I'm always entertained by revered coaches with empty rivalry trophy cases and rings like this: As a somewhat neutral somewhat outsider, I see both sides of this.
I think that
@847badgerfan has a point: What has Fleck accomplished as a coach?
GA on the tOSU staff in 2006 when the Buckeyes went 12-1 WR coach at N. IL in 2007-2008 WR coach / Recruiting coordinator for N. IL in 2009 WR coach at Rutgers in 2010-2011 WR coach in the NFL (Tampa) in 2012 Those are all as an assistant, obviously. Lets not dive into those because even if we agreed that his position group was phenomenal or sucked we could still argue over whether it was his fault or the HC's or whether it was to his credit or the HC.
P.J. Fleck as a HC:
1-11 at WMU in 2013 8-5 at WMU in 2014 8-5 at WMU in 2015 13-1 at WMU in 2016 - finished ranked #15 5-7 at Minnesota in 2017 7-6 at Minnesota in 2018 11-2 at Minnesota in 2019 - finished ranked #10 At Minnesota he is:
1-2 against Wisconsin 0-3 against Iowa And he has an Outback Bowl and a Quick Lane Bowl win.
I get where Badge is coming from. That isn't really all that impressive. He is just 1-5 in his biggest rivalries (IA, UW) and his bowl wins are a meh win over Auburn in the Outback Bowl and a meh bowl that nobody cares about in Detroit over GaTech.
OTOH, I can also see
@Benthere2 's side of things. Badge has been disparaging this hire since before it was even official and Fleck's accomplishments as a HC need to be viewed in context. He is the coach of Minnesota not Ohio State.
His highest ranking is #7 and his highest final rank is #10 and both of those are the highest for Minnesota in nearly 60 years. His WMU teams were ranked 10 times and got as high as #12 and Western Michigan has NEVER been ranked under any other coach before or since. Minnesota's 11 wins in 2019 are their most since 1904 when their opponents included Twin Cities Central High, So Dak, Carleton, No Dak, Lawrence, Shattuck, and St Thomas. Prior to Fleck, Minnesota hadn't finished with just two losses since their last league Championship in 1967 and the last time Minnesota finished a season with less than two losses the final win was a 41-6 blowout of Wisconsin almost exactly two weeks before Pearl Harbor He hasn't exactly set the world on fire but he did more at WMU than any other HC EVER and he has done more at Minnesota than any coach since before the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor. I used that reference because my point is that it isn't over. Lets see how he does over time. In retrospect 2019 may appear to be a flash in the pan of no significance or maybe P.J. Fleck will be Minnesota's Barry Alvarez. I'm not in either of those camps, I just think that it is far too early to tell.
I'll leave you with the clip from the reference I made above:
VIDEO https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8lT1o0sDwI 
