Once in a while, P.J. Fleck will see someone wearing a very specific T-shirt in public and feels a need to set the record straight.

Head coach P.J. Fleck of the Minnesota Golden Gophers motions to a referee in the second quarter of a game against the Ohio State Buckeyes at Ohio Stadium on Oct. 4, 2025 in Columbus, Ohio. (Photo by Ben Jackson/Getty Images)

The Gophers’ head coach has come across Iowa Hawkeyes fans donning “It wasn’t a fair catch” shirts and can’t help but approach them. One such scene came on a recent trip he and wife Heather made to Minnesota’s Largest Candy Store in Jordan.

“Hey, I like your shirt,” Fleck will say to the fan. “That was actually a correct call.”

The reference, of course, is to the invalid fair catch signal penalty that was flagged on Iowa punt returner Cooper DeJean’s 54-yard touchdown run in the Floyd of Rosedale rivalry game in October 2023. After review, the decision negated the TD, and Minnesota went on to a 12-10 win over then-No. 24 Iowa at Kinnick Stadium.

Days later, the Big Ten Conference’s coordinator of officials Bill Carollo and NCAA rules editor Steve Shaw told the Pioneer Press and the Des Moines Register the officials’ final decision in Iowa City was the correct enforcement.

Fleck said his off-the-cuff retorts to Hawkeyes fans can catch them off-guard, either from them not expecting him to go there or from them just being surprised to see him in the first place.

“It’s so funny because some people laugh and some people don’t,” Fleck told the Pioneer Press. “… Not everybody here (in Minnesota) graduated from the University of Minnesota. So you just see it different and who their allegiance is to when you see that shirt. I love it.”

That contentious win snapped Minnesota’s 10-game losing skid in Iowa City since 1999 and ended an eight-game overall losing streak in the rivalry since 2014.

While that win remains fresh two years later, Fleck said there is little the Gophers can take from that victory and apply to Saturday afternoon’s road game. The Hawkeyes (5-2, 3-1 Big Ten) are an eight-point favorite over Minnesota (5-2, 3-1) for the 2:30 p.m. kickoff.

“It’s its own entity. This is going to take a completely different effort, different team, different identity than we had before,” Fleck said. “… I think having the ability to win there allows us to say, ‘Hey, we can.’ (Now we’ve) just got to go do.”

The reputation of Kinnick Stadium imprinted Fleck before he came to Minnesota. He played there as a receiver at Northern Illinois (1999-2003) and then as a graduate assistant at Ohio State in 2006.

“I’m not one of those head coaches that doesn’t give anybody credit,” Fleck said. “Somebody asked me a long time ago: What’s the hardest place to play? You’ve got to take where you’re (coaching) at out of it. … And I’ve always told them Kinnick.”

The Buckeyes were ranked No. 1 that year but were tested in a 37-17 win over No. 11 Iowa in late September.

“That was the one, I thought, game on the road we struggled with,” Fleck said of a Buckyes team that would fall to Florida in the BCS Championship Game. “The crowd, the atmosphere, and then you throw the football team of Iowa in there, (which) never beats themselves.”

Fans are only a few feet away from the visiting sideline at Kinnick and are known for trash talking. And the sounds cranked into Gophers’ practices this week will include not only songs from the band and other music, but some colorful comments they might here on game day.

“We have a lot of things piped in to the indoor (practice facility) that they might hear over and over and over,” Fleck said.

Including personal comments? “Oh, one hundred percent,” Fleck said.

Last year at home, the Gophers had a 14-7 lead over Iowa at the half, but the Hawkeyes outscored Minnesota 24-0 the rest of the way. Running back Kaleb Johnson amassed 206 rushing yards and three touchdowns.

“To beat Iowa, you’ve got to play elite in all four quarters,” Fleck said. “We weren’t able to do that. … What the score is at halftime gets too much credit … It’s only 30 minutes. You’ve got 30 more minutes to play. You’ve got to make adjustments, and you’ve got to play better in the second half. Unfortunately, we didn’t play better in the second half. They took advantage of that.”

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NEW YORK (AP) — Disney+ and Hulu subscription cancellations rose during the month that ABC briefly cancelled “Jimmy Kimmel Live!, ” according to data from subscription analytics company Antenna.

Walt Disney Co. owns the streaming platforms and ABC. ABC pulled the show off the air for less than a week in September in the wake of criticism over his comments related the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.

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Antenna estimates total cancellations in September were 4.1 million for Hulu and 3 million for Disney+. The “churn rate,” or the percentage of customers that cancel their subscriptions in a specific month, jumped from 5% in August to 10% in September for Hulu. That figure jumped 4% in August to 8% in September for Disney+.

However, signups were higher in September for both Hulu and Disney+ than the prior five months.

Antenna is a subscription analytics company that tracks U.S. consumer data. The data excludes subscribers in bundle deals.

In its most recent earnings report for the quarter ended June 28, Disney reported 183 million Disney+ and Hulu subscriptions.

Disney declined to comment.

NEW YORK – Despite his average size and his unrelenting willingness to play a net-front game for the Minnesota Wild, center Marco Rossi had not missed a game due to injury for two full seasons entering the 2025-26 campaign.

That iron man streak came to a halt after Rossi blocked a shot in the first period of the Wild’s 2-1 overtime loss in Philadelphia on Saturday. He was not on the ice for the team’s morning skate at Madison Square Garden on Monday, and coach John Hynes confirmed that Rossi was out with a lower body injury.

“He’s a tough kid. Hopefully it should just be day to day,” Hynes said. “I just think the quick turnarounds and things like that are difficult for him. But I know when a guy like him says, ‘I can’t play,’ then you know there’s something really bothering him.”

Rossi kept playing versus the Flyers, despite limping to the bench in obvious pain after more than one shift. He turned 24 last month, and has a goal and four assists in the Wild’s first six games.

Defenseman Zach Bogosian also missed morning skate and missed his second consecutive game on Monday, also dealing with a lower body injury that the Wild consider day to day.

Bright lights, big city

Wild backup goalie Jesper Wallstedt came to New York City once as a teenager, but only for a day. So when the team got a day off in Manhattan on Sunday, the native Swede took advantage of the chance to explore America’s largest metro area.

Wallstedt is a fan of YouTube videos showing shrewd traders buying and selling high-end watches – some of them valued at $15,000 or more – in the Diamond District, located on 47th Street, not far from Times Square. Wallstedt’s first stop was there, to experience the high-pressure salespeople eager to get your business buying and selling. He spent some time window shopping, but he was not a buyer.

During Monday’s morning skate at Madison Square Garden, which is billed as the World’s Most Famous Arena, rookie defenseman Zeev Buium was all smiles and admitted playing a road game versus the Rangers for the first time is an exciting career milestone.

“You see all the historic people that have been here and they’ve got pictures of everyone, so it’s pretty cool,” Buium admitted, thinking of all of the famous athletes and performers who have gotten ready for a game, or a show, in the backstage areas of the arena. “Our video room for the penalty kill and power plays, and the room where we get changed, those walls have definitely seen some things. It’s a cool building, and to be here, just a really cool setting.”

Before coming to the NHL level, Buium played in a World Juniors gold medal game and a NCAA title game, winning both. He said you are able to block out the noise of the setting and just play hockey, but you are always aware of the magnitude.

“You always kind of know the stakes of the game, and every game matters,” he said. “When you play in big games a lot, I think it just kind of settles your nerves.”

Buium had a goal and four assists in the Wild’s first six games, playing a quarterback role on the team’s first power play.

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It seems highly unlikely that J.J. McCarthy is going to start at quarterback when the Vikings play the Los Angeles Chargers on Thursday night at SoFi Stadium. The quick turnaround doesn’t exactly lend itself to him being ready.

After recently returning to practice as he works his way back from a high ankle sprain, McCarthy himself admitted he still isn’t 100 percent. He was a limited participant last week, and in under normal circumstances might have been a full participant this week. But there probably isn’t proper preparation time for the Vikings to feel comfortable throwing him out there.

So long as Carson Wentz can get his body turned over in time, he will in all likelihood be leading the Vikings in primetime. As soon as McCarthy is 100 percent, however, there needs to be an immediate change under center — and not necessarily because McCarthy gives the Vikings the best chance to win.

That distinction might still belong to Wentz, despite the fact his starts have resembled a trip to Valleyfair.

No, it has to be McCarthy, for better or for worse, because the Vikings must find out if he is who they think he is. They chose not to sign Sam Darnold this spring, or Aaron Rodgers this summer, because they believed McCarthy would hit the ground running this fall.

Even if the decision is looking more and more like a miscalculation, the sample size for McCarthy hasn’t been nearly big enough to make any sweeping declarations about the trajectory of his career. He deserves much more than a couple of starts to determine whether he’s worthy of being the face of the franchise.

The process of McCarthy gaining valuable experience can happen sooner rather than later with the Vikings no longer looking the part of a Super Bowl contender.

Although McCarthy occasionally looked overwhelmed in the season-opening win at Chicago, and a week later in a 22-6 loss to the Atlanta Falcons, his extended absence has proven issues holding the Vikings back go far beyond having a young signal caller at the helm.

The roster simply isn’t as good as everybody thought it would be, and while there’s a chance Darnold or Rodgers could’ve masked the problems in real time, Wentz hasn’t been capable of doing that.

There might have been a legitimate quarterback controversy had Wentz been lights-out while filling in. Instead, he has looked more like a journeyman backup, which has been his role for the past several years of his career.

In wins over Cincinnati and Cleveland, and losses to Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, Wentz has at times looked like a veteran in control, and at others like a guy who wasn’t in the team’s plans until September.

Those ups and downs make life easier for head coach Kevin O’Connell moving forward. It shouldn’t be a hard decision to go back to McCarthy whenever he’s ready to return. Not anymore.

There was an argument to be made, even last month, that winning should take precedence over McCarthy’s development. That logic no longer applies after the Vikings have shown themselves to be flawed in other areas.

Who cares if McCarthy might actually lower the floor in the present? The rest of this season should be rooted in figuring out if McCarthy can raise the ceiling in the future.

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