After losing to Purdue by 28 points on the road, Minnesota had a much-needed bye week to prepare for one of its most important games every season: a rivalry showdown with Iowa for Floyd of Rosedale. The Gophers have lost to the Hawkeyes by a combined score of 72-17 over the last two seasons, and the pressure is on P.J. Fleck to lead his team to a better performance.

Fleck’s struggles against Iowa go well beyond the last two seasons. He is 1-8 in the series since he was hired by Minnesota in 2017. Fleck has brought a new level of consistency to the program, but his lack of success against Iowa is becoming too hard to ignore. He’s treating this year’s game as a completely new matchup against a completely new team.

“I think you’ve got to look at it as this year’s team. That’s all we’re going to focus on: this year’s team. That’s the way we handle every opponent,” he said at his press conference on Monday.

“There’s consistency, and there’s carryover based on tendencies and coordinators, but if you’re looking at things and really focusing on things two years ago, three years ago, with the way college football is designed right now, and how fast it turns over and roster turnover, and coaches turn over, you gotta take it for what it is.” Again, there’s things that you will go back into the well to study, but the ’26 team is the focus.”

Longtime Iowa head coach Kirk Ferentz has dominated Fleck since 2017. Minnesota should always be compared to programs like Iowa, and Ferentz has been the model of consistency in Midwest college football since he was hired in 1999.

“I think he’s probably, arguably, one of the greatest college football coaches of all time,” Fleck said. “You could make an argument for that, definitely in the Big Ten. When you look at him, the consistency that he has won with… He has been doing it for so long. You can’t just talk about like ‘since COVID’ with him.”

“You can go all the way back, and how much the game has changed every five years, and it has evolved and changed. If there’s one person in college football who has changed with it the most, it has been him. It might look as consistent, and just, ‘Hey, this is what they do.’ But they’ve changed a lot internally based on how the game has changed.”

College football had the BCS system in place when Ferentz began his run in Iowa City. The four-team College Football Playoff was implemented in 2014 and expanded to 12 teams in 2024. It will expand again to 24 teams in 2027. You’ve been able to count on Iowa winning between eight and 10 regular-season games nearly every season under Ferentz despite all the changes.

It sounds like Fleck fully understands that Iowa is the goal for programs like Minnesota. It’s hard to think Minnesota can ever crack into the Big Ten’s top tier with programs like Ohio State, Michigan and Oregon, but reaching Iowa’s consistency is an entirely realistic goal.

“People always ask, ‘Is it harder to build it or sustain it? I said it’s both, but when you’re sustaining it for 28 years, the consistency of what you pour out of that program is what he has done. I think that’s why it’s one of the greatest feats,” Fleck continued. “He is one of the greatest coaches of all time, ’cause he has done it with such consistency. Not just at one place where you’re supposed to go 12-0 every single year… I know it’s a rivalry game, but give credit where credit is due.”

Fleck has always taken the route of talking up every opponent he faces in pregame and postgame press conferences. It’s fascinating to hear him speak so highly of Ferentz before their 10th meeting in the rivalry. Fleck and Ferentz are the two longest-tenured head coaches in the Big Ten, and Saturday feels like a game that could define both teams’ 2026 seasons in the ongoing chaos of college football.

Source: Yahoo Sports