29 August 2023
Gophers Athletics Director Mark Coyle had a letter sitting his desk Tuesday from a long-time season-ticket holder. He was preparing a personalized response, but first sat down with the Pioneer Press to address hot topics at the U of M, the Big Ten Conference and across college sports.
Coyle shared what success might look like for head coach P.J. Fleck’s football team with one of the most challenging schedules in the country this fall, the expanding Big Ten Conference and how the U is doing with name, image and likeness (NIL) programs. Plus, Coyle responds to how he was linked to the open AD job at the University of Southern California and what he needs to see from men’s basketball coach Ben Johnson in his third season this winter.
Here’s a condensed version of the interview:
P.J. Fleck has won nine or more games in every full season since 2019. The standard has been raised, but obviously the schedule is much more difficult this year. What does success look like for the football team in 2023?
(Coyle reiterates the five things he looks at with each team: student-athlete experience, compliance, academics and fund raising/public relations.)
“The fifth piece of that puzzle is winning. Obviously, winning is a big tenant at this level. We have high expectations. We have a lot of opportunities in front of us this year. … We’ve got a (tough) schedule. In terms of success, I think every year you’re talking about the opportunity to get to postseason play and play in a bowl game. Obviously, our goal is to win the (Big Ten) West and get to Indianapolis (to play in the Big Ten championship game)and then see what the next steps are. Those expectations haven’t changed.
With the Big Ten expanding to 18 teams, how do you see competitiveness for football? Are there going to be divisions or pods?
Right now, we’ve not had any conversations about going back to divisions or pods or anything like that.
We had a (Minnesota) head coaches meeting a few weeks ago and we talked about how do we define competitive success at Minnesota? … A year ago, we had a Jeremy Foley, who is the AD emeritus at the University of Florida. … Jeremy talks all the time about being relevant. And by being relevant, you’re competing in postseason opportunities. And obviously, you want to win a Big Ten championship in any sport. But with 18 teams, it’s a monster.
On NIL, Dinkytown Athletes doesn’t share vital financial information. How are you able to gauge kind of where that collective is and how it stacks up against competitors?
… This isn’t a sprint, it’s a marathon. And I think you’ve seen a lot of collectives that busted out right away, and they raised all this money, and then they disappear. I think we’ve been very cautious at Minnesota, working with our office of general counsel and our campus to make sure we’re doing it the right way.
We’ve not had much guidance from the NCAA on the national level. So we’ve tried to be very strategic in how we move forward with our NIL. I’m very pleased with the money we’ve raised. … (NIL is) not going away. It’s an important part of our future. Some donors are completely turned off by NIL. They … want to give money towards scholarships … towards facilities. That’s all important, and that is awesome. But in NIL, that’s a huge piece of recruiting. It wasn’t supposed to be, but it is. And so if you want to have good teams and good success, you need a strong NIL program.
I feel very comfortable that our coaches have not made false promises to recruits. When we recruit kids to come to Minnesota, we don’t make false promises and say, Hey, (John Doe,) when you come here and play sports, you’re gonna get X amount of dollars. We don’t make any false promises. We encourage them to talk to kids on the team, and they can tell them what type of NIL opportunities exist out there.
What would you like to see from either legislative oversight or NCAA ground rules or framework on NIL?
… I cannot tell you how much hope (new NCAA President Charlie Baker) has given me. He talks about needing transparency. There’s got to be some sort of national registry.
… We’re hearing that school X is offering this and school Y is offering that and school Z.
… We need transparency, where people can understand what the actual dollars are because, I think, we’re hurting each other right now. There’s so much false information out there.
You were linked to the once-vacant Athletics Director job at USC. What was that connection?
It’s interesting. My name surfaces and there’s media reports. When jobs open up, search firms contact me. I was contacted about that opportunity. And I explained to them that my contract situation here in Minnesota, which we feel very comfortable with, and very fair with, I explained to him that I have a son, who actually (Tuesday was) his first day as a junior in high school at Cretin-Derham Hall. … After that conversation, I did not hear back from anybody at the search firm. …
As you know, Minnesota has been home to us. My mom is three hours away. We’ve got family in Chicago. … We’re very excited and feel very blessed to be here at Minnesota.
On men’s basketball coach Ben Johnson, you talk about all the elements you want to see from a program. But his team has had two straight last-place finishes in the Big Ten. From a competitive standpoint, what do you need to see from Ben in Year 3?
Well, not acceptable. If Ben was sitting right here, he would tell you we’ve had this conversation multiple times: You need to win at this level. … I really appreciate the way Ben is doing things. Again, we talked about the sprint and the marathon mentality. He has been very deliberate. We’ve talked about this, how he wanted to build this program the right way. Very similar to P.J. P.J. talked about, we’ve got to remember when he got here, we talked about bringing in young kids, building it and letting it mature.
… We have a younger team. Obviously, our freshmen are now sophomores, Dawson Garcia is back. I like the freshmen that he brought in, so there’s no doubt in my mind it will be more competitive and we’ll have some more wins this year. … You’ve got to compete at a high level, and we have every expectation that we’ll do that.”
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