I think it’s safe to say the Kills won’t be inviting the Flecks over for the holidays anytime soon. Or vice versa.
During an interview on SiriusXM radio Tuesday, Jerry Kill, the former Minnesota head coach, launched a blistering verbal assault on P.J. Fleck, the current Minnesota head coach. Kill, who had Fleck on his Northern Illinois coaching staff for two seasons in 2009 and 2010, stepped down as the Gophers’ coach in October of 2015 amidst health concerns and was replaced by his long-time lieutenant Tracy Claeys, who was fired amidst controversy a year later.
Kill blasted the university’s decision to rid themselves of Claeys at the time -- “I won’t be stepping foot back in the stadium and I won’t be stepping foot back at the university,” the coach said -- even as he was initially supportive of Fleck taking over the program. Per Kill in this week’s interview, he spoke to Fleck once since he took over the Gophers, and “it wasn’t good. ... That’s the last time.”
(Writer’s note: come for that, stay for the gratuitous and unsolicited scot at Jimbo Fisher.)Do I still root for the Gophers? I do. Do I enjoy him running up and down the sideline? No. Do I think that he’s about the players? No. He’s about himself. You can’t tell me. You’ve watched him. You listen to his interview, you think he thinks about the players?
I just lost a lot of respect. It’s kind of like when Jimbo Fisher left Florida State and went to A&M, and [Rick] Trickett, who’d been with him for years and years and years, he never even gave him a call. He just takes off and goes to A&M, doesn’t call. Those kinds of things disappoint me in people. So I guess maybe disappointment is a better way to put P.J. Disappointed on how he handled some things.
Kill seemed to lay a lot of the blame for Fleck’s shifting personality at the feet of Greg Schiano, who had Fleck on his Rutgers staff from 2010-11 and also brought him to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers the following season, as well as a divorce from his first wife.
He coached with me, but after that, he changed a lot. I’ll just be honest with you guys. People that have known him before — When he got with Schiano, his personality changed a lot. And I knew his first wife, and he just changed a bunch. And then once he became a head coach, I mean, I helped him get the job at Western Michigan, and I just think sometimes, ego gets carried away.
And when he went into Minnesota and treated the people the way he treated my guys and telling ‘em he had to go in and completely change the culture, and it was a bad culture and bad people, you know, he made it sound like we didn’t know what we were doing, and I took it personal. You just don’t treat people that have been with you and helped you career and you don’t even talk to him, you know, once you get the job.
Speaking of wives, and while Fleck himself hasn’t publicly responded to the verbal blasts, Fleck’s current wife posted a message of forgiveness on Twitter Wednesday morning that may or may not have been in reference to the situation, a tweet that her husband retweeted from his personal account.
— Heather Fleck (@hfleck10) February 20, 2019