Former Gopher Players are Claiming Fleck Runs an Abusive Program
Sorry, I can’t get my copy and paste feature to work in the text if the article.
A quick summary, three former player from his first recruiting class are claiming Fleck runs abusing practices. Two of them had their careers end with injury and one got so anxious about the idea of practice that he would wake up and throw up every morning and lost 50 pounds at which time he was asked to leave.
All three players haven’t heard from the program at all since they left.
Better hope that Prof. Stahl has tenure otherwise he will be gone on sabbatical real soon.
He was demoted after he went to the AD. The U says his position was eliminated. He’s since resigned.
Probably because he has multiple "awful" ratings on Rate My Professor. It's a shame what his students had to go through.
Are 3 players from 4 yrs ago a problem? This is probably an isolated incident, but we can only hope. I don't like Fleck. Considering they took a player, our medical staff didn't clear, and he completed his carer without incident tells you medical staffs are't always right or wrong.
The NFL also took the guy. Just saying.
Agreed.
And I know this will sound very "get off my lawn" - but nothing I read in that article seems all that unusual. Walked on at a MAC program in 1992 and it was one of the toughest things I have ever done.
Tough practices? Check.
Abuse? Didn't see it then, and don't see it here.
Bo Fleck?
Well yeah... That boat ain't gonna row itself...
Did the U uphold the students’ s’ship thru degree completion?
He'll be fine as long as they win a lot of games. If they start losing the whole thing will get really ugly.
Tracy Claeys was doing pretty well though wasn't he? I can't remember what he was fired for though.
I forget - Was he the walrusy-looking fella who ate the ice cream bar on the sideline during a snow storm like he was at BBQ in Texas on a hot day?
You're thinking of Jerry Kill.
Claeys took over as interim for Kill who retired for health reasons. Claeys was then made permanent head coach until:
> On January 3, 2017, he was fired after public outrage over a team-led boycott in response to suspensions of 10 Minnesota football players accused of having a role in a sexual assault case. Claeys was on-record stating he "supports his players 1st amendment rights!"
How in the world does this keep happening? The guy eating the Dilly Bar was not Jerry Kill. It was not Tracy Claeys.
It was Dan Lehman, who did phone tech support for the Gophers' football team.
Let's just all agree that the Minnesota football team has employed a plethora of Wilford Brimley-style coaches and that's even apparent to the most casual of fans. Now I could really go for an ice cream bar...
Totally Lehman. He was wearing shorts as I recall
How in the world does this keep happening?
Because 1) most of us don't really care who it was and 2) it's funnier if it was Claeys.
Yup, that was him
I was prepared to be skeptical, but the details here do seem pretty bad for Fleck and the administration.
I'm not in any way condoning this but I can assure you that every player on Bo's 69 team has stories that make Fleck's practices look like a picnic scene on "Anne with an E".
That first year was brutal.
And, FWIW, it's pretty common for first year HCs to absolutely put the team through a meat-grinder practice to weed out the players who dont buy into the new guy's regime. Again, not condoning this but it isnt as uncommon as people might think.
Are we such pussy's or is cancel culture so great that you have to qualify your statements in a blog? What in the world is going on, where you just stating your opinion has come to this?
Logged in just to say fuck you.
*pussies
Get some new buzzwords. People use qualifiers in everyday conversation.
When, exactly, did wide swaths of our society appear to lose the ability to pluralize simple words? Suckaz.
oh, hey, "pussies" and "cancel culture." might as well go for trifecta and toss in something racist or homophobic.
THAT'S the post you decide to go off on?
Yeah, you're right about all of that. It was a different time and people were much more tolerant of that type of treatment than today. There was no social media, but even if there was, players probably would have kept their mouth shut. Now, any type of alleged mistreatment will get "out there" in no time, for better or worse.
I mean, back when I played sports, coaches told you that you were weak if you took a water break.
We have mostly moved on from that Neanderthal type mind-set in coaching. I'm not going to claim it doesn't work, because some coaches have proven they can coach that way. But I think time has shown us that there are other ways to be a "tough coach" without doing stuff that might actually hurt your players.
Exactly. Football today is no less “tough” than it was in yesteryear. You can instill discipline and toughness without resorting to mental and physical abuse. Anyone who defends “the old days” is just old.
I'm not even talking about that. I'm talking about MGrow having to say he doesn't condone the behavior, when we don't even know if any of it is true.
Sorry - I guess I just assumed everyone here was aware of Bo's first year practices because HE WROTE IT HIMSELF IN HIS BOOK (see Don's post below)
But you might be right. How can we be sure Bo knows what Bo did during that year?
Sheesh.
I'm not talking about Bo's practices, I'm talking about you not "condoning" what "allegedly" happened at Minnesota.
pretty common for first year HCs to absolutely put the team through a meat-grinder practice to weed out the players who dont buy into the new guy's regime. Again, not condoning this but it isnt as uncommon as people might think.
Shesh
What a terrible burden, to have to think about what you say. How will our culture survive the crushing expectations placed on people to not be complete assholes all the time? Truly we are living in 1939 Germany.
"I came in and instituted an extremely rigorous summer training program; there had been none and everyone told me it wouldn't work, that people wouldn't go for that in Ann Arbor. The team had a reputation for having good talent, but being soft. I did have some attrition, but the real football players stayed. I was harder on that Michigan team than I ever was on any other group... I killed them. I ran them into the ground."
"I was prepared for some attrition when I became Michigan's coach. I can honestly say we did not lose a guy who really could have helped us. I didn't lose any sleep over anyone who quit that spring..."
Meet Michigan's Meanest Man
Sports Illustrated, November 16, 1970
"As Bo says, he runs a tough football program," Dierdorf explains. "Run and run and run. The track team doesn't run as much as we do. And their coach isn't as mean, either."..."When something goes wrong during a practice a whistle blows and Schembechler roars in, wielding words like whips. Betts waits until the point is well made and the rage has ebbed."....
"This is a rough tough hard-nosed football program," says last year's Coach of the Year. "We run their tails off. Maybe three miles of sprints on Mondays. Then Tuesday and Wednesday we really hit. We bring the freshmen in and we go after them for a full two hours. But this is an easy team to coach. They are bright kids and we have some fun. If they don't like something, they know they can say it. That doesn't mean I'll change. But if I don't, I'll be sure they know the reason why."
Except for his open-door policy, Schembechler might have lost it all last year when he arrived from Miami of Ohio to replace Bump Elliott, who became assistant athletic director. He called in the team and said there was nothing ahead but hard work, a lot of hard work.
"And he changed everything," said Newell. "I remember I didn't like that and I didn't like him. I thought it was cool the way Bump ran things."
The Monday before 1969's opening game with Vanderbilt, Schembechler called in his defense. He wanted to know what was wrong. There was a lot of talk but nobody really said anything. Players began to leave. Finally the only player left was Newell.
"Pete," said Schembechler, "for 15 minutes you've been standing there telling me everything would be all right. But you're lying to me. What is the trouble?"
Newell looked at him. As he remembered later, he was sweating like a soaked sponge. "O.K.," he said, "I'll tell you. I think you are an s.o.b."
"Fine," said Schembechler. "Now tell me why."
Yeah, but ‘we did it this way in the 60s’ is a pretty ridiculous standard 60 years later
No one is claiming otherwise. Don's post is in response to the poster who questioned my statement that Bo's first year practices were brutal. He said "how do we even know it's true" so Don posted Bo's own words on that first year.
I find it interesting that I posted without any comment whatsoever that Bo's first year practices were brutal and it was interpreted as me offering an opinion when none was offered at all. Don simply cut and pasted Bo's own words without comment and it was interpreted as an endorsement.
There's a difference between being an SOB running extremely tough and demanding practices and being an SOB who does stuff like:
• Repeatedly striking/hitting his own players (Frank Kush)
• Forcing players to watch gruesome and/or horror films while eating (DJ Durkin)
• Cutting a bull's testicles off during practice (Jackie Sherrill)
To my knowledge, Bo Schembechler never did any of this stuff.
To my knowledge, Bo Schembechler never did any of this stuff.
No.
From what we're finding out Bo looked the other way regarding abuse.
I find it interesting that I posted without any comment whatsoever that Bo's first year practices were brutal and it was interpreted as me offering an opinion when none was offered at all
Where you came up with this, I'll never know. I questioned the fact that you felt the need to qualify it by saying you didn't "condone" the behavior.
Not you. Mackbru & Detroit Blue both did.
You simply questioned why I parsed my words so carefully. The answer to that question is I knew that many would automatically assume I support treating players like that because I'm from that generation.
Agreed.
And a tough practice doesn't equate to abuse.
My daughter, a soccer player, has asthma, and suffers from such shyness and anxiety that she sometimes used to have episodes of extreme disorientation accompanied by shortness of breath at the outset of games, especially important ones. She was also the runner up for local player of the year two years ago, and broke all of her high school's scoring and assist records.
In watching her coaches I've come to believe two things--like almost all kids, she wants to succeed and please her coaches, to get better and tougher. The question for a coach, then, is how do you make that happen. I see no evidence that humiliating or hurting a kid, any kid, achieves the desired result. The goal becomes pushing individuals and teams to expand their limits and improve. That DOES involve making them uncomfortable, pushing them, and it does involve a lot of insight. Kids are very different in their responses to coaching strategies. If you're getting yelled at at home you may respond to yelling on the field; if people are using reason to motivate you, you may tell an abusive coach to kiss your ass.
Most coaches are just folks, rarely geniuses. Really good ones are rare. And sports attract sadists, older people who like to lord it over younger people. Watch out for your kids. If you applaud them being hurt you're an idiot. Happily, that model is all but dead. We're evolving. Fewer kids are being treated like shit at home; fewer are accepting it on the field.
I'm so happy your daughter thrived despite the anxiety-induced physical symptoms. It sounds like she was a warrior to fight through those episodes.
Your daughter's experience with anxiety/shyness describes me perfectly. I suffered shortness of breath at the beginning of most basketball games early in my high school years, especially the obviously important games. It was horrible. I thought I was suffocating on the court. The moment would pass, usually by the middle of the 1st quarter. When I felt it starting, I always prayed for a foul and free throw attempts to help me calm down and truly catch my breath. After being diagnosed with an anxiety disorder 30+ years later, those episodes finally made sense to me. The worst thing? The varsity basketball coach (I was playing JV at the time) openly teased me about it and ridiculed it as a weakness. I never understood why I was being ridiculed in front of my teammates for something that was out of my control. I disliked that coach immensely.
"I see no evidence that humiliating or hurting a kid, any kid, achieves the desired result."
I think that can work only if a kid is from a really *#$%ed-up family where "tough love" occurs regularly. In that case, of course, the overall picture is dismal and no one should be concerned whether the coaching is working.
"And, FWIW, it's pretty common for first year HCs to absolutely put the team through a meat-grinder practice to weed out the players who dont buy into the new guy's regime."
I'm not sure the average fan understands this. Most players aren't upset to see a failing coach go--many are supportive of the change, even if they like the coach. But all players have strong opinions about what needs to be changed for the program to be successful and it is never, ever themselves on an individual level that feels they need to change. It's always the guys around them. It's always someone else's fault. This is just human nature. So new coaches fire almost everyone in sight and attempt to run off whatever "cancerous" elements they feel are on the team.
The new rules regarding transfers might help as new coaches might just tell players they don't want that they should enter the portal.
I agree it's not uncommon for first-year coaches, and there's absolutely a place for "tough" practices. I also think, if you asked guys from that first Bo team, if they thought it was a bit extreme and guys got needlessly injured they'd agree with that statement as well, even if they understood and respected the coach.
I do think one of the more significant changes in college athletics these past 10-15 years is that athletes feel more comfortable speaking out about behavior they disagree with. Obviously (as this thread exemplifies) that can lead to differing opinions on the quality of those comments, but decades ago coaches and programs had so much control over how their programs were viewed and what information got out that abuses were allowed to fester (and not to re-litigate the Anderson situation but there's evidence Bo ignored that as well). For better or for worse (IMO for the better) that doesn't happen as much, and people are held accountable for their behavior, even if it winds up being deemed "fine".
Reading about the players who had to medically retire, I can't help but think about St-Juste.
Makes me wonder if the Minnesota doctors saw something that indicated we were too cautious with him or if Fleck said IDGAF and wanted to win at all costs, even if this kid never walked straight again.
This is a huge stretch. No one is putting their career on the line for a (at the time) back up CB. People forget that once you start making these exceptions on your morals once, it happens over and over again and always ends poorly, just a matter of when, not if.
BSJ was processed in a back door type of way, they used the medical reasoning for something that wasn’t serious, because they thought they had a better player lined up. Unfortunately, Michigan didn’t have the better player, and BSJ used it as motivation.
Based on this article Fleck put his career on the line (by forcing injured players to practice) for a few freshmen that never saw the field. Not sure why he wouldn't do the same for St Juste.
Is it known that he was 'processed' at Michigan? Genuinely asking, if you have a source or anything. I always interpreted the BSJ situation as gray but wasn't aware of any confirmation he was processed.