As P.J. Fleck takes the Gophers football team to heights unseen in decades, the head coach is now being asked about his future at Minnesota.
“My future at Minnesota is to make sure Minnesota gets the attention Minnesota is getting, on a national level, for our team, for our coaches, for our state, for our Twin City area; that is my responsibility,” Fleck told WCCO-AM on Sunday.
“I know Heather and I absolutely love it here, and we are very grateful to our fans, very grateful to our administration and very grateful for our community that have accepted us with open arms. We got a lot of things to finish here this year.”
The 52-10 win over Maryland on Saturday was Fleck’s 50th victory as a head coach since 2013. At Minnesota, he’s 20-13 and riding a 10-game winning streak dating back to last November. He was 30-22 at Western Michigan, going from 1-11 to 13-1 in four season.
With the 50th win, Fleck became the second-youngest active FBS coach to reach that mark behind Northwestern’s Pat Fitzgerald.
As for Fleck’s goal of being on the “national level,” the 17th-ranked Gophers will face No. 6 Penn State on Nov. 9 at TCF Bank Stadium, and those teams are set to jump in the polls Sunday afternoon.
Fleck will have four seasons remaining on his contract after this year, with the standard being five years for nearly all coaches in good standing. He signed a five-year, $18-million contract in January 2017 and has received one-year rollover extensions in November 2017 and in December 2018.
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His current $3.6 million salary, which goes up $50,000 a year, ranks 11th in the Big Ten and 37th in the nation, per USA Today’s database shared last week.
At 5-0, the Gophers sit in first place in the Big Ten West, but Fleck’s salary is last in the division.
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