Barring an unforeseen turnaround, the Gophers football program’s best years are several decades in the past.
Their seven national titles -- five of them between 1934 and 1941, and the most recent in 1960 -- sometimes seem to serve as an anchor for the modern-day reality of the program.
It’s not realistic to think the Gophers will compete for seven more national titles. A modern day dream might be to have a team every five years that’s good enough to chase a spot in the expanded 12-team college football playoff.
That reality tends to obscure, though, the relatively solid footing the program has found in recent decades. If we can forget about most of the Tim Brewster Era -- a memory trick most of us would enjoy -- we find a program that has been downright decent for most of the last quarter-century.
That includes the recent run for head coach P.J. Fleck, who produced 29 total wins in the three full seasons between 2019 and 2022. The program has been pretty good. The facilities are, dare we say, elite?
There are better jobs Fleck could realistically leave for, but not more than a handful.
But yes, old habits die hard. And every job opening that produces a list of potential candidates with Fleck’s name on it becomes a source of worry to some fans -- as Patrick Reusse and I talked about on Monday’s Daily Delivery podcast.
The latest proof was a 24-hour tempest in a teapot: On Friday, we learned UCLA coach Chip Kelly was bolting to become Ohio State’s offensive coordinator. Fleck was listed as a top potential replacement at UCLA by several outlets.
