The Big Ten Conference resembles the Twin Cities roadways the past few months. Under construction. The league should change its logo to an orange barrel.
Year 6 of P.J. Fleck's tenure brings all the elements for a successful Gophers title run
The Gophers have a real chance to win the West, just as the Big Ten's current divisional alignment is likely to change.
September 1, 2022 at 11:29AM
Schools removed conference football schedules beyond the 2022 season from their websites because nobody knows how things will look or function a year from now. The assumption is that the East-West division structure will cease to exist. The mechanism for grouping teams and determining a champion becomes even more complicated when USC and UCLA arrive in 2024.
Even though USC is no longer Pete Carroll's USC, and UCLA is hardly a football powerhouse, their additions will make the Big Ten even more challenging in the annual slog to establish pecking order. Expansion won't water down the product.
P.J. Fleck begins his sixth season as Gophers coach against that backdrop on Thursday night. The West Division looks as wide open as any point in his tenure in Dinkytown.
Will the Gophers rise up and take it?
Unlike the East Division, the West does not boast a universal favorite. Many preseason publications picked Wisconsin to emerge as champion, but a case can be made for Iowa and Minnesota. Purdue believes it belongs in that discussion too.
Each contender has strengths, and each one has unknowns that need to be answered.
Fleck's blueprint has been in place long enough that expectations should stay in this realm — that come November, the Gophers will be in contention. That's an important marker in Fleck's stated goal of building a sustainable program.
The so-called Year Zero feels like a lifetime ago. Quarterback Tanner Morgan often refers to that phase as "The Dig" that required players to navigate, in his words, "muddy waters."
The Gophers are clear of those baby steps. The pandemic tested every program in ways that could not have been anticipated, but the lessons learned made them appreciate normalcy and opportunity.
That's what the Gophers have right now, an opportunity.
Year 6 of any regime should represent a true reflection of what the head coach envisions for his program. The roster is entirely all his recruits. The culture has taken root. Expectations and standards are understood. Growing pains have given way to stability. That maturity within a program lends itself to being assured when adversity hits.
"Every team has its own fingerprint and character and identity, and the 2022 team will as well," Fleck said. "I just look forward to seeing what it is. You have an idea what it is. You just want to see them go out and do it."
Fleck has not masked his enthusiasm for this team since last winter, coinciding with the "Encore Four" — Morgan, Mohamed Ibrahim, Chris Autman-Bell and John Michael Schmitz — announcing they would return for a sixth season.
Not often does a college football team feature a quarterback who could finish his career with 50-plus starts. Morgan had an eventful offseason in advance of his final season: He got married and his former offensive coordinator Kirk Ciarrocca returned to the program. That qualifies as a win-win.
Fleck has not had a better combination of coordinators in his tenure here than Ciarrocca and Joe Rossi. Two proven veterans whom Fleck can trust entirely in overseeing the offense and defense.
The offense will show more creativity under Ciarrocca, which is a low bar considering the run-pass balance last season paid homage to 1960s football.
Rossi's defense became one of the best statistically in college football last season, and he believes this unit can be even deeper with more versatility this season.
Fleck sees the "blueprint of how we should play" in his team. In Year 6, that should be the case. Everything feels more settled and stable, even as the conference undergoes a transformation.
The Gophers have risen to the level of being legitimate contenders in the West in recent years. Right there on the cusp but unable to break through and finish the job. That's the next step in the development of Fleck's program, to fill in that blank line on the résumé.
“I had to change,” Gophers coach P.J. Fleck said of his cautious offensive approach, which looked totally different in Friday’s convincing victory at Wisconsin.
