Fan Base

Mason mentioned it in his podcast, and others (the smart ones) have mentioned it here from time to time. We keep on setting ourselves back every time we get a new coach. Unless we were to bring in a legit big time coach that would recruit himself like a Saban, a Meyer, a top five dude, we will probably get roughly the same kind of recruits we always get. Fleck may get a few better players-and I think he willl- but where we fail where our rivals succeed is longevity of the system, or maintaining the same culture. Fleck says it and sounds stupid but it’s 100% true. We need to build a culture and sustain it with little to no coaching movement over the course of ten plus years to begin to compete with Iowa and Wisconsin year in and out. We need to pick a dude and frickin stay with him, this merry go round BS ain’t workin, I don’t understand what folks here get out of bashing the coach, it’s self-destructive, counterproductive, and at the end of the day not fun to read. It’s gotten so bad it’s almost not worth coming here anymore.


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I agree. I was on board with Coyle going after Fleck and getting his guy. We have to stick with him and the school needs to give 100% to making sure he is successful. If he then leaves, we will still be in a better place to hire. You can't worry about that.

That being said, if Coyle had wanted to stick with Claeys, I wanted it to be a 6-8 year deal. At some point we you have to break the cycle.

I'd rather we do it with Fleck as the Coach than Claeys, however.
'
 

Mason mentioned it in his podcast, and others (the smart ones) have mentioned it here from time to time. We keep on setting ourselves back every time we get a new coach. Unless we were to bring in a legit big time coach that would recruit himself like a Saban, a Meyer, a top five dude, we will probably get roughly the same kind of recruits we always get. Fleck may get a few better players-and I think he willl- but where we fail where our rivals succeed is longevity of the system, or maintaining the same culture. Fleck says it and sounds stupid but it’s 100% true. We need to build a culture and sustain it with little to no coaching movement over the course of ten plus years to begin to compete with Iowa and Wisconsin year in and out. We need to pick a dude and frickin stay with him, this merry go round BS ain’t workin, I don’t understand what folks here get out of bashing the coach, it’s self-destructive, counterproductive, and at the end of the day not fun to read. It’s gotten so bad it’s almost not worth coming here anymore.


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Ya, we should have kept Brewster for 10 years. Ya, we shouldn’t have fired Kill, OH WAIT. It’s not the firing, it’s hiring the right person and supporting the program from the President level, the regents, and the AD. It’s support from those people along with resources.

I’d argue we FINALLY have a President who wants to support football, we have an on campus stadium (thank u Mason), and we finally have facilities (thank u Coach Kill!). Lastly, we have a decent AD who was able to make a very good hire. Our last AD made an all time bad hire in Brewster and our previous President sucked. We’ve had to hire sub par coaches because of our program and the lack of support. I give Kaler a ton of credit for supporting football and I give Kill immense credit for building support for football. Coyle gets credit for finally hiring a Football Coach we didn’t have to “settle” for.

So everything is finally in the best place it’s ever been,by far, in the last 50 years. Mason was the only questionable firing in hindsight, in my mind. Firing Brewster was a no brainer, and Kill wasn’t fired. Firing Claeys was a no brainer, his recruiting class was terrible and he was in over his head.

So it’s the hiring that has been the problem (precipitated by the lack of support) not so much the firing. Mason probably deserved a chance to coach with an on campus stadium, but here we are, that was more than a decade ago. Fleck will get all the time he needs and wants. It’s the President, AD, and Board of Regents that matter. Provide the necessary support and make good hires. Stability by itself means absolutely nothing, you have to have the right people in the right places providing the right resources.




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Ya, we should have kept Brewster for 10 years. Ya, we shouldn’t have fired Kill, OH WAIT. It’s not the firing, it’s hiring the right person and supporting the program from the President level, the regents, and the AD. It’s support from those people along with resources.

I’d argue we FINALLY have a President who wants to support football, we have an on campus stadium (thank u Mason), and we finally have facilities (thank u Coach Kill!). Lastly, we have a decent AD who was able to make a very good hire. Our last AD made an all time bad hire in Brewster and our previous President sucked. We’ve had to hire sub par coaches because of our program and the lack of support. I give Kaler a ton of credit for supporting football and I give Kill immense credit for building support for football. Coyle gets credit for finally hiring a Football Coach we didn’t have to “settle” for.

So everything is finally in the best place it’s ever been,by far, in the last 50 years. Mason was the only questionable firing in hindsight, in my mind. Firing Brewster was a no brainer, and Kill wasn’t fired. Firing Claeys was a no brainer, his recruiting class was terrible and he was in over his head.

So it’s the hiring that has been the problem (precipitated by the lack of support) not so much the firing. Mason probably deserved a chance to coach with an on campus stadium, but here we are, that was more than a decade ago. Fleck will get all the time he needs and wants. It’s the President, AD, and Board of Regents that matter. Provide the necessary support and make good hires. Stability by itself means absolutely nothing, you have to have the right people in the right places providing the right resources.




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I agree with everything you said, except that Coyle made, “a very good hire.” That is yet to be seen. While, I really do not like his style, or him as a person, as Bob said earlier, I don’t want to see the program fail. Some think just because I don’t agree with Fleck”s “culture” and “year 0” and uniforms means I want to see him fail. For the sake of the program I don’t, and hope he is successful, taming down the nonsense and just coaches football.


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The fan base will shrink. Michigan State had as big a scandal as Minnesota, but they didn't dump Dantonio. The Kill/Claeys regime was a multi-year buildup of a football system and Claeys should have been given a few more years to see if he could turn the corner. If not, it would have been a decade or so attempt and hiring a new coach would have made some sense. Fleck was hired on the basis of one really good year in the MAC and has shown nothing this year to suggest he's a better coach than Jerry Kill or Tracy Claeys. He beat the worst teams on his schedule, upset one of the three at our level and lost to the better teams (one more of those should be added next Saturday). He messed around with QBs, never developed a passing attack and recruiting is still a question mark. Beyond that, the Gophers have to compete with their own basketball team, which now starts about a month earlier than it used to, and with the Timberwolves, Sept-October baseball, pro hockey. It's a tough row to hoe.

Beating Nebraska wasn't an upset.
 

Ya, we should have kept Brewster for 10 years. Ya, we shouldn’t have fired Kill, OH WAIT. It’s not the firing, it’s hiring the right person and supporting the program from the President level, the regents, and the AD. It’s support from those people along with resources.

I’d argue we FINALLY have a President who wants to support football, we have an on campus stadium (thank u Mason), and we finally have facilities (thank u Coach Kill!). Lastly, we have a decent AD who was able to make a very good hire. Our last AD made an all time bad hire in Brewster and our previous President sucked. We’ve had to hire sub par coaches because of our program and the lack of support. I give Kaler a ton of credit for supporting football and I give Kill immense credit for building support for football. Coyle gets credit for finally hiring a Football Coach we didn’t have to “settle” for.

So everything is finally in the best place it’s ever been,by far, in the last 50 years. Mason was the only questionable firing in hindsight, in my mind. Firing Brewster was a no brainer, and Kill wasn’t fired. Firing Claeys was a no brainer, his recruiting class was terrible and he was in over his head.

So it’s the hiring that has been the problem (precipitated by the lack of support) not so much the firing. Mason probably deserved a chance to coach with an on campus stadium, but here we are, that was more than a decade ago. Fleck will get all the time he needs and wants. It’s the President, AD, and Board of Regents that matter. Provide the necessary support and make good hires. Stability by itself means absolutely nothing, you have to have the right people in the right places providing the right resources.




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The one recruiting class that Claeys signed was the best one we've had on paper in several years, so I'm not sure what you're talking about.
 


The strangest thing about this forum recently is the large amount of fans that seem to believe in the boogeyman. You're confusing any criticism of Fleck or the coaching with a desire to fire Fleck. A lot of people on here are also confusing any defense of Kill/Claeys with hatred for Fleck. It's bizarre.

This forum is incredibly positive considering we just got done watching ass kicking against a team we beat last year.

But keep telling yourself that everyone is calling for PJ's head.

It goes both ways. People also seem to think giving Fleck the benefit of the doubt in year one, or thinking that nitpicking every little thing he does or says is ridiculous means your a Fleckster and that you care about him more than the program.
 

Keep in mind, the best two wins we had under Kill and Claeys were two wins over Nebraska, both when Nebraska was ranked 22nd and quickly dropped out after the loss.

The program they inherited won their last two games before Kill arrived including beating #24 Iowa.

From a winning perspective, I don't see how in any way Kill compared to Barry Alavarez.
 

Since this thread was about the fan base:

I maintain that the "fan base" for Gopher Football is smaller than a lot of people want to admit.

There are maybe 30,000 to 35,000 hard-core fans who will attend every game no matter what. After that, any extra attendance is due to casual fans, bandwagon jumpers, and fans of the visiting team.

This season, other than initial curiosity about Fleck, there hasn't been a lot to draw in the casual fans. There's no bandwagon to jump on, and the visiting fans have not shown up in typical numbers.

This fan base has been beat down by years of inconsistent football, constant ridicule from the media, and the death blow - Teague jacking up the required seat donation, resulting in a loss of several thousand season-ticket holders.

Bottom line - the Gophers cannot consistently sell out one of the smaller stadiums in the B1G. (11th largest - slightly larger than Rutgers, and Maryland, and about 2,000 seats larger than NW.)

And this year, they're not even close to selling out.
 

Who has called for Fleck to be fired? We need a list of names.

Personally I think Fleck is a knucklehead and it makes my skin crawl that he apparently decided that 2017 is a non-season and wins/losses don’t matter until he says they do. However, I do believe we’ll win with Fleck at the helm. I just think he’s making some very strange decisions along the way. He’s like a guy who buys a nice old house, says he’s going to remodel it and make it really nice, but then he dynamites it to the ground without salvaging any off the valuable features.
 



Ya, we should have kept Brewster for 10 years. Ya, we shouldn’t have fired Kill, OH WAIT. It’s not the firing, it’s hiring the right person and supporting the program from the President level, the regents, and the AD. It’s support from those people along with resources.

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I’d agree with just about everything you said, besides what you said I said. I didn’t say we need to keep every coach we hired that long. My point is that I feel like people are making up their mind they don’t like PJ (which is fine) but they are letting it cloud their judgement when it comes to expectations this year.


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Who has called for Fleck to be fired? We need a list of names.

+1. Can we also get a name of those that have said PJ is losing games intentionally? I keep reading that people are saying that too, but am yet to be shown one example.


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Who has called for Fleck to be fired? We need a list of names.

Personally I think Fleck is a knucklehead and it makes my skin crawl that he apparently decided that 2017 is a non-season and wins/losses don’t matter until he says they do. However, I do believe we’ll win with Fleck at the helm. I just think he’s making some very strange decisions along the way. He’s like a guy who buys a nice old house, says he’s going to remodel it and make it really nice, but then he dynamites it to the ground without salvaging any off the valuable features.

Fired after this year? None. But there are several that think he won't get it done and will be fired a few years down the road.
 

As someone posted on the Strib commentary, I’d love to take a job where I ask for $3.5 mil starting salary but dictate to my boss that the first year is “year 0” and not to expect any results.
 



The one recruiting class that Claeys signed was the best one we've had on paper in several years, so I'm not sure what you're talking about.

I’m talking about the only recruiting class he was entirely responsible for, the one that Fleck had to salvage in 3 weeks. I’m not talking about the one where Kill had to step down mid season and was still around the program. Once Claeys had a full year on his own it was pretty sad.


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Kill was the closest thing we've had to a Barry Alvarez culture maker and this school treated him like sh!t. People around the cities don't want the effort of hard blue collar work. They want a slick, white collar salesman to blow smoke up their @$$. How's that smoke been working out for the past 50 years?

Enter PJ Fleck.
 

I’m talking about the only recruiting class he was entirely responsible for, the one that Fleck had to salvage in 3 weeks. I’m not talking about the one where Kill had to step down mid season and was still around the program. Once Claeys had a full year on his own it was pretty sad.


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He never had a chance to complete the class. There isn't one person who knows what would have happened had he stayed on.
You can think he wasn't going to be able to get any good players, but there isn't anyway to prove that would have happened.
Just like I can think he would have brought in a respectable recruiting class, but there isn't anyway to prove that either.

I'll go back to MC making his stupid statements when making the change. That did more damage to the fan base and it did not help PJ out in the least bit. His reasons for the change: Attendance was low for last game vs NW - well hows that going to look this year when it is going to feel like a W home game next week. On field product - Last year we beat the teams we should have and were in all the other games, this year we haven't done either, Classroom - no change from last year to this year, Recruiting - Really don't know as Claeys wasn't given a chance and PJ hasn't signed his first class yet, but here's what I find to be interesting on this front: The U put out a video with MC giving a walk through of the Athletes Village and during it MC said that the AV was going to be the reason for better recruiting, Off-Field/player boycott - MC created most of the issues with his handling of the incident, but blame Claeys for the whole thing.
 

So Kill not taking care of his own health problems is now the schools fault?

As someone who has epilepsy I can tell you for a fact you have no clue what the **** you're talking about. You have no clue how long medications are going to work how new ones will affect you etc. So just shut the **** up
 

I will say this, whatever happens you still have a faculty that is hostile to men's athletics, if not athletics overall. The entire EOAA "investigation" of the Early Sept 2016 incident shows that little, if anything, has changed in the twenty-nine years since I graduated.

I do not understand how they can bring up for suspension or expulsion players who were only involved in stopping the incident or were not even present and claim to be objective.

Winning solves problems and we are not doing that.

It seems every time the football program has success that the faculty seems to view it as a nail sticking up that needs to be pounded back down. That is a long term obstacle to be overcome.

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He never had a chance to complete the class. There isn't one person who knows what would have happened had he stayed on.
You can think he wasn't going to be able to get any good players, but there isn't anyway to prove that would have happened.
Just like I can think he would have brought in a respectable recruiting class, but there isn't anyway to prove that either.

Yes you can if you follow recruiting even a little bit. There was absolutely no movement in recruiting at all when Claeys was fired, with 1 month before signing day. They were ranked dead last in the B1G and dead last in the P5.

Only 40% of Claeys verbal commits had other P5 offers. 70% of Flecks did, but of the ones that didn't, it included McLaurin (who was already on campus) 2 instate kids he kept, and one late OL signee.

On top of that he was struggling to recruit our biggest needs, QB, WR, OL, and DL. Claeys class was awful and there was plenty of proof it was going to stay awful, and almost none that suggested it was going to get better.
 

As someone who has epilepsy I can tell you for a fact you have no clue what the **** you're talking about. You have no clue how long medications are going to work how new ones will affect you etc. So just shut the **** up

So I shouldn't have believed Kill when he repeatedly said his condition was under control when he slept and ate well, but it got out of control when he didn't sleep and eat well. I'm so sorry I believed him.

I'm sure Rutgers is taking markedly better care of him than Minnesota was. :rolleyes:
 

Yes you can if you follow recruiting even a little bit. There was absolutely no movement in recruiting at all when Claeys was fired, with 1 month before signing day. They were ranked dead last in the B1G and dead last in the P5.

Only 40% of Claeys verbal commits had other P5 offers. 70% of Flecks did, but of the ones that didn't, it included McLaurin (who was already on campus) 2 instate kids he kept, and one late OL signee.

On top of that he was struggling to recruit our biggest needs, QB, WR, OL, and DL. Claeys class was awful and there was plenty of proof it was going to stay awful, and almost none that suggested it was going to get better.

That's all speculation on your part. It is not proof. No different than in August when everyone was saying we were going to have a top 20 recruiting class this year. Except in this instance we actually get to see the end. With Claeys class that was not the case.


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That's all speculation on your part. It is not proof. No different than in August when everyone was saying we were going to have a top 20 recruiting class this year. Except in this instance we actually get to see the end. With Claeys class that was not the case.


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Yeah there’s a big difference between August and the beginning of January.
 

I’m talking about the only recruiting class he was entirely responsible for, the one that Fleck had to salvage in 3 weeks. I’m not talking about the one where Kill had to step down mid season and was still around the program. Once Claeys had a full year on his own it was pretty sad.


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He didn't have a full class. He was fired a month before signing day. Despite what you may think, neither you nor anyone else knows how he would've finished out that class. Your "point" is invalid.
 

For those of us who work in the real world, I can't imagine taking over leadership of a Department that was performing moderately well, and a year later have them performing at the bottom of the entire company. And in that scenario, there's somehow all this support that you just need a few years to turn the Department around, and get guys who believe in your "culture" in place. Part of leadership is recognizing the strengths you have in your current staff and helping them maximize their potential....not regress under your leadership.
 

Over the last couple weeks this forum has been entertaining after Gopher Games. Some people just need to relax and let the process work out. I find it absolutely insane that some Fans are saying to fire Fleck after 11 games or if Fleck has lost the team. Some others will get mad at Flecks post game comments.

Saban himself couldn't come in here and go 11-0 with this team. Let Fleck work his players in, support the team good or bad, and things will work out. I do appreciate the laughs on some of the end of world Gopher Football posts.

I get the feeling that Nick Saban would have about the exact same record, given the roster and injuries.
 

Mason mentioned it in his podcast, and others (the smart ones) have mentioned it here from time to time. We keep on setting ourselves back every time we get a new coach. Unless we were to bring in a legit big time coach that would recruit himself like a Saban, a Meyer, a top five dude, we will probably get roughly the same kind of recruits we always get. Fleck may get a few better players-and I think he willl- but where we fail where our rivals succeed is longevity of the system, or maintaining the same culture. Fleck says it and sounds stupid but it’s 100% true. We need to build a culture and sustain it with little to no coaching movement over the course of ten plus years to begin to compete with Iowa and Wisconsin year in and out. We need to pick a dude and frickin stay with him, this merry go round BS ain’t workin, I don’t understand what folks here get out of bashing the coach, it’s self-destructive, counterproductive, and at the end of the day not fun to read. It’s gotten so bad it’s almost not worth coming here anymore.


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Great post and dead on. The people bashing Fleck here are ridiculous. He hasn't exactly been dealt a strong hand this season, and they have played close in every game except two, regardless.

He's damned if he does, damned if he doesn't. If he continued to play Rhoda, the team may have won a couple of more games, and the debbie-downers would have less to complain about, but complain they still would anyway. If he continued to play Rhoda, half of the fans would piss and moan that he wasn't playing for the future in a non-stellar season. If he burned redshirts, half the people would piss and moan that he was unnecessarily burning redshirts in a lost season. Yet the debbie-downers piss and moan that he retains the redshirts, anyway. Some people just want to piss and moan about everything, because their sad lives would have little enjoyment without it.

The incoming recruiting class isn't burning up the field, and yet it is as strong as anything we've seen since Brewster's first year, in which almost all of those high-end recruits completely flamed out for various reasons, most of them poor behavior. The incoming class also seems to be as strong or better in terms of character as the recruits being obtained by the Kill crew, the players of which were able to make the team respectable. The future is plenty achievable for this program, if the fanbase and the TC media allow it to be.
 

Kill was the closest thing we've had to a Barry Alvarez culture maker and this school treated him like sh!t. People around the cities don't want the effort of hard blue collar work. They want a slick, white collar salesman to blow smoke up their @$$. How's that smoke been working out for the past 50 years?

Wait, what? How in the world did the U "treat Kill like sh!t"? That is insane. They U put up with Jerry's health problems the entire time, compensated him well, gave him full authority over the program, trusted him, and then he quit on us, not the reverse. HIS choice, not ours. Revisionist history rules.
 

Can you find examples of coaches that were not successful (and this definition importantly will vary between fans) after 4 years but became relevant after 8-10?

Some coaches just don't have "it" and that seems to usually be evident by season 3,4, or 5. I am willing to entertain examples of OTJ coaches.

After 2 mediocre or even terrible seasons? Many, including the guy who built the success of our chief rival. After three seasons? Plenty, including at least one guy currently coaching a successful program in our own conference. The previous admin (Kill/Claeys) wasn't exactly stellar anywhere they went, early on. Nor was our current coach at his last venture; our current basketball coach struggled two of his first three years, and now the bball program is in better shape than it was at any time since ca. 1998.

Nobody's asking for 8-10 years to build something. But only a fool would think that annual revolving coaching doors would be a successful way to run a program. And only a foolish fanbase dead set on bashing a coach in his first season for not having wild success would be a great way to jumpstart the program.
 

He didn't have a full class. He was fired a month before signing day. Despite what you may think, neither you nor anyone else knows how he would've finished out that class. Your "point" is invalid.

Agree. Everyone is conveniently omitting the fact that Claeys was given a short term low buyout contract and was always labeled as the interim, formally or informally. I bet Fleck also has 2-3x the recruiting budget (just speculating admittedly, but the chopper...?) Give Fleck that handicap and see what kind of class he’d have.
 

Agree. Everyone is conveniently omitting the fact that Claeys was given a short term low buyout contract and was always labeled as the interim, formally or informally. I bet Fleck also has 2-3x the recruiting budget (just speculating admittedly, but the chopper...?) Give Fleck that handicap and see what kind of class he’d have.

So you honestly think Tracy Claeys was going to recruit strong classes that would keep the Gopher football program competitive for years to come?

Those saying we didn't give Claeys the final month to pull a miracle out of a dreadful hat are correct - a miracle could have happened in that last month, and Claeys could have pulled out the #1 class in the nation. We just needed to have faith, and ignore the real data. Shame on the U for not believing that a miracle would happen.

Note that the way that Claeys handled the whole "incident" helped his matters none; lest we forget that was also a pretty horrific issue at the time of firing; and lest we forget that the loss of those players also played into the 2017 on-field results.
 




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