One of my favorite pieces I've written at FootballScoop was this 2018 deep dive into the difference between Minnesota and its two rivals, Iowa and Wisconsin. In the 15 years heading into the 2018 Minnesota-Iowa game, the Golden Gophers were 4-27 against their border rivals. The reason for that, PJ Fleck argued, was that Iowa and Wisconsin had stable cultures while Minnesota's changed with Presidential administrations; over a 40-year period, Iowa's employed two head coaches to Minnesota's nine. What I found fascinating about that was Fleck, in his second season in charge at Minnesota, making an argument simultaneously self-serving and correct.
"The reason why they are so successful is they've had the same system, the same coaches, the same people that they can recruit to. They can develop in the same strength staff," Fleck said at the time.
Fast forward seven years and Fleck is now preparing for his ninth season as Minnesota's head coach. Great success! Iowa is still chugging along in Year 63 under Kirk Ferentz, while Wisconsin is struggling heading into Luke Fickell's third year. Fleck is a brutal 1-7 in the Floyd of Rosedale game against Iowa, but the worm has turned against Wisconsin: the Gophers have taken Paul Bunyan's Axe in three of the last four years after dropping 14 straight from 2004-17.
Fleck is now the longest-tenured Minnesota head coach since Glen Mason's 10-season run from 1997-06, and the second-longest since Murray Warmath's 18-year tenure that ended in 1971. You don't last eight-plus seasons without racking up wins, and Fleck has done that. He's led the Gophers to a bowl game every season except his 2017 debut and the covid-impacted year of 2020. What's more, Minnesota has finished above .500 in Big Ten play in four of its last five (full) seasons, winning 11, nine, nine, and eight games in those years.
And yet.
While Fleck has largely avoided low lows, his resume also lacks high highs. His 2019 team rose to No. 8 in the country following an 8-0 start and a thrilling 31-26 win over No. 4 Penn State and won a share of the B1G West... but missed the Big Ten Championship because they dropped games to Iowa and Wisconsin down the stretch. That's the only time Fleck's Gophers have finished in the AP Top 25. What's more, with the dissolution of the B1G West, Minnesota missed a prime window to in the conference championship. Wisconsin won the division four times, Iowa three, Northwestern won it twice and even Purdue made an appearance in Indianapolis, while Minnesota (and Illinois) did not. (Granted, most of those teams got hammered once they got there: the East champion went 10-0 vs. the West champ, winning by an average score of 36-14.) In Year 1 of a new format pitting the top two teams of an 18-team table, the 2024 B1G championship featured No. 1 Oregon against No. 3 Penn State.
Minnesota has seen plenty of those pre-Christmas bowls in desirable winter locales like Detroit and New York under Fleck, but only in 2019 did a Gophers season stretch into January.
With the floor effectively raised but the ceiling stubbornly not budging, Fleck is telling his 2025 team to dream bigger.
"It means no cap on the jar, no limitations, dreaming big. With the College Football Playoff and where it is, as Indiana showed last year, anybody can get there," Fleck said. "If we're delusional enough to know we can do that, we can get there."
In typical PJ Fleck fashion, he tied his Playoff aspirations into a larger point. "When you're somewhere long enough, the standards are one thing, but then you continue to raise the expectations, and that's what we want to continue to do," he said. "We want to do that off the field as well. We want to be delusional as husbands, fathers, as brothers, as sons, as members of our community. Take the cap off the jar. Limitless."
The good and bad news about the Minnesota's 2025 schedule is that offers opportunities for the Gophers to rapidly climb the polls. They visit Ohio State on Oct. 4 -- Minnesota has won in the Horseshoe once since 1950 -- and Oregon on Nov. 14. Minnesota also visits Iowa, where it's 1-10 in its last 11 games but 1-0 in its last one. After the stir created by Indiana's CFP berth with 11 regular season wins and zero marquee ones, Minnesota will need to beat at least one of the Buckeyes and Ducks, and possibly both, to make the Playoff. (The Big Ten's highly-flawed Playoff plan is tailor made for a program like Minnesota, who would need only a sixth-place finish to have a shot at a national championship.)
But after eight seasons of solid success, Fleck is ready for more than solid. He wants great.