PJ Fleck says "howdy".
Have you ever wondered what other Big Ten coaches think of the Gophers football team? As it turns out, Athlon Sports recently published quotes from anonymous Big Ten coaches about the Gophers and what came from it was a fairly shocking comment about head coach P.J. Fleck.
"I think P.J. [Fleck] chased UCLA and some other jobs pretty hard to get out of there, and it didn’t happen for him," an anonymous coach allegedly said.
Fleck was a candidate for the UCLA job but this is the first time it's been presented as Fleck "chasing" the job and not UCLA chasing him. And it's definitely the first time it's been described as Fleck trying "pretty hard to get out" of Minnesota.
Shortly after Deshaun Foster was hired at UCLA, the University of Minnesota Board of Regents approved annual retention bonuses in Fleck's contract that could pay him an additional $5.7 million if he stays with the Gophers through 2029. Fleck currently earns $6 million annually.
"P.J. and I have a really close relationship, and when UCLA reached out to him, he kept me up to speed on all those conversations,'' Gophers athletics director Mark Coyle told the Star Tribune in March. "We feel really grateful that he should lead our program, and we look forward to having him do that for a long time."
