Mark Coyle's Job Should Be On The Line

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There's an enormous amount of money that gets raised in this town for all kinds of things. Raising or sourcing NIL money should be the top priority of any college AD in 2023. NIL money isn't going to guarantee a positive outcome. However, it will make a positive outcome much more likely.

Fleck was an excellent hire. He was also an excellent recruiter by 2020 "rules." Not having NIL money and recruiting from a cold climate in a state that isn't a D1 football hotbed makes the job a more rigorous challenge than ever.
 


Some guy said:
Bigger deal is free transfer. Lost about 5-6 depth guys.
+ 4-5 injuries. You’re down 11 guys from your two deep.

Minnesota isn’t good enough to be down 11 guys in the two deep
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You’re completely ignoring two things: transfers in and the fact that other teams have injuries (including Purdue, NW, and Illinois).

Make a list of all the transfers out of the program the last three years. Then make a list of all the transfers in. Then tell me which list of guys you’d rather have. Unless you’re insane, you’d take the group of transfers IN to the program. There has been a ton of crapping on PJ (myself included), but he has been good to great (comparatively speaking for a place at the Gophers level) at the transfer portal. The only one that really stung was Bucky. Even when you include him on the list, we have gained way more production via the portal than we’ve lost, so that argument is hollow.

And relatively speaking (for week 11 in the football season), this team has been pretty healthy. Other than the RB’s and both MLB’s, it’s been pretty good. QB, WR (other than your #4 WR), OL, TE, DL, CB, OLB, S have all been pretty consistent. We’ll see how bad Green’s injury is, as that one could hurt. Look at the losses IA has had and they just keep chugging along. Every team has injuries, and the Gophers have not had a disproportionate number of them.
 

Wehatebadgers said:
Tough when the Gophers are playing in a town with four pro teams. We always be second fiddle
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Washington just went to 11-0. They play in a very similar sized metro area with a campus in the largest city in the state. They have extremely popular NFL, MLB, and NHL teams. They have one of the two highest drawing MLS and WNBA teams as well. Not only that, their head coach is from a small town in South Dakota just a few miles from the Minnesota border.

Stop making excuses.
 

forever a gopher said:
You’re completely ignoring two things: transfers in and the fact that other teams have injuries (including Purdue, NW, and Illinois).

Make a list of all the transfers out of the program the last three years. Then make a list of all the transfers in. Then tell me which list of guys you’d rather have. Unless you’re insane, you’d take the group of transfers IN to the program. There has been a ton of crapping on PJ (myself included), but he has been good to great (comparatively speaking for a place at the Gophers level) at the transfer portal. The only one that really stung was Bucky. Even when you include him on the list, we have gained way more production via the portal than we’ve lost, so that argument is hollow.

And relatively speaking (for week 11 in the football season), this team has been pretty healthy. Other than the RB’s and both MLB’s, it’s been pretty good. QB, WR (other than #3/4 WR), OL, TE, DL, CB, OLB, S have all been pretty consistent. We’ll see how bad Green’s injury is, as that one could hurt. Look at the losses IA has had and they just keep chugging along. Every team has injuries, and the Gophers have not had a disproportionate number of them.
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Other than the fact we have no linebackers or running backs we are pretty healthy
True I guess?

Other teams have injuries
True
And we have not been able to win games through ours. Neither have all the other teams near .500 in the conference.
4-4 northwestern has injuries
4-4 Wisconsin has injuries
3-5 Nebraska has injuries
3-5 Illinois has injuries
3-5 Maryland has injuries
3-5 Rutgers has injuries
2-6 Michigan state has injuries
1-7 Indiana has injuries


It is almost like it is hard to be consistent when you have a mediocre team and that team has glaring holes in it. You might win like half the time



The biggest issue with this gopher team is that it isn’t very good
 


disco said:
Washington just went to 11-0. They play in a very similar sized metro area with a campus in the largest city in the state. They have extremely popular NFL, MLB, and NHL teams. They have one of the two highest drawing MLS and WNBA teams as well. Not only that, their head coach is from a small town in South Dakota just a few miles from the Minnesota border.

Stop making excuses.
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As I was watching their game I kept asking myself “If Washington can do this, why can’t we”? The ONLY thing I could come up with is recruiting. I would imagine they can pull pretty easily from CA. The places that the Gophers are pulling from (ILL, MI, OH, etc) doesn’t have enough high end kids to go around to all the programs pulling from them. Otherwise in theory, the situations between WA and MN are remarkably similar.
 

forever a gopher said:
As I was watching their game I kept asking myself “If Washington can do this, why can’t we”? The ONLY thing I could come up with is recruiting. I would imagine they can pull pretty easily from CA. The places that the Gophers are pulling from (ILL, MI, OH, etc) doesn’t have enough high end kids to go around to all the programs pulling from them. Otherwise I’m theory, the situations between WA and MN are remarkably similar.
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If we had a heisman QB on the roster the last 2 years we may have won a national title last year

They were 4-8 like 3 years ago
.
 

Some guy said:
Bigger deal is free transfer. Lost about 5-6 depth guys.
+ 4-5 injuries. You’re down 11 guys from your two deep.

Minnesota isn’t good enough to be down 11 guys in the two deep
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This right here is reason #1
 

MplsGopher said:
You can’t squeeze blood from a turnip.

There is no NIL to be had. You can’t just make it appear by trying harder.

That’s not at all how it works. Plain proof: Texas A&M is terrible, and they swim in NIL and every other type of donation.

College sports donations come from wealthy individuals who are rabid fans of a team for whatever reason.

You can’t make that out of thin air. They’re either already there or they don’t exist.


There’s no rich alum of the U who watches the football and/ or MBB teams just sitting there saying to themselves “gee, ya know I’d be happy to give the U $1M in NIL … if they’d just ask me! If they woo’ed me harder! Oh well, guess I won’t give a single dollar and the team I care about will just suffer.”

No such thing
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Nonsense. You make it sound like there are no former Gopher players that made a ton of money. Devondre Campbell earned $34 million and is slated to earn $64 million in his career in the next 3 years. Eric Murray earned $24 million in his career to date. Eric Decker has a net worth of $20 million. There are many others.

MN is not Tanzania. There are many billionaires and thousands of multi-millionaires in MN. You just need the right person to get them to open their purse strings.
 





short ornery norwegian said:
So - is the AD responsible for generating NIL money?

look, I know the rules around NIL are really fuzzy - but as I understand the rules, NIL does not come from the school. NIL comes from outside the school.

Fleck or Coyle can encourage people to donate to Dinkytown Athletes, but I don't know if they are allowed to directly solicit donations - as in Fleck meets Rich Dude and says "please give money to our NIL fund." technically, coaches are not even supposed to talk about NIL with recruits - at least not make specific promises.

I realize that some schools may bend or ignore the rules. but MN - for better or worse - is a school that at least gives the impression of trying to play by the rules.

I am not a Coyle fan - mainly for his lack of communication skills and weak public persona. but I don't know if it's fair to hang NIL on him.
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Well when you roll out the red carpet for yourself when hired and bragged about it online as well as saying "I didn't come here to be .500" and hire Ben Johnson two days later..... EVERYTHING is on you.
 

Ski-U-Mahed said:
Well when you roll out the red carpet for yourself when hired and bragged about it online as well as saying "I didn't come here to be .500" and hire Ben Johnson two days later..... EVERYTHING is on you.
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Apathy has already set in for men’s basketball, and it’s coming for football. When that happens, none of the folks in charge will survive. It’ll be here sooner versus later.
 



Ski-U-Mahed said:
There are more fortune 500 companies in the metro area than any other big ten team. It's there, it's just these great business men have heard all the sleezy snake oil sales pitch that Fleck and Coyle pitch.
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1. Corporations aren't major NIL donors. Rabid fans with hundreds of millions of dollars who are willing to buy players for their favorite team are.

2. Pretty sure there's a little town called Chicago in the B1G.
 


MplsGopher said:
You can’t squeeze blood from a turnip.

There is no NIL to be had. You can’t just make it appear by trying harder.

That’s not at all how it works. Plain proof: Texas A&M is terrible, and they swim in NIL and every other type of donation.

College sports donations come from wealthy individuals who are rabid fans of a team for whatever reason.

You can’t make that out of thin air. They’re either already there or they don’t exist.


There’s no rich alum of the U who watches the football and/ or MBB teams just sitting there saying to themselves “gee, ya know I’d be happy to give the U $1M in NIL … if they’d just ask me! If they woo’ed me harder! Oh well, guess I won’t give a single dollar and the team I care about will just suffer.”

No such thing
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The NIL red herring.
 

@jamiche There's an enormous amount of money that gets raised in this town for all kinds of things.

This is such bunk, to propose that because Foundations for curing children's diseases can raise millions .... that people who donate to those also are just as willing give away that same amount of money for ........ paying college football players that are already getting full cost of attendance scholarships?????

Such bunk.

It is an anti-logical argument. One thing has absolutely nothing to do with the other.


You can't be serious. You can't be. You're way too intelligent to actually believe this.
 

disco said:
Washington just went to 11-0. They play in a very similar sized metro area with a campus in the largest city in the state. They have extremely popular NFL, MLB, and NHL teams. They have one of the two highest drawing MLS and WNBA teams as well. Not only that, their head coach is from a small town in South Dakota just a few miles from the Minnesota border.

Stop making excuses.
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You beat me to it. Washington is a great example that refutes almost all of the excuses for why Minnesota can't succeed (I guess with the exception of the knife wielding polar bears). Maybe we can't be like OSU, but there us no reason we can't be like Washington.
 

disco said:
Washington just went to 11-0. They play in a very similar sized metro area with a campus in the largest city in the state. They have extremely popular NFL, MLB, and NHL teams. They have one of the two highest drawing MLS and WNBA teams as well. Not only that, their head coach is from a small town in South Dakota just a few miles from the Minnesota border.

Stop making excuses.
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Washington is who we should try to be, but they also have a lot more talent on the west coast to choose from, and about a 50 year head start on being a better program than us which helps them significantly financially. They just didn't become good overnight.
 

jamiche said:
As I was watching the game and noting the huge gap in talent it occurred to me that the fingers are pointed at the wrong folks. Of course PJ coached not to lose and Johnson is inexperienced as a head coach. However, the game has changed completely in the last three years and Coyle is still playing by the old rules.

Minnesota football and men's basketball teams don't have a chance unless or until Coyle starts raising heavy, heavy NIL money. Not. A. Chance. He's an earnest, decent, organized AD, well suited for the position in, say, 2010. There's a reason USC didn't want him. He can't raise money. He's a perfect assistant AD for 2023.

The next U president needs to bring in a new AD director who is a prolific fundraiser. Once the money flows, the talent will miraculously appear. Until then, it will get continuously worse for football and basketball.
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This is the guy we should have hired instead of Coyle. Pete wanted the job, and with his connections and personality, he'd be great at raising funds.

Peter Najarian - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

1700405438540.png
 

College sports is turning into Girl Scouts. Whoever sells the most cookies, wins!
 

The Gophers face a slaughter schedule next season. I keep saying that for a reason. It's a great schedule for seeing great football teams but brutal for wins. It's the new Big Ten coast to coast, millions of viewers.

The time to rethink the situation is after next season or after two season of slaughter-level Big Ten schedules. The world view may be different then.

So chill for now. Watch what unfolds over the next season -- like massive fireworks going off.
 

SHGopher said:
Gophers football had several bad games this season.

After many good seasons.

Perspective.

Unless the alleged play calling is driving people nuts it's an offyear. That is not plural.
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This is just the start of many off years. The days of 9 or 10 win seasons are over. No money and more good teams = 4 or 5 win seasons.
 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Washington_Huskies_football_seasons

Washington is not just some nothing program that suddenly up-jumped itself.

1990 - finished ranked #5
1991 - finished ranked #1/#2
2000 - finished ranked #3
2016 - finished ranked #4 (CFP)
2022 - finished ranked #8


I disagree that they are a very close comparison, football-wise. Only in the sense of being in a relatively big market, dominated by pro sports, with the campus right near downtown. That bit, sure. There are only a handful like that: Washington, Minnesota, Pitt, maybe a few others.

But as others have said, the situation out on the west coast is not comparable to recruiting to Minnesota.

#1, the weather is not nearly as cold. I don't even think it regularly snows there.

#2, you have all these excess of California kids, who are looking to go to major programs, and USC is really the only one that is football foremost and first. UCLA trying, but not as successful. Cal and Stanford highly academic focused. And then the fact that kids don't want to stay home, sometimes (a lot of times, in my opinion).

But it's way too far to go all the way across the country, to the Eastern timezone in particular. So their best options in a lot of cases (all but the very blue-chippers) are the other PAC schools.
 

MplsGopher said:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Washington_Huskies_football_seasons

I disagree that they are a very close comparison, football-wise. Only in the sense of being in a relatively big market, dominated by pro sports, with the campus right near downtown. That bit, sure. There are only a handful like that: Washington, Minnesota, Pitt, maybe a few others.
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My point was aimed at those who claim that professional sports are the reason why the Gophers can't succeed in this market. It's simply not true.

Same with the urban market. Columbus is the largest city in Ohio.
 


But again, even Seattle and Pittsburgh are just not the same as Mpls. And Austin and Columbus sure as hell aren’t even close.

We’re just unique, in the total factors. Geographic isolation, cold, culture, pro team dominance, and such a huge period of time where Gophers were terrible and fan apathy set in.

Will take another decade or two or really turn that around. It’s a very slow process
 

short ornery norwegian said:
So - is the AD responsible for generating NIL money?

look, I know the rules around NIL are really fuzzy - but as I understand the rules, NIL does not come from the school. NIL comes from outside the school.

Fleck or Coyle can encourage people to donate to Dinkytown Athletes, but I don't know if they are allowed to directly solicit donations - as in Fleck meets Rich Dude and says "please give money to our NIL fund." technically, coaches are not even supposed to talk about NIL with recruits - at least not make specific promises.

I realize that some schools may bend or ignore the rules. but MN - for better or worse - is a school that at least gives the impression of trying to play by the rules.

I am not a Coyle fan - mainly for his lack of communication skills and weak public persona. but I don't know if it's fair to hang NIL on him.
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If Coyle does not have primary responsibility for NIL donations as head of the U's athletic functions, then who does? Yes, Coyle is an important figure in fundraising for athletic matters and he's damn poor at it.
 

Ski-U-Mahed said:
Well when you roll out the red carpet for yourself when hired and bragged about it online as well as saying "I didn't come here to be .500" and hire Ben Johnson two days later..... EVERYTHING is on you.
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Coyle delivered on his promise. He said he didn't come here to be .500, and through two years, his hire is not at .500.
 

MplsGopher said:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Washington_Huskies_football_seasons

Washington is not just some nothing program that suddenly up-jumped itself.

1990 - finished ranked #5
1991 - finished ranked #1/#2
2000 - finished ranked #3
2016 - finished ranked #4 (CFP)
2022 - finished ranked #8


I disagree that they are a very close comparison, football-wise. Only in the sense of being in a relatively big market, dominated by pro sports, with the campus right near downtown. That bit, sure. There are only a handful like that: Washington, Minnesota, Pitt, maybe a few others.

But as others have said, the situation out on the west coast is not comparable to recruiting to Minnesota.

#1, the weather is not nearly as cold. I don't even think it regularly snows there.

#2, you have all these excess of California kids, who are looking to go to major programs, and USC is really the only one that is football foremost and first. UCLA trying, but not as successful. Cal and Stanford highly academic focused. And then the fact that kids don't want to stay home, sometimes (a lot of times, in my opinion).

But it's way too far to go all the way across the country, to the Eastern timezone in particular. So their best options in a lot of cases (all but the very blue-chippers) are the other PAC schools.
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Seattle has it's own unique weather that I would absolutely compare to winters here as far as tolerance. I do agree MN could work to be what the Huskies are.
 

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