Beer release, coupled with P.J. Fleck’s comments, becomes big help for Gophers’ players

An imperfect storm has benefited Gophers student-athletes this week.

Dinkytown Athletes told the Pioneer Press on Friday the NIL collective’s specialty beer release — unintentionally coupled with football coach P.J. Fleck’s jarring plea for more funding — has produced a big response over the past three days.

DTA said it has netted more new memberships over the past three days than it had gained across the previous three months. There is little context, however, because DTA does not share internal data for competitive reasons — read, negative recruiting between other athletic programs.

Some Gophers fans in Dinkytown Athletes were upset by Fleck’s comments on KFAN on Tuesday. The comments can be summarized down to: If there isn’t more funding for players, “we will be a Triple-A ball club for somebody else.”

Coming off a shocking loss to Northwestern last week, Fleck had been responding to a question about phenom freshman tailback Darius Taylor. Fleck steered the answer to how he feels previous players have left for not getting paid enough through the NIL outfit.

The NCAA allows college athletes to benefit monetarily off their name, image and likeness (NIL). Each college is trying to quickly move into this space with new enterprises and revenue streams.

The day after Fleck’s comments, Dinkytown Athletes released its Duck, Duck Beer via Gray Duck Spirits at Stub & Herbs.

Since then, fans have been raising cans of the “American light lager” to Taylor (and others) in the U dive bar, sharing on social media that they are buying it for tailgating before the homecoming game against Louisiana on Saturday.

Dinkytown Athletes said the beer launch from Gray Duck has created more “awareness” of its organization and its cause than any other previous campaign since the collective launched in summer 2022. The Minnesota-made liquor company said it is providing 20 percent of sales of Duck Duck Beer and “fun pack” of seltzer sales to Dinkytown Athletes.

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