Koi Perich has thrown his hat into the NCAA transfer portal and there’s no way to spin this as a positive for the University of Minnesota’s football program.
Or college football.
Even if he wasn’t the Gophers’ best safety this season — that was Kerry Brown — and coach P.J. Fleck can use the money the U was paying Perich on more than one transfer who can help next season, the fact is, the best in-state prospect to buy into P.J. Fleck’s row-the-boat paradigm has taken a long look and decided he’s more interested in the big-time NIL paradigm.
Whether it’s more money, more national exposure or a more likely path to the NFL — debatable — Perich has decided it won’t happen at Minnesota.
As a college football fan, one has to wonder if watching most of your school’s best players go look for the bigger, better thing after every season is palatable. And as a Gophers’ fan, one has to accept that this just doesn’t bode well for the program’s viability as, for all intents and purposes, a small-market professional football franchise.
One could look at what Indiana has done the past two seasons and see a crack under the fence just big enough for those without a ticket to crawl through. We know that, for now, it’s possible for an also-ran Power Four program to genuinely contend for a national championship. But Minnesota appears to be moving the other way at an inopportune time.
The Gophers went 8-5 after beating New Mexico in the Rate Bowl in Phoenix. The Lobos were one of two bowl teams they beat this season, and Minnesota was 0-3 against the best Big Ten teams they played — Ohio State, Iowa and Oregon — and was outscored 123-19.
With talented young quarterback Drake Lindsey under center and what they believed would be a prolific running game — it wasn’t — the Gophers had their eyes on another move up the conference ladder. Instead, it was a typically OK season.
Minnesota Gophers head coach P.J. Fleck leads his team onto the field at the start of an NCAA football game against the Nebraska Cornhuskers at Huntington Bank Stadium in Minneapolis on Friday, Oct. 17, 2025. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)
It’s probably not lost on longtime Gophers fans that Indiana started the season as the only other OG Big Ten school with a Rose Bowl drought (1968) nearly as long as Minnesota’s (1962). And the Hoosiers just humiliated Alabama in Pasadena on New Year’s Day to advance to the College Football Playoff semifinals.
This space has been used, fairly recently, to praise the job that Fleck has done in his nine seasons in Dinkytown. A large reason for that is the way he cleaned up an ugly culture fomented by former coach Jerry Kill that later exploded into ugly, and very public, behavior under replacement Tracy Claeys.
What was once a national embarrassment for the Gophers has changed for the better under Fleck. Against most odds, his dedication to teaching his players how to meditate and where to place the salad fork has, in fact, resulted in a program that Minnesota can be proud of off and, largely, on the field.
When, for instance, they were short of the six wins required to earn a berth in one of 41 bowl games in 2023, they became eligible because they had the best graduation rate of available teams. That matters, or used to, anyway.
Further, Fleck’s teams are 7-0 in bowl games, including a victory over a then-Top 10 Auburn team in the 2019 Outback Bowl that pushed them to a program-record 11 wins and No. 10 in the final Associated Press poll. The Gophers also have been sending more players to the NFL, a recruiting point that could help build the talent coffers.
Landing Perich, a four-star recruit from Esko who turned down 2025 national champion Ohio State to stay home, was another positive step. Losing him, as seems inevitable, is two steps back, because whatever the safety and kick returner’s goals are, he’s convinced they will be easier to meet elsewhere.
Even Darius Taylor, a talented but oft-injured tailback, who will no doubt be the Gophers’ starter next season, waited until the last moment — at least publicly — to renew his vows with Minnesota.
Fleck did something smart when this season ended, when he publicly revealed that he was allowing Lindsey to help him target receivers in the next recruiting class. In the absence of the big, big money, giving a promising QB like Lindsey that kind of ownership is the next best thing to the bigger, better thing.
But isn’t it exhausting? Not just for Fleck, or athletics director Mark Coyle, but everyone with an emotional stake in the Gophers’ success.
Fleck has been conspicuously tied to just about every coaching opening that appears to be a step up from Minnesota. If any of that was real, and those offers come again, he might want to finally take one with more money in the slush fund.
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