OT. P.J. Fleck looks like he's staying at least another year

No offense intended but maybe no big programs are taking a shot at him because the hit rate on hiring "Hot MAC Coach of the Year" has got to be below 10%. What great coaches have come from the MAC recently? Urban Meyer? Brian Kelly I guess?

Indiana. They did just go ahead and make their DC the head coach after firing Wilson, skipping the Interim tag. But Fleck and the Hoosiers seem like a good fit. 

WMU will struggle against MSU without Terrell and Davis, but they do have some other talented receivers if T. Flacco is any good so you never know. 

their contracts and not let their coaches leave. Maybe the optics are bad but unless the coach has an opt-out clause or buyout clause then they would be stuck coaching at the school until their contract ends.

Not a bad deal to stay put. WMU is offering him a cool $30 million over the next 10 years. A frickin' MAC school. Offering frickin' $30 million. Even over 10 years, that puts him in some pretty good company, salary-wise. There's a lot of good P5 schools with better programs that are paying their coaches less than that. Nebraska and Wisconsin are two examples. 

Unless he gets the itch to go compete for a national title, which let's be honest, one day he will, WMU is offering him everything he wants. Great money, competes for conference championships year in and year out, probably the best program in the MAC right now, and little to no pressure whatsoever. If he falls back to the pack next year, no one cares. 

His only problem is that a 10 year contract and whatever buy-out he has will scare a lot of programs away that otherwise might be interested in the coming years. And the NFL will want to see him coach at a good P5 school before any team ever takes a chance on him. If he signs that 10 year deal, and he sees some jobs in the next few years that he'd like, he may be out of luck. 

NE Indiana, rather than NW.  But otherwise--interesting!

He may want to wait a bit on signing an extension though. Who knows if someone gets snatched up to the NFL or another team wants to wait until after their Bowl game to decide their coaches fate. I don't see any of those likely to happen, but stranger things have happened. He should sign a new contract sometime around February if the AD let'a him.

Fleck always said he wanted to make Western into the Boise State of the Midwest. Why all the hate? Western can be a threat to Sparty with no threat to Michigan. If WMU is good, that is great for the state of Michigan. He has been outrecruiting many P5 schools and does it really hurt his stock if he goes 9-3 next year? Chris Petersen built Boise State (it was not Hawkins) and was patient until he took his dream job at Washington. This is a good model for what could happen. In the mean time, Fleck is a hero in Kalamazoo with job security making 1-3 million a year at age 35 living in a 7000 square foot lake house.

After 0 of the major schools with openings (of which there were many) even gave Fleck a real look following 13-0, what makes people think one would in a few years? He needs to go somewhere as a stepping stone first - Cincinnati would be a good move if he can get the job.

It would be interesting if the Group of Five re-aligned themselves with the NCAA and left the CFP and NY6 to the Power 5. The P5 would basically just be the NFL minor leagues at that point, but whatever. 

The Group of Five could be another "division" (they could use the old "1A" tag from back before 1A and 1AA were renamed FBS and FCS). They could have their own 8 or 16 team playoff instead of sending teams and fans off to Boise or Mobile or Boca Raton for a shitty bowl. 

The Group of Five championship could be played alongside the same schedule as the NY6 bowls, either as one of the New Years Day bowls or on NYE. Or, the Saturday before the CFP championship game. It would be played in a rotating southern location like the CFP, using Tampa or Orlando or San Antonio, etc..

In this scenario, there were a lot of successful P5 teams that are going to match up against each other in crappy bowls anyway so why not have them play each other on the higher-seeded team's campus and have it actually mean something. WMU as the 1 seed along with Houston, WKU, Temple, Navy, USF, Memphis, San Diego State, Tulsa, Toledo, App State, Louisiana Tech, UCF, Wyoming, Boise State and Troy. Playoff istead of shit bowls.

This is where the Fleck $3 mil salary is unteneble. It's too much to justify coaching a program that will never have a shot at a national championship and probably will rarely if ever make NY6 bowl again. But is it also too much to pay a coach who could conceivably win multiple "NCAA division 1A championships"? Probably too much for that, too, as cool as that would be. So I don't know what WMU private donors would be going for here: Perennial bragging rights in the MAC plus an NY6 bowl every decade? 

It could be that Fleck has too much baggage and not a long enough track record for a P5 school right now.

The guy is in his mid-thirties.  In ten years, he will still be a youngish coach.  If he keeps being remotely successful, opportunity will follow.   

None of the jobs available really were a good fit for him.  And he's about to get PAID.  Not a bad deal.

I can't see him replicating another season like this one. I'm not sure if he'll be a "hotter" name then now. However, if he can at least keep a winning record for the next one or two seasons, he should have a decent shot to move up a level.

I was under the impression none of the schools looking offered him.  Did he turn down some?

I thought that was Narduzzi's when the MSU job opens up.

In these coaching decisions, I always wonder how much the wife has to do with decisions of staying or where to go. I would say quite a lot.

Recall that Urban Meyer's wife loved their life when he was an assistant at Colorado State and wanted to live there permanently. They has an agreement that she could veto any job offer EXCEPT: Notre Dame, Ohio State...and Michigan.


Maybe Fleck's (new) wife is happy in Kalamazoo. Fleck likes to compete and coaching and I am sure he would like to compete at a "higher level", but maybe he is more into building a program to last and the community,

75 posts on this thread and no one has astutely observed that "Oakland is still in play".

We're really slipping, collectively ;)

Doesn't anyone here remember all the NFL people carefully explaining to us naive, foolish Michigan fans that there was no conceivable reason anyone would prefer college over the NFL? It's just possible that maybe Fleck thinks getting paid millions of dollars to be the beloved superstar coach of a successful team is more attractive than getting shit on for not winning at least 11 games or making the playoff or whatever other unreasonable standard a P5 team will have. Hell, he could coach at WMU for a decade and still take a P5 job whenever he wants as long as he consistently wins 9-10 games.