Everything P.J. Fleck said on the Big Ten Network on Tuesday

On Tuesday, Minnesota Golden Gophers head football coach P.J. Fleck was on the Big Ten Network to discuss the Gophers 2024 season, their 2025 recruiting class, transfer class, and more. Here's everything he had to say.

ON THE 2024 SEASON

HOST: The Minnesota football program has become synonymous with bowl game wins in the last decade or so, with their win over South Carolina (Virginia Tech) in the Duke's Mayo Bowl to cap off this past season. The Gophers won their eighth consecutive bowl game, that's the longest active streak in the nation and the longest ever in the Big Ten.

To talk more about the Gophers, we now welcome in head coach PJ Fleck in today's Big Interview. Coach, it's great to see you as I just alluded to in our break before coming on the air. You look a little different than last time I saw you doused in mayonnaise, but congratulations on that Duke's Mayo Bowl win over South Carolina (Virginia Tech). What was that experience like?

Fleck: It was a great experience for us. It was a big win for our program and our kids take a lot of pride in winning bowl games. They care a lot and they prepare a lot.

It's an extra spring ball for our football team and got the same color shirt kind of look like I'm covered in it, but the good thing is we finally cleaned up from all that.

Host: How long did it take to get the mayo not just off of you, but the smell out of just like your pores?

Fleck: Well, so many coaches cheated in the past. They did wear a hat, they wouldn't get it all over their head.

Being bald, I thought it'd be a lot better. It just kind of slide right off. No, it didn't.

It caked down there pretty good. I mean, you would actually like squeeze your ear and there'd be like mayo coming out. There'd be some in your tear ducts.

For days, you would just smell it no matter how many showers you took. So, it was worth it though to win. That's for sure.

Host: You hear coaches talk so much about how important that extra month of practice is. What were you able to take away in terms of your team just getting that extra time together that can help propel you into the spring and 2025 fall?

Fleck: Well, building a team is all about connection. It's about empathy.

It's about gratefulness. Having the ability and we get to go play in a bowl game. It's so important for our young players who are now part of our 2025 season are going to have to be massive role players for us and contribute a ton to this program.

It's imperative that they get reps and they get work in the bowl prep. I think our bowl success has been really dedicated to our players' attention to detail. They want to play.

They want to be in it. They want to get better and they care. I think that's half the battle when you get to bowl season.

We had a lot of opt-outs just like Virginia Tech and we were very fortunate to be able to get that victory. It helped us springboard into 2025. Bowl games are always a celebration of the season that you just had, but they're also an extension and a start of the next season.

So, there's a really good balance to it. In addition to that big win over Virginia Tech, your team rattled off a couple of impressive victories in 2024. You look at the comeback against USC, the big win on the road against Illinois.

Host: Before we turn the page to 2025, what are a couple of highlights that stick out to you about 2024?

Fleck: I think you hit the nail on the head when you talk about the USC game and you talk about the Illinois game. Anytime you beat our rival in Wisconsin and bring the Axe back to Minneapolis, that's a huge win for us, but it's really about the players' stories. I mean, you watch a guy by the name of Max Brosmer come in here in one year and set the completion record at the University of Minnesota.

Watching Koi Perich, who turned down every offer in the country to come to Minnesota as a top 50 recruit, go out and seal the victory at USC. If you ever come in my office, there's a wall that's right here. You can't see it, but it has a bunch of moments and memories on it from every year.

That's what you remember. You won't remember the score. You'll remember possibly if you win or lose, but you'll remember those moments and memories forever and those still pictures that will be in our minds forever.

That's what that whole wall is full of. There's a bunch of them this year that we're really proud of. Every single team seems to lay down some new moments and memories for their legacy that they've left on gopher football.

Now it's up to this 25 season to create their own. You also created so many great memories for the fans, for those of us who just love college football.

Host: Thank you for that, first of all. You also touched on Max Brosmer. What a great addition he was to your program. Now you start the evaluation process of looking for another quarterback who can lead this Gophers group. What is that assessment and search like?

Fleck: It's unique in its own right. Every year is its own entity and just because you did something last year doesn't mean you're going to do it again this year. Our program's all about earning the opportunity to compete and play in the greatest conference in the country.

The quarterback competition is going to be fierce. It really will be. It's going to be a lot of fun.

It's already started. We talk about there's three phases of competition. There's the within, which is what we're going through right now, which is the winter conditioning phase of our program.

There's the with when we get to spring ball. We're on the same team. We're competing for jobs, but we're still on the same football team.

And then once you hit the season, you kind of get to compete against everyone else. So it's that proper build up at every position, not just the quarterback position. We're replacing a really good football player in Max Brosmer.

I don't think you ever replace him. You just find somebody that can run the offense their way and build the offense around them. That's the fun part about what we're doing right now.

We're finding out what our quarterbacks are really, really good at. We've had a lot of time to be able to do that, especially in the bowl prep, but now we're building our offense around what our quarterback strengths and weaknesses are and going from there. Real quick on Brosmer, I've seen him start to climb up some of these NFL draft boards.

Host: What do you think makes him an NFL draft caliber talent

Fleck: Well, first of all, I think he processes information better than anybody I've ever met. He's on the level, people that know football will know this, that he's on the Dan Orlovsky level of processing information. I was able to be around Dan Orlovsky when I was in Tampa Bay.

He processes at such a high level and can get the ball out of his hand really quickly. He's really smart. He's going to be the hardest worker on the field.

And one thing that people don't maybe know much about Max is he challenges people around him, not just other players, but he'll challenge coaches in a way not to question a coach, but he'll make you think deeper and deeper and deeper about either a concept, a technique, a scheme, something like that. He'll make you think really, really deep. And he'll always challenge you as a coach to make sure you're doing everything right to get the information across to the players.

The more people spend around Max over the next few months, he's just going to keep skyrocketing these draft boards like he's doing. And that's what I tell everybody, the more time you spend around him, the more you're going to love this young man. And he hasn't disappointed in those bowl games.

Host: Brosmer reportedly really impressed in some of those shrine bowl practices, as you mentioned now, even being looked at as a top 10 quarterback in this draft class. Moving along though, back into your 2025 recruiting class, you got 22 commits ready to come to Minneapolis. What excites you most coach about this group coming in?

Fleck: It didn't change. The only thing that stays the same in college football is change. You get a new football team. The great thing about January and February, you guys were just talking about this on air, is the job of the head coach is to get this team connected.

We're going to have a total of, we got 23 newcomers on campus. 22 of the 23 are already here. We're only signing one kid on national signing day.

We got a bunch of other freshmen. We got 14 others that'll be joining us in the summer. It's a race against time to get this team, not just the schemes and the football piece, but to get this team to be one.

And I think that's the fun part about coaching in college is you bring in the team in January for the majority, the most of them. And then you've got to connect this football team and you do it a variety of ways, but that's what's fun about January and February in this winter conditioning type program that we have. We're doing everything we can to this football team in a really close way.

The thing that's so tough to me about being a coach now is you're not just recruiting the freshmen, you're speed dating the transfers in that time that you get to try to recruit those guys out of the transfer portal.

ON RECRUITING

Host: You've got 15 incoming transfers coach, including wide receiver Malachi Coleman from Nebraska and inter big 10 transfer. What do you like about his skillset? And then any others that you want to particularly point out that you're excited to join your group?

Fleck: Yeah. Malachi is a really good player. He's, he's a developmental player for us. You know, he's in the program for all the right reasons.

And one thing we love to do is, is, is develop wide receivers here. And we've had a great track record for doing that. He's got all the physical attributes.

Now you just got to be able to, to sharpen that and, and, and, and smooth that out. I think he's been really, really, really good so far in the, in the few weeks that he's actually been here. But we're excited about everybody that we brought in here.

We brought in a lot of running backs. That's what we do. RTBs doesn't stand for just row the boat stance or run the ball here at Minnesota.

And we can always use more backs here to compliment Darius Taylor. So we brought a few guys in, brought Cam over from Washington, brought AJ over from Marshall. We feel really good about where we are in that running back room.

Fame Ijeboi as well, who's already in our program. So we feel we got four or five running backs that have all played significant football. They're going to be able to help us in 2025.

And then you can't run the football in the big 10 without really good offensive linemen. So that was really important for us to bring some other offensive linemen in here on the offensive side and, and really join us there and then create some depth on the D line as well. But I really liked the prospects that are here.

They're working really hard. They're off to a really good start. It's fun to watch them really form into the program, form into the culture and really join our team.

And it's kind of like they'd been here forever already in the three to four weeks, which has been really exciting.

ON DANNY COLLINS

Host: The other thing is you're not just recruiting freshmen. You're not just recruiting transfers. You also have to recruit coaches because when you've got good offensive and defensive coordinators, they often get cherry picked to other programs. You recently elevated Danny Collins to defensive coordinator. He was already on your staff working with the safeties. What does he add in this new role?

Fleck: Yeah, first of all, we're really happy for Corey Hetherman. And you know, one thing I've always said is, and Winston's will have a bid here going out to be the D-line coach for the Arizona Cardinals. You know, my job is not just to help get the players to where they dream of being and develop players.

Your job as a head coach is develop your coaches and get them to where they dream of being as well. And Danny Collins is a great story. Danny Collins was a student coach for me at year one at Western Michigan.

And Danny's been with me going on 13 years. I mean, this is a young man who's coached every position on defense. He's called games before.

He's known our defense for a long time. It's his turn to run it. He could have ran it probably six, seven years ago.

This is a guy that's earned all of his stripes. I mean, he slept in a closet at Western Michigan because that's what it took. When you have a lot of student help and you have a lot of student coaches, you have a lot of volunteers.

It's amazing when everybody says, I want to coach, I want to coach. And then you go through the coaching and you really kind of find out who really wants to do that. And Danny's class kind of, there was about 10 assistant, you know, or 10 student coaches and nine of them quit.

And Danny wasn't the one that was the one that didn't quit. And you look at where he is in his career. I couldn't be prouder of him.

He's a new father to his son, Rocky, and his wife, Maria. It's just so exciting for him to have this opportunity to be the defense coordinator at Minnesota and in the Big 10. And I know he's going to do a great job.

Host: So wait, was he literally sleeping in a closet? I feel like there's more to the story here

Fleck: I think that's it back in the day. I mean, you know, I was 31, 32 years old. So I mean, we didn't know much. I mean, sometimes I don't let my coaches sleep in the closets anymore, nor do I let them sleep in their offices. Nobody does that here anymore.

But when you're a young coach, you're, you're, you're willing to do whatever it takes and you're not making any money and you're going to school and you want to make sure that your job is done at an elite level. And, and that's the story. I mean, it was a janitor closet and he'd sleep in it.

And that's Danny Collins story, but that's the fun part about this. You're paying your dues. Not everybody has to do that, but you know, when you're a student in college, I mean, you're doing everything you possibly can to, to maybe get an, a leg up in the time department in your job that you're doing.

So I'm really grateful for the effort that he's given over the course of the last 13 years. And we're excited to have, Hey, we've all earned our stripes in some way, shape or form, no judgment passed. You do it because you love it.

Right. And maybe you have to sleep in the closet along the way.

Host: Well, coach, we really appreciate the time.

We look forward to watching your gophers in 2025. Thanks for your time. Appreciate it.