Minnesota coach P.J. Fleck fired back at allegations of a toxic culture within his program, calling the allegations "baseless" at Big Ten Media Days. The seventh-year coach added that no complaints were reported during his first six years through "around a half dozen anonymous reporting avenues that players can go to if they have an issue."
Fleck's remarks came in response to a Wednesday report from Front Office Sports describing Minnesota football as "fraught with intimidation and toxicity."
"We have full support of our athletic director Mark Coyle and our university leadership," Fleck said. "This is a similar story that gets pedaled every single year."
The FOS report detailed a system devised by Fleck called the "Fleck Bank," in which players could rack up goodwill to circumvent the repercussions of failed drug tests and other violations. Fleck said the "Fleck Bank" was mostly used in 2017 and 2018 as an analogy for investing in the program.
"There was no currency ever exchanged, there were no coins that ever existed," Fleck said. "It was an analogy simply to explain an investment for life, a life less lesson of investment. Simply that. No one ever got out of any type of punishment for that."
Fleck is 44-27 (26-26 Big Ten) with the Gophers after a four-year run at Western Michigan. His enthusiasm and "Row the Boat" philosophy, replete with slogans and acronyms, is a hallmark of his identity as coach.
That culture led some anonymous former players quoted in the FOS report to call Fleck's program "a cult." Among the other allegations, Fleck was said to have used intense physical activity and workouts as a form of discipline.
"We do not use physical activity to discipline our player at the University of Minnesota, and we have never done that," Fleck said. "Our players do things like, they wake up early and clean the weight room. Whatever you did, you watch a video on that. If you were late to class, you watch a video on tardiness. You then write your professor a later. Those are the disciplines we actually have within our program."
The Gophers open the season Aug. 31 against Nebraska and face a challenging schedule that features a game at North Carolina and cross-division contests against Ohio State and Michigan.
"Our program and culture is proven to work on and off the field and is always done in a first-class manner," Fleck said. "We're one of the most transparent programs in the country. There are tons of testimonials from past, present and even future Gophers to support and prove that. My energy needs to be on the 2023 football team, and that only, and not the baseless allegations."
In 2018, CBS Sports obtained a memorandum in which a former employee warned the Minnesota board of regents of a toxic culture within the program. The person said if "issues … continue to go unaddressed and things do not change, the health and welfare of student-athletes at the University of Minnesota are in jeopardy."
The former employee alleged Minnesota medical staffers illegally prescribed Toradol, a powerful anti-inflammatory that reduces pain. The ex-staffer also alleged the school's athletic medical team violated NCAA Independent Medical Care best practices. A subsequent investigation by Husch Blackwell, a well-known independent firm, was spurred by the concerns raised in that memorandum. The investigation largely exonerated those accused of improper conduct while crediting Minnesota's athletic training staff for best practices.
