Gophers make Badgers a true rivalry game again under Fleck, as stability provides a niche in new era

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — When P.J. Fleck was hired as Minnesota’s head coach nearly nine years ago, there was no message from Gophers fans he received more frequently or poignantly than this: Just beat Wisconsin.

The battle for Paul Bunyan’s Axe was so lopsided then that making the Gophers competitive against the rival Badgers in the longest-running series in major college football was an obvious priority. Minnesota under Fleck has managed to win four of the last seven matchups in stopping a 14-game skid that was the longest losing streak for either side in the rivalry’s 135-year history.

Mission accomplished? Eh, maybe not.

“They’re never satisfied,” Fleck said. “That’s why our fan base is so passionate.”

The Gophers are 6-0 in bowl games with Fleck and will play in one again next month, having only missed the postseason in his first year (2017) and the pandemic-shortened season (2020). But they’ve lost four or more games each year since an 11-2 finish in 2019 landed them 10th in the final Associated Press poll, their highest end-of-season ranking since 1962.

Minnesota is also just 1-8 against Iowa, the other bitter border-state rival that fans want so badly to beat. That includes a 41-3 loss last month. The Gophers (6-5, 4-4), who host the Badgers (4-7, 2-6) on Saturday, were also blown out by top-ranked Ohio State and fifth-ranked Oregon.

The Gophers have established a solid floor for annual on-field performance that’s higher than it’s been in decades. So what’s the ceiling? Cracking that top tier of the Big Ten has only become more difficult in an 18-team conference after the dawn of NIL and revenue sharing.

The answer depends on who’s spelling out the expectations.

“We’re truly still a developmental program. Year 9 has no difference with Year 3, the way that college football has changed. The cultural sustainability allows you to have a chance. You have to continue to stack chances on top of each other,” said Fleck, who’s now the second-longest-tenured coach in the Big Ten behind Iowa’s Kirk Ferentz, who in his 27th year has been with the Hawkeyes far longer than any other coach currently running an FBS program.

This 2025 season has been marked by hefty buyouts owed for premature firings of coaches at schools across the country dissatisfied with their results in this College Football Playoff era.

Never has the “cultural sustainability” that Fleck preaches the value of — with Ferentz and the Hawkeyes setting the gold standard — looked more like a worthy value to lean into for a program that will forever be looking up at Ohio State and the other conference blue bloods from a resources standpoint.

The “Row the Boat” mantra of persistence, sacrifice and purpose has been well-documented, and trademarked. Fleck these days speaks more frequently of a “transformational” philosophy around which to build the program, with service to others at the forefront.

During the week of what’s often the most important game of the season for the Gophers, the entire team assembles to hand out Thanksgiving meals to families in need a couple of nights before the holiday. This year, several players attended the annual fall festival at Annunciation church in Minneapolis as a show of support a couple of weeks after the shooting that killed two students and wounded many more.

“We’ll have certain memories from games that capture us, but you’re going to remember all the lessons you learned that you’re going to go apply in your life,” Fleck said. “Some of those can be from a game, but more than likely they’re from a lot of moments outside of the football field.”

The Badgers, meanwhile, have lost 20 games without a bowl win in three seasons under Luke Fickell, whose seat was hot enough last month that athletic director Chris McIntosh issued a statement confirming Fickell would return next year with a vow that the university would deepen its financial commitment to the sport. Attendance at Camp Randall Stadium has been in decline.

After bottoming out with five straight losses to finish last season and end a power-conference record 22-year streak of bowl game appearances, the Badgers had such a brutal schedule this season that any progress being made was nearly invisible on game days. They’ve faced six of the current top seven teams in the Big Ten, including Ohio State, Indiana and Oregon — first, second and fourth in the latest College Football Playoff rankings.

The defense’s performance has given Fickell and his staff a building block for next year, however, as they continue to refigure their roadmap for success in the new landscape of the sport as one of the middle-of-the-pack programs in a supersized league featuring resource-and-tradition-rich powerhouses Ohio State, Michigan, Oregon, Penn State and USC.

Beating Minnesota on Saturday to take back the axe and finish on a three-game winning streak would give the Badgers a much better feeling to ride into the offseason than the bad vibes that were surrounding them last month.

“Some of the growth and things that we’re doing, we feel like we’re in a really good place,” Fickell said. “But we’ve got to continue to grow.”

Though Minnesota has sought plenty of transfers for key positions in recent seasons, Fleck has maintained a firm belief the Gophers need to have a developmental focus and train freshmen all the way up in the traditional process, even if that risks standout players leaving for more lucrative opportunities at other FBS schools.

There will likely always need to be a developmental aspect of Wisconsin’s program, too, but Fickell has more recently acknowledged the need to rely on the portal to compete in the Big Ten for even an occasional spot in the College Football Playoff.

“It’s really difficult to play at a young age in this league. The maturity, the speed and the size is different,” Fickell said. “Your ability to grow over two or three years is going to continue to be and has been a lot more difficult I believe in college football the last few years.”

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AP Sports Writer Steve Megargee in Madison, Wisconsin, contributed to this report.

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