Row, Row, Row the Boat
Meet P.J. Fleck, the brash young coach promising he’ll row Golden Gopher football back to national prominence.
by Drew Wood
July 20, 2017
Photograph by Micah Kvidt
P.J. Fleck in his office
P.J. Fleck leans over his administrative assistant’s shoulder, his eyes trained on her computer. It’s the stillest he’s been all morning. A scented candle flickers on the corner of her desk—something about flames symbolizing the promise of a new day for the 36-year-old coach who also just likes things to smell nice. Oars clutter the area around them. More symbolism. Early on in his last job, head coach at Western Michigan University, Fleck coined the term “Row the Boat,” a rah-rah mantra that helped him turn that program from 1-11 to 13-1 in just four seasons. He brought it with him to Dinkytown, and Gopher fans haven’t been shy about sending him customized oars to show they’re in his boat. He was even sent a yellow Wenonah canoe with the Row the Boat logo emblazoned on it—never mind that you paddle those.
The Chicago native who played wide receiver for Northern Illinois University before a brief stint with the San Francisco 49ers is known for being high octane, and watching him buzz around the Gibson-Nagurski Football Complex to start his day underscores it. He’s barely been here an hour and he’s already changed his clothes, filmed a promo, done an interview and photo shoot, stopped by a wrestling camp in the fieldhouse to say hi to a kid he met during a pep rally Up North—and he’s got a plane to catch. But right now the coach who even at rest moves—he bounces a Little Tikes basketball against his office wall during our interview—is motionless, focused on the pressing business on his assistant’s computer: shopping for new pants. “This is how Big Ten football coaches do it! They shop for pants on Macys.com,” laughs Fleck before shifting his focus back to the task at hand. “See those? They have stretch. Now, see if you can find some black ones like that.”
Since the U hired him in January, Fleck’s current pants have barely sat. He’s reinvented the culture of the program in the image of Row the Boat, begun assembling what could become one of the best recruiting classes in school history, and moved his family into the same neighborhood as a fellow young Gopher coach, basketball’s Richard Pitino. As his first season looms, we convinced Fleck to finally sit down for a second.
Prior to January you had never set foot on this campus. What were your impressions of this place before you came?
I knew that it was north and the winters had snow. I was aware of the bridge system that connects the entire city. I knew it was an incredibly political state. And I knew there was a ton of [football] tradition. We’ve won seven national championships. But who knows that? Nobody. What I want is for people who don’t even live hereto say, “Oh, I know all about Minnesota.” You’ve got to be able to get that out there. And that’s hard. Look, we haven’t won a Big Ten championship in football in more than 50 years, yet everybody here loves the Gopher football program. Like, everybody loves the Gophers.
Photograph by Brace Hemmelgarn/Minnesota Twins/Getty Images
The Flecks throw out the first pitch at a Twins game.
But our love of the Gophers comes with a hefty dose of Minnesota sports fatalism, right?
There’s that, “We love our Gophers, but we know something’s going to go wrong.” And that’s what I want to change, but it doesn’t happen overnight. [You have to] chip away at it and eventually that doubt turns to “could it be.” Could it be? Then you open the flood gates. I feel like on this campus there’s a ton of water at the gate, it’s just that the dam won’t break yet. It’s getting weak, and we’re here to unleash it. . . . You have to change your mindset to 100 percent, not 99 percent. If I came in here and said, yep, I think there’s a 99 percent chance we can do this thing, well, everybody’s going to focus on that 1 percent. We are going to do it. I can’t promise you when, but I can promise you it will happen. Everybody mistakes my energy for promise now. The energy that I have promises you the process now, every single day—consistency for as long as they’ll have me.
A big part of the process is Row the Boat. What does it mean?
On February 9, 2011, I lost my son to a heart condition. And when you lose a child, you go one of two ways. You either build a wall up and never go back, or you open the door to serving and giving. And that’s what I did. I invented and trademarked Row the Boat.
At the end of the day, Row the Boat is very simple—it’s a never-give-up attitude. The oar is the energy you bring to your life and your family, and it’s the only thing that can move the boat. And when you row a boat, your back’s to the future. When your back’s to the future, you can’t control it. You row in the present, which is the only thing you can control, and you look at the past, which you can’t change but you can learn from. Life is the water. So life will take you where it wants to go if you don’t dictate where you go with the oar.
The second part of the boat is the sacrifice. What are you willing to give up for something that you never had? Our program is about two things: serving and giving. When you serve and give, your boat gets bigger. The bigger your boat gets, the more people you can put in your boat and the more storms you can take on.
The third part is the compass, the direction of your life, and it’s set by who you surround yourself with. If you surround yourself with idiots, you’re going to do idiotic things. If you surround yourself with elite people, you’re going to find a way to become elite. That’s what I did. I got an 18on my ACT. I couldn’t read until third grade. I’m as average as they come. But I surrounded myself with incredible men who changed my life forever.
Judging by your early recruiting successes you’re already rowing like crazy.
We’re ranked in the top eight in the country in recruiting right now. And I don’t care if it’s [early], but we have the third most commitments in the entire country right now. And that’s never happened to the University of Minnesota. Now, I’m not saying that promises that we’ll be number eight on signing day, but we will have one of the better signing classes ever, and this is our first year. [And] we’ve kept the three best players in the state home. We’re going to find our type of players, our type of kids, whose lives are important to them. Academically, athletically, socially, and spiritually.
So now you’ve got all these recruits and all these current players buying into the Row the Boat Gophers, and the mantra is plastered all over campus right next to “Ski-U-Mah,” but what happens to the U’s new brand if you leave?
Just because the 1967 team graduated doesn’t mean you take away everything that team did. This is our culture, and I want to be here as long as people will have me here. Everybody asks, “Well, what if you leave?” Well, what if you fire me? Then what happens to my motto? If [the U] wasn’t going to accept Row the Boat, I wasn’t coming. Western Michigan allowed me to be P.J. Fleck, and I got to raise the culture the way I know how. I don’t fit everywhere. But I know who I am. And I know what I can do. And I know what my staff can do. And I know what our players will be able to do as they continue to grow in this culture.
The U wasn’t the only school interested in you. Why did you take this job?
My wife’s from Michigan and I’m from Chicago, and we left that comfort to take a major risk and believe in something that hasn’t been what we think it can become in the last 50 years. That’s what’s exciting. The jobs that interest me are jobs like this.
Photograph by Gregory Shamus/Getty Images
Fleck raises the MAC championship trophy in 2016, his final year at Western Michigan.
Look at the two jobs I’ve taken. Western Michigan had won two championships in 108 years, and they had to share one of them. All 17 coaches prior to me getting the job at Western Michigan were fired. Not one coach ever took a job somewhere else. Then I took the job here, a place that hasn’t won a championship in half a century.
I love the cultural build. I love the development of something that has been, or hasn’t been, for so long, but dreams of becoming something they can’t even fathom, and connecting the dots and building the bridge between it. And I came here because of those national championships. I came here because of that 1967 team, and the ’60s and ’40s and ’30s and the ’20s. I came here because there is a legacy here. There will be a legacy in the future, but in the present we have to create our future legacy. I like doing something that people don’t think we can do. I love the criticism. I love the doubt. All that does is make me want to do it more.
http://mspmag.com/arts-and-culture/row-row-row-the-boat/
Meet P.J. Fleck, the brash young coach promising he’ll row Golden Gopher football back to national prominence.
by Drew Wood
July 20, 2017
Photograph by Micah Kvidt
P.J. Fleck in his office
P.J. Fleck leans over his administrative assistant’s shoulder, his eyes trained on her computer. It’s the stillest he’s been all morning. A scented candle flickers on the corner of her desk—something about flames symbolizing the promise of a new day for the 36-year-old coach who also just likes things to smell nice. Oars clutter the area around them. More symbolism. Early on in his last job, head coach at Western Michigan University, Fleck coined the term “Row the Boat,” a rah-rah mantra that helped him turn that program from 1-11 to 13-1 in just four seasons. He brought it with him to Dinkytown, and Gopher fans haven’t been shy about sending him customized oars to show they’re in his boat. He was even sent a yellow Wenonah canoe with the Row the Boat logo emblazoned on it—never mind that you paddle those.
The Chicago native who played wide receiver for Northern Illinois University before a brief stint with the San Francisco 49ers is known for being high octane, and watching him buzz around the Gibson-Nagurski Football Complex to start his day underscores it. He’s barely been here an hour and he’s already changed his clothes, filmed a promo, done an interview and photo shoot, stopped by a wrestling camp in the fieldhouse to say hi to a kid he met during a pep rally Up North—and he’s got a plane to catch. But right now the coach who even at rest moves—he bounces a Little Tikes basketball against his office wall during our interview—is motionless, focused on the pressing business on his assistant’s computer: shopping for new pants. “This is how Big Ten football coaches do it! They shop for pants on Macys.com,” laughs Fleck before shifting his focus back to the task at hand. “See those? They have stretch. Now, see if you can find some black ones like that.”
Since the U hired him in January, Fleck’s current pants have barely sat. He’s reinvented the culture of the program in the image of Row the Boat, begun assembling what could become one of the best recruiting classes in school history, and moved his family into the same neighborhood as a fellow young Gopher coach, basketball’s Richard Pitino. As his first season looms, we convinced Fleck to finally sit down for a second.
Prior to January you had never set foot on this campus. What were your impressions of this place before you came?
I knew that it was north and the winters had snow. I was aware of the bridge system that connects the entire city. I knew it was an incredibly political state. And I knew there was a ton of [football] tradition. We’ve won seven national championships. But who knows that? Nobody. What I want is for people who don’t even live hereto say, “Oh, I know all about Minnesota.” You’ve got to be able to get that out there. And that’s hard. Look, we haven’t won a Big Ten championship in football in more than 50 years, yet everybody here loves the Gopher football program. Like, everybody loves the Gophers.
Photograph by Brace Hemmelgarn/Minnesota Twins/Getty Images
The Flecks throw out the first pitch at a Twins game.
But our love of the Gophers comes with a hefty dose of Minnesota sports fatalism, right?
There’s that, “We love our Gophers, but we know something’s going to go wrong.” And that’s what I want to change, but it doesn’t happen overnight. [You have to] chip away at it and eventually that doubt turns to “could it be.” Could it be? Then you open the flood gates. I feel like on this campus there’s a ton of water at the gate, it’s just that the dam won’t break yet. It’s getting weak, and we’re here to unleash it. . . . You have to change your mindset to 100 percent, not 99 percent. If I came in here and said, yep, I think there’s a 99 percent chance we can do this thing, well, everybody’s going to focus on that 1 percent. We are going to do it. I can’t promise you when, but I can promise you it will happen. Everybody mistakes my energy for promise now. The energy that I have promises you the process now, every single day—consistency for as long as they’ll have me.
A big part of the process is Row the Boat. What does it mean?
On February 9, 2011, I lost my son to a heart condition. And when you lose a child, you go one of two ways. You either build a wall up and never go back, or you open the door to serving and giving. And that’s what I did. I invented and trademarked Row the Boat.
At the end of the day, Row the Boat is very simple—it’s a never-give-up attitude. The oar is the energy you bring to your life and your family, and it’s the only thing that can move the boat. And when you row a boat, your back’s to the future. When your back’s to the future, you can’t control it. You row in the present, which is the only thing you can control, and you look at the past, which you can’t change but you can learn from. Life is the water. So life will take you where it wants to go if you don’t dictate where you go with the oar.
The second part of the boat is the sacrifice. What are you willing to give up for something that you never had? Our program is about two things: serving and giving. When you serve and give, your boat gets bigger. The bigger your boat gets, the more people you can put in your boat and the more storms you can take on.
The third part is the compass, the direction of your life, and it’s set by who you surround yourself with. If you surround yourself with idiots, you’re going to do idiotic things. If you surround yourself with elite people, you’re going to find a way to become elite. That’s what I did. I got an 18on my ACT. I couldn’t read until third grade. I’m as average as they come. But I surrounded myself with incredible men who changed my life forever.
Judging by your early recruiting successes you’re already rowing like crazy.
We’re ranked in the top eight in the country in recruiting right now. And I don’t care if it’s [early], but we have the third most commitments in the entire country right now. And that’s never happened to the University of Minnesota. Now, I’m not saying that promises that we’ll be number eight on signing day, but we will have one of the better signing classes ever, and this is our first year. [And] we’ve kept the three best players in the state home. We’re going to find our type of players, our type of kids, whose lives are important to them. Academically, athletically, socially, and spiritually.
So now you’ve got all these recruits and all these current players buying into the Row the Boat Gophers, and the mantra is plastered all over campus right next to “Ski-U-Mah,” but what happens to the U’s new brand if you leave?
Just because the 1967 team graduated doesn’t mean you take away everything that team did. This is our culture, and I want to be here as long as people will have me here. Everybody asks, “Well, what if you leave?” Well, what if you fire me? Then what happens to my motto? If [the U] wasn’t going to accept Row the Boat, I wasn’t coming. Western Michigan allowed me to be P.J. Fleck, and I got to raise the culture the way I know how. I don’t fit everywhere. But I know who I am. And I know what I can do. And I know what my staff can do. And I know what our players will be able to do as they continue to grow in this culture.
The U wasn’t the only school interested in you. Why did you take this job?
My wife’s from Michigan and I’m from Chicago, and we left that comfort to take a major risk and believe in something that hasn’t been what we think it can become in the last 50 years. That’s what’s exciting. The jobs that interest me are jobs like this.
Photograph by Gregory Shamus/Getty Images
Fleck raises the MAC championship trophy in 2016, his final year at Western Michigan.
Look at the two jobs I’ve taken. Western Michigan had won two championships in 108 years, and they had to share one of them. All 17 coaches prior to me getting the job at Western Michigan were fired. Not one coach ever took a job somewhere else. Then I took the job here, a place that hasn’t won a championship in half a century.
I love the cultural build. I love the development of something that has been, or hasn’t been, for so long, but dreams of becoming something they can’t even fathom, and connecting the dots and building the bridge between it. And I came here because of those national championships. I came here because of that 1967 team, and the ’60s and ’40s and ’30s and the ’20s. I came here because there is a legacy here. There will be a legacy in the future, but in the present we have to create our future legacy. I like doing something that people don’t think we can do. I love the criticism. I love the doubt. All that does is make me want to do it more.
http://mspmag.com/arts-and-culture/row-row-row-the-boat/
