hopefully keep them coming back.

It's like one of the things PJ said about recruiting. As much as he recruits outside athletes to come into the program, he also recruits the athletes that are already on campus, so that they want to stay a part of the program.

Fleck can be a tad divisive, but I think the hope is that those who aren't enamored with his personality can buy into the program and the culture change once the wins start rolling in.


Not being a smart donkey here, but can you or someone else explain what "culture change is all about"?

I get the game day thing as the atmosphere around the campus needs to improve. The damn dome was a downer and bad for the program. Maturi's vision for improvement was all about face-painting and a mall with a few games. Teague's donation scheme drove away many long term ST holders. All one needs to do is go to a Vikings game and compare. That's where the younger crowds like to be.

Kill worked very hard to get the students to TCF just short of personally getting them out of bed and dressed. He also did a great job of elevating the student part of student/athlete where it needed to be.

What is needed is for the Gophers to finally win big and often. That may not happen for a few years. But in the meantime, I agree with your statement "Not only getting folks to show up, but the whole fan experience once they're on site that will hopefully keep them coming back."

So what else is there that I am missing about culture change?
 

Thing is.... i agree with him. I don't like judd. He's a prick. However, our fan base can be wishy washy. We had momentum starting with our tcu. Yet we crapped the bed against Michigan, didn't win any trophy games, and besides the bowl game, haven't done anything noteworthy to excite the fan base. The Michigan game was the backbreaker that made me feel like early 2000s all over again: can't win the big game and losing it in the most excruciating ways
 

Your parents were born after 1967? How old are you - 20?

Much older than that.

It's not much different than Benny Sapp III who's committed to play here next year. His dad is 36, and was born 14 years after our last share of a B1G title.
 

Considering how many of the Gopher "hardcore fans" (trolls aside) think that Fleck is gonna barely be a .500 coach this year, the fickleness of the public and all those opportunities to spend their money elsewhere, that's gonna take a lot of selling. No, make that winning.
 



Remember folks.... This is authored by Zulgad.... I'm not sure what his forte is, but it ain't Gopher football.

The existing fan base does not need to be "changed".... We just need a few more of us, and to get another few thousand of those kids out of the dorms
...

"A few" more of us...

OK, agree, give me another 20,000 that want to attend EVERY game..... Including the 2016 Northwestern game (I did not understand where everyone was either). I guess I just assume to some point that those that regularly attend are as invested as I am...And I am pretty damn invested. In the end, I don't care who the coach is, and I have no control.... but I want to win EVERY damn game

I don't give a crap if it is 30 below zero, or it there is a hurricane predicted. I am there, and I am into it. Pregame, game and postgame.
 

He's not wrong, any new change and some hardcore folks won't like it and inevitably be left behind.

Fortunately winning fixes all of that.
 

Zulgad isn't wrong but I think "change" is the wrong word. Pretty clear from this board alone that a segment of the fan base doesn't like Fleck's style and that isn't going to change even if he wins big at Minnesota.

Instead of change Fleck needs to energize a new generation of fans that aren't so put off by him. If he does that and wins big there won't be 15,000 empty seats on game day.
 

Instead of change Fleck needs to energize a new generation of fans that aren't so put off by him. If he does that and wins big there won't be 15,000 empty seats on game day.

How will he do that without changing something? Status quo won't energize anything.
 

Decrease scholarship donation requirements.
They're trying to sell you a Kia for Toyota prices.
 

This is a multi-faceted issue. let's split it up.

Students. To put it simply, the students will show up if they think it's going to be fun, and if they feel that going to a Gopher game is "cool." Here is where the U and the neighborhoods need to loosen the reigns and let the students have fun. (which really means let them drink. keggers at the frat houses. Hospitality tents for local businesses/M Club/civic groups. Bars have parties in the parking lot, etc.) Get them in the door, and hope like heck the team plays well enough to keep them coming back.

Adult fans: two words - ticket prices. Teague dynamited any momentum the program was gaining under Kill with the donation increase. Season-ticket sales have dropped by roughly 5,000 - about 20% - since the increase was announced. Some of those people may be gone for good. Others might come back IF they feel the entertainment value of the game is worth the cost of admission. The big question is - if you offer people discounts and deals to get them to return, is that fair to the diehards who stuck it out and are paying full price? It would be a tough pill to swallow, but I think the best thing the U could do is just cut all ticket prices/seat donations by at least 20%. Revenues would take a hit, but an empty seat brings in no revenue. Cut prices, get people back in the seats, then hope like heck Fleck wins and wins big. Once games are selling out, then worry about raising prices.
 

Zulgad isn't wrong but I think "change" is the wrong word. Pretty clear from this board alone that a segment of the fan base doesn't like Fleck's style and that isn't going to change even if he wins big at Minnesota.

Instead of change Fleck needs to energize a new generation of fans that aren't so put off by him. If he does that and wins big there won't be 15,000 empty seats on game day.

I guess I disagree with that. Fleck beats Wisconsin and there are going to be very few people bitching about his "style." Also, if you don't live in GH, Fleck and the way he goes about things, isn't that big a deal. Most of the people I talk to are casual Gopher fans. They don't follow his actions and read the tea leaves like GH does. This team starts winning and the fans will come out of the woodwork. There is a whole state that will get behind the Gophers--they just need a reason to do it.

They might be bandwagon, but that is the way it is. Look at Clem's year that never was; the Gopher women's final four year; the excitement when we went to the Citrus Bowl. The problem with football has been just as it seems we've finally gotten over the hump, something takes the air out and it's, "Here we go again." The Michigan meltdown is the best example but there have others like several Wisconsin games or Kill retiring. At my age, I'm placing perhaps my last good hope on Fleck. Get a couple of nice wins, beat Wisconsin, and then start following it up with solid seasons. That'll be the culture change. Expecting to win instead of just hoping.
 

change the culture by getting the !@#$%^^& city to let us actually have a proper gameday atmosphere. Close down Uni so the band can march, let the whole campus be a tailgate like every other college. People will realize how much fun college football is and they will realize that nothing competes with it and then we will have our culture change.
 




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