Saying 'we have to get better,' Fleck tackles struggling football program

Gopher football coach P.J. Fleck has a lot of work ahead of him as he tries to turn around a program that hasn't won a conference championship in 50 years.

Fleck took over as head coach in January after the firing of Tracy Claeys, who'd voiced support for a team-led boycott when the U suspended 10 football players amid a sexual assault investigation.

Fleck, 36, was last at Western Michigan University, where his team finished the 2016 season 13-1 and secured a Mid-American Conference title. That was a major turnaround from Fleck's first year — 2013 — when his team lost 11 games.

The Gophers are not in as dire of straits. But Fleck said last Thursday's season-opening performance — a 17-7 win against Buffalo — was sub-par. The victory made Fleck the first Gopher football head coach since 1986 to win his debut game.

"Whether that's a W or an L, how you played is how you played. That's what we have to fix. So a result will not dictate how we practice, how we coach. We have to get better," he said.

Fleck said the Gophers were able to recover from two missed field goals and an end zone interception. But the team will face much tougher opponents when Big Ten conference play starts later this month. Taking on that challenge, he said, will require a major shift in the Gophers' culture.

He sums it up with a mantra he started using after his newborn son died of a heart condition: "Row the boat."

"No matter what happens in your life, your oar stays in the water. 'Row the boat' isn't exactly for the best times. Row the boat's invented for all the bad times," he said. "When I was at Western Michigan year one we went 1-11. Everybody's like 'throw row the boat out, row the boat didn't work.' That's the time we had to row the boat."

Fleck has spread his mantra from the Gophers' front office, where it's painted on a brand new Minnesota-made Wenonah canoe in the lobby, to TCF Bank Stadium, where boat oars and canoe paddles painted by fans are on display.

Filling that stadium is another challenge Fleck faces. Last year average home game attendance hit a low not seen since 2002, when the Gophers played off campus in the Metrodome. Last week just over 43,000 fans turned out to see the coach's debut, a number below last season's seven-game average. However, Fleck says Gopher football was competing with the Twins, a Vikings preseason game and the State Fair that day.

Despite middling attendance at the home opener, the new coach appears to be generating excitement among fans on campus. Senior Danielle Abushanab was at Thursday's game and plans to go to more.

"Based on what I've seen so far and what I'm hearing, it sounds like he actually has plans for how things are going to go and his expectations laid out for players," she said. "I think that's a big thing that we needed."

Noah Mikell, another senior who's watched three years of lackluster football, said Fleck's legendary high energy is already having an effect on fans.

"You can see it on campus. People are excited. There seems to be a lot of optimism around it, so I think it is definitely a change for the better," Mikell said.

The Gophers play two more non-conference games this month before their first Big Ten matchup against Maryland on Sept. 30.