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An anonymous former player is pushing back on P.J. Fleck's denial of fostering a toxic culture as head coach of Minnesota football. Responding to the embattled coach's insistence at Big 10 media day that he never used extra grueling workouts as a means of punishment for players, a former Gopher is calling B.S.
“The fact he is saying he has never used workouts as punishment is such bull,” the anonymous former player said of Fleck, per A.J. Perez of Front Office Sports.
The source wasn't among the six former Gophers previously interviewed by Front Office Sports who, along with former staffers, alleged Minnesota football's toxic environment under Fleck. The player contacted FOS following the publication of Wednesday's story.
“Just so everybody knows, in punishing our football team, that word ‘punishing,’ in fact, our athletic department has taken over our disciplinary-type actions,” Fleck said Thursday. “We do not use physical activity to discipline our players at the University of Minnesota. And we have never done that.”
The latest source recalled one of his teammates getting ill and coughing up blood during a “culture” workout, the supposed name for extra intense sessions allegedly doled out as punishment.
“One of my teammates was feeling super sick and was coughing up blood,” the player said. “He went to the trainers beforehand and said he could not [get through it because] of how he felt. The trainers said it was nothing and forced him to do the workout. The trainers were too scared of Fleck to say anything.”
Though Fleck called the initial report “baseless,” he also copped to the existence of the so-called Fleck Bank, a means of tracking players within the program. The ex-players told FOS that players with enough credit in the Fleck Bank avoided typical punishment for breaking team rules, including positive drug tests. Two former players allege that those who provided inculpatory information on teammates were awarded credits in the Fleck Bank.
“Some of Fleck’s recruits tested positive, but he looked past it because they had coins in the Fleck Bank from doing community service or staying around to pray with him,” an ex-player told FOS. “He wanted you to be family, and he wanted you to do whatever he wanted you to do.”
A subsequent statement by the Minnesota athletic department denied that charge, stating the school's “drug testing policy is applied equitable and universally across all programs and any implication otherwise is false.”
The allegations about Fleck and Minnesota football come on the heels of related revelations about the Northwestern program under former coach Pat Fitzgerald, who was fired shortly after multiple former players detailed a toxic culture—including sexually charged hazing and enabled racism—put in place by the coaching staff.
