Fleck signs “7 year” contract extension with Minnesota!

The silly season for coach movement officially began (sorry, Rutgers) on Sunday when Florida State fired Willie Taggart, and Minnesota and Fleck decided they wanted absolutely no part of it by agreeing to a new 7-year contract. The key numbers: Minnesota currently leads Iowa and wisconsin by 2 games in the West.

Wait. The contract. Yeah. The new deal calls for Fleck to make $4.6m a year, which is far less than he deserves when you consider that Jeff Brohm makes $6.6m and Scott Frost steals $5m. But in a world where those two don’t completely destroy the curve, the number is reasonable and realistic. According to the USA Today college football coaching salary list, it slides him into 21st in the country between Stanford’s David Shaw ($4.613m) and Ryan Day ($4.5 in his first year as a HC, but will surely be corrected), and 7th in the B1G behind the aforementioned overpaid clowns, Jim Harbaugh, James Franklin, Kirk Ferentz, and Pat Fitzgerald. Once again, that feels about right.

The two key figures to keep track of are the buyout, which is initially for $10m, and the big bump in assistant pay. How much of a bump? An additional $1.05m for 2020, which is about 25% of the current pool. Depending on how fast the buyout drops off and if there’s a rolling extension every year that keeps the buyout roughly where it is to protect both Fleck and the University, this is a great deal for everyone involved.

The only losers here? Florida State fans who thought Fleck would be interested in cleaning up their absolute disaster of a football program, my buddy who made a couple great photoshops of Chief Osceola with oars instead of spears, and everyone else in the West. Fleck’s Gophers have slaughtered everyone in the division in the last 12 months except Iowa and Northwestern, and those two are conveniently appearing on the schedule in the very near future. With this extension, the team can focus on the remaining schedule starting with the very highly anticipated showdown with #5 Penn State on Saturday and Fleck can go about poaching some recruits from across the conference now that teams can’t try to claim he’s leaving this offseason. Good luck, y’all.