Minnesota football head coach P.J. Fleck has built an outstanding résumé over the years. For whatever reason, it has been continuously overlooked.
The Big Ten Conference is one of college football’s most promising leagues, and several teams deserve a slice of the credit for helping it hold such a standard. If you were to ask folks for examples of said teams, names like Ohio State, Michigan, and Penn State would likely be some of the first ones you’d hear.
Beyond those powerhouses, there is another school that, while having neither the brand nor the success that those do, also deserves some acknowledgment: Minnesota.
The Golden Gophers have been a strong force in the Big Ten’s West division for the past several years, having won eight games or more six times since 2012. Half of those instances have been under current head coach P.J. Fleck.
Fleck took over in Minneapolis for the 2017-18 year, and so far, that’s been his only full season there to finish with a losing record. As for his best season with the Gophers, they managed to hit a spectacular 11-2 record just two years after the sorry debut. It gave the program the most wins it’s seen in a single run since 1904.
Most recently, Minnesota football has had back-to-back 9-4 seasons, which is also a level of excellence that hasn’t been seen since the early 1900s. In both years, they won a bowl game to keep their postseason win streak alive (six-straight bowl wins, a total of four have been obtained while under Fleck).
When you combine all of that with previous accomplishments from his time at Western Michigan—three of four seasons saw records of 8-5 or better, including the university’s greatest of all time (13-1 in its 2016-17 run)—Fleck appears to be one of the top HCs in America today. The only problem is that he gets next to no recognition for it.
Just how harshly has P.J. Fleck been overlooked?
Some big-name media sites have taken on the task of ranking college football’s best coaches as we’ve grown closer to the fall, such as Pro Football Focus and CBS Sports. The pair made top-25 lists, with both doing Fleck dirty; PFF did not rank him at all while CBS just barely squeaked him in at 24th (and that was with the latter being Power 5 only).
With P.J. Fleck not being present on the first list, there was of course no context provided as to why he was left out. As for the second, the analysis was surprisingly positive in spite of his underwhelming placement.
For the majority of his assessment of Fleck, CBS Sports’ Tom Fornelli (the one behind their rankings) actually did make a point of praising him for all the good he’s done with the Golden Gophers.
In fact, there was only one piece of criticism (if you could even call it that) that Fornelli shot his way—his polarizing personality. To quote Fornelli directly: “There are two types of people in the world: those drawn to Fleck’s personality and those turned off by it.”
He went on to state that regardless of where one may stand on the matter, the results achieved with Minnesota football stand tall, and I couldn’t agree more with that mindset.
Concerns surrounding Fleck’s “personality” mean nothing to me if he keeps winning as much as he has with talent that’s willing to play for him. Simply put, who am I to dictate his worth as a head coach by something as subjective as an interpretation of his personality when his success is staring me dead in the eyes?
Where would I rank P.J. Fleck on these lists?
So, with all the pats on the back out of the way, the question must be asked: Where would I rank Fleck? Well, before I answer that, we need to see the coaches ranked instead of/ahead of him that I feel do not deserve to be.
While the two lists I referenced had their differences, they were bound to be similar in regard to at least some of the names present on them. Up top, they had guys like Kirby Smart, Nick Saban, Dabo Swinney, Jim Harbaugh, Lincoln Riley, and so on. Obviously, P.J. Fleck does not deserve to be in any of their conversations. Rather, it’s mostly some of the lower/middle-ranked names that caught my attention.
Noteworthy selections that fell under those categories on both rankings were Lance Leipold, Mike Gundy, Chip Kelly, Jimbo Fisher, and Luke Fickell (he was actually a top-10 coach on the lists). Along with all of them, PFF had thrown in Matt Rhule while CBS Sports included Bret Bielema.
Especially when talking about their displays from last season and/or how they look heading into this upcoming one, none of those guys should be ahead of Fleck, and there’s a variety of reasons as to why.
What is it that makes these guys overrated?
For starters, Leipold just went 6-7 at Kansas. I understand that is great when considering the program’s typical standard, but I’m not putting him in front of Fleck for it. A losing season that could’ve been worse is still a losing season—and it was achieved in a weaker conference, no less.
Speaking of Big 12 coaches, Mike Gundy’s recent performances at Oklahoma State has also made him inferior to P.J. Fleck until further notice. Since 2017, Minnesota football has more wins than Oklahoma State (not including the COVID season, as the Cowboys played four more games). In that same span, the Golden Gophers have had three seasons with nine wins or more—the Cowboys have only had one.
Secondly, I could humor OK State’s 7-6 record in 2022 as being a fluke, but Gundy giving us that right after a 12-2 run shows an inconsistency that Fleck doesn’t seem to possess (and again, all of OKST’s shortcomings are happening while playing in what is usually a weaker league).
When it comes to guys like Chip Kelly and Jimbo Fisher, the best they’ve gotten their current teams to is nine wins, the same count Minnesota football has hit the last two seasons. Kelly just managed to do so for the first time despite being at UCLA (which belongs to the noticeably weaker Pac-12) since 2018, while Jimbo is coming off of an abysmal 5-7 year.
Now yes, I know Jimbo is in the SEC and that’s brutal, but I expect more from him when he’s got a national championship under his belt combined with some of America’s best talent. I’m not expecting him to win another title, but finishing with the same record as Vanderbilt is just flat-out unacceptable.
As for someone like Bret Bielema at Illinois, I can respect the fact that he’s had Fleck’s number in both their 2021 and 2022 meetings and him giving the Illini their best season since 2007 in just his second year with them is very impressive. If he can keep the wins (especially the ones against the Gophers) coming, I’ll perhaps be more open to putting him over Fleck in the future, but he’s got to give me more than just one decent stretch.
That just leaves Wisconsin’s Fickell and Nebraska’s Rhule. I’ve already given both of these gentlemen some TLC, as the last thing I’d want to do is ignore what they accomplished in their previous endeavors.
But, putting praise aside, it would be wrong to assume that we are promised to see their top-tier coaching abilities in their first seasons, as neither Wisconsin nor Nebraska are easy places to win at. With that said, they are not as safe of bets to put on a 2023 list as Fleck is, as we know what he can do with Minnesota football.
If we were to make a list that included Fleck being above just those coaches (and NC State’s Dave Doeren, who was the only one beneath him on the CBS Sports rankings), he’d be 17th. And please remember that such a placement comes from comparisons to only some of the names that stood out. The ranking of 17th goes without even touching on some of the other HCs we could have insisted on making Fleck’s case against (e.g. Tulane’s Willie Fritz, Oregon State’s Jonathan Smith, etc.).
As I said before, P.J. Fleck is not some one-in-a-million coach that deserves to sit amongst the Sabans and Smarts of the world, but his knocking on the door of top-15 status is far more fitting than him being either barely ranked or not ranked at all. He’s at least proven that much.