PJ was put in front of the media, here’s what he had to say about his 2025 team
Representatives from the Gopher football program are in Las Vegas this week as part of the 2025 Big Ten Media days. Darius Taylor, Koi Perich, Drake Lindsay and Anthony Smith are all there representing the program and facing the Big Ten media.
Yesterday, PJ Fleck was on the podium for his 15 minutes. Here are some of the highlights of what he spoke about.
He starts with thanking everybody. I mean basically EVERYBODY. His family, he AD, the Big Ten, Las Vegas, donors, former players…everybody. This is the first 3 minutes of the video.
The next 12 minutes were about the Gopher program and their focus for 2025.
“For us, we talk about ourselves being the ultimate life program. I know there’s changing aspects of college athletics, but they’re still student-athletes, and until somebody tells me differently, we are going to run the best life collegiate program in America, and that’s what we’ll continue to do.”
“Not enough people talk about that, they’re student-athletes still. It doesn’t mean that in the transformational programs and things like that, there aren’t transactions, there are transactions within the transformational programs. I’ve had to learn that and adapt to that as well.”
I do appreciate this. College athletics has become very transactional, but it is important to note that they are still student athletes. They are still at a time in their life when they are away from home for the first time in their lives and learning how to become adults. And continuing to have that as a part of the program and the culture, is important.
Creating a culture of connected individuals helps raise the ceiling because it becomes about more than just the transaction. And he used one word to describe this team, “multipliers.”
“Groups just add. A plus B plus C plus D. They just add it, just like you’re adding out of the portal, adding to your team. Can you connect that team? This team has done an unbelievable job of amplifying the talents we have around each other and multiplying those talents.”
Fleck then transitioned from talking about multipliers to talking about the four individuals they brought with them to Vegas for media days. This section of his address had some fun anecdotes, but it was not terribly insightful for what we can expect from them this season. But their themes for 2025 were.
1 – Be Delusional
“It means no cap on the jar. No limitations. Dreaming big. With the College Football Playoff where it is, as Indiana showed last year, anybody can get there. If we’re delusional enough to know we can do that, we can get there. When you’re somewhere long enough, the standards are one thing, but then you continue to raise the expectations, and that’s what we want to continue to do. We want to do that off the field as well. We want to be delusional as husbands, as fathers, as brothers, as sons, as members of our community. Take the cap off the jar, limitless.”
Again, incorporating the development of these young men along with expectations on the football field.
2 – Get Two
“There’s two things that connect the locker room more than anything, it’s empathy and gratitude. If you do not have those two things, you do not have a connected locker room. And our players are incredibly grateful, and they have empathy. They can walk a mile in somebody else’s shoes. They’re willing to do that for each other. So the get two piece is really, really critical.”
This one ties everything together in my opinion. This is the development of more life skills but it also creates a connected locker room and a connected locker room allows you to multiply talents, not just add.
3 – Give More
“We were 8-5 last year, but the great thing about Minnesota now is, when you’re 8-5, you’re like, yeah, all right. That’s our sixth straight in a row bowl game with our team being there in technically seven years. That’s tremendous, but we’ve got to continue to raise the expectations. We were 3-4 in one-possession games last year. People always say, how do you improve that? You’ve got to win situational football. You’ve got to be better in two minute. You’ve got to be better in four minute.
That’s what we’ve been focusing on since January, if we can give a little bit more and we can flip those, just like in 2019, 6-1 in one-possession games, that’s how you win 11 games in the Big Ten. There are nine conference games. It is a hard league. You have got to be able to find ways to win those one-possession games. We’re a missed field goal, an onside kick offsides, and a fourth and three away from having that flip to 6-1 and being in the College Football Playoff. That’s what our players know, and that’s what they believe.”
It takes a little more and finding ways to win the game of inches, turns good seasons into great seasons.
The season will be here very soon! Here’s hoping that this team of multipliers puts together something special.