P.J. Fleck brings Minnesota to Iowa amid culture change

IOWA CITY — Lots of coaches will tell you about building culture, and that being an essential part of a successful football program.

It's an undeniable tenet. Belief in a system, belief in an approach and belief in a mentality all are part of the culture a given coach tries to instill.

Iowa welcomes Minnesota to Kinnick Stadium on Saturday as the Hawkeyes and Gophers will battle once again for the Floyd of Rosedale trophy. On one side is a culture well-established — with roots more than 30 years old — and on the other is one in its infancy.

Coach P.J. Fleck is in his first season leading a Minnesota program that has had three different head coaches the last three years and five head coaches since 2007. Fleck looked across the proverbial field Tuesday during the Big Ten coaches teleconference while talking about what he's trying to build in Minneapolis.

'They've had two head coaches in 40-some years,' Fleck said of Iowa. 'That's called cultural sustainability, where you don't rebuild, you just reload. Hopefully the University of Minnesota, we get to that point some time, where we're just reloading.'

The Gophers went 9-4 last year with a win in the Holiday Bowl — the second straight bowl win for Minnesota, which also won the Quick Lane Bowl in 2015.

Fleck came to Minnesota following Tracy Claeys' ouster amid allegations of sexual assault against players and mounting pressure from the outside on the university. Claeys led the Gophers to both those wins and was on the job a year and a half after Jerry Kill briefly retired with health concerns.

Before that, it was five years of Kill, a year of Jeff Horton and four years of Tim Brewster.

The players on the roster now obviously didn't go through all of that, but the road they've traveled in just the last three has been rough enough that Fleck said judging progress isn't as simple as wins and losses. To be fair, he's said that repeatedly this season, both when Minnesota was 3-0 and after his team lost three straight to get to where it is now.

Fleck has been through this before. When he took over at Western Michigan, the program had just fired Bill Cubit. Coming into Minnesota after a coach was fired and the program was on uncertain ground feels all-too-familiar. He acknowledged the obvious 'challenges and opportunities' and that the beginnings of both jobs have 'a lot of similarities in terms of cultural change.'

Fleck has a colorful way of going about things. His 'Row the Boat' mantra has deep roots and his aggressive tactics both in recruiting and on the field keep people paying attention to him and his team.

'Everything you do is not just what you're doing but how you do it and why you're doing it,' Fleck said. 'That's hard for some people to understand

'It's always a mixed bag and a tough transitional year for anybody. There's a lot of similarities, but again, the win/loss record is not what I compare. What I do is compare and look at how the culture change happens, how fast it happens and why it happens.'

Fleck's respect for Ferentz and Iowa's culture is something several coaches across the conference have stated in the past.

Ferentz knows something about rebuilding, of course, having led the Hawkeyes through a pair of the worst couple years — results-wise, anyway — in Iowa football history after Hayden Fry retired. While Ferentz had been at Iowa before that under Fry, he said Tuesday it wasn't the same Iowa when he came back and that 'some of the common denominators weren't here anymore.'

The most tenured coach in college football agreed with one of the newest in saying adjustments always will be there, whether you have history with a program or not.

'I think anytime you take over a program, it's kind of like talking about the injuries, you just never know what it's going to be like,' Ferentz said. 'There's always an adjustment period going on, that type of thing. It's just part of the deal. But they've done a good job. They're well-coached. They play hard, play with a lot of energy, and they have a lot of good players. So we're going to have our hands full once again.'

Fleck's team won last week, 24-17 against Illinois (also in a rebuild). The Gophers are young across the board and haven't found much consistency on offense, except for maybe the three-headed backfield of Rodney Smith, Shannon Brooks and Kobe McCrary.

Success and sustainability isn't at some finish line this year. It's a week-to-week thing. Getting that to level out and become less mobile — and how fast that happens — will answer whether or not Minnesota can return to what it once was.

'It's always a moving target, especially in Year 1,' Fleck said. 'You've got to get that moving target to slow down eventually getting into Year 2. You've got to get that to focus in. That's very tough for young people.

'I understand how it goes when you take over a program that had somebody released of their duties. It's very difficult but also very opportunistic for a lot of people. Change is healthy. Change is good. We've had a lot. … Hopefully the cultural sustainability can last here for a very long time.'

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