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P.J. Fleck 'working on' bringing trademarked 'Row the Boat' phrase to Minnesota
Gather your oars, P.J. Fleck plans to bring his “Row the Boat” phrase to Minnesota — in an official capacity.
During Fleck’s four-year tenure at Western Michigan, the phrase was trademarked by WMU. Now that Fleck is the head coach at Minnesota, he is working on bringing the phrase, which has great personal meaning to him, along for the ride with the Golden Gophers.
“We’re working on it,” Fleck told ESPN.com Wednesday while in Houston for the Bear Bryant Coach of the Year Award presentation. “There’s just some things to go through, and hopefully I’ll have the opportunity to bring it with me.”
For Fleck, the phrase came to fruition after his son died in 2011 from a heart condition. Fleck, who was an assistant at Rutgers at the time, has said it helped him get through that difficult time in his life. He brought that mindset with him when he landed the head-coaching gig at WMU.
“’Row The Boat’ first came to the forefront when my wife and I lost our second child,” Fleck said in 2013. “We had a second son after Carter, we had a second son named Colt. And Colton had a heart condition and we lost him shortly after birth. We knew toward the end of the pregnancy that we were going to lose him, it was just a matter of how long he’d be with us. We got to spend time with him, be with him, hold him. But to watch your son pass away in your wife’s arms is an amazing experience in terms of the amount of sorrow and the amount of frustration, questions.
“But it was something that I had in the back of my mind to say, ‘Hey, no matter what happens, no matter what we’re going to do here, we’re just going to keep rowing. Whatever turns out, however it turns out, we’re just going to keep rowing. Then when it does turn out, good or bad, we’re just going to keep rowing, keep rowing and keep rowing. So, it was able to, at least, help my method to get through some type of adversity.”
Fleck told ESPN he’s hopeful the folks at Western Michigan will see the personal meaning it has for him and allow him to use it at his new school:
“When we first put it out there, you had to be able to have a trademark and licensing, I think it was with the university, or you can’t sell it as a university logo through the NCAA rules,” Fleck said. “So they basically own those rights to it, and that was something that I gave them the ability to do, because I never saw a dollar from it, never saw a cent from it, but we were able to create some type of culture.
“Again, it comes from a very personal, personal tragedy in my life and that’s where ‘Row the Boat’ came from. … So, I really hope they do see that, and [that] they are willing to allow me to take that, but we’ll see as we move forward. I’m not sure what they’re going to do with it, but I really hope because of what it means, that I have the ability to at least purchase it, take it with me, and continue to change other people’s lives through tragedy, through adversity, in just a different area.”
Fleck relayed a similar sentiment during his introductory news conference.
“I plan on bringing it. I think it’s something we got to handle as we continue to move forward. It’s a major staple in my own personal life, has a lot of personal meaning, but it can bring a lot of people together. Like I said before, we need everybody rowing in the same direction, same speed, same efficiency. It’s going to take all of us, everybody,” Fleck said.
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Fleck also hopes to incorporate “Row the Boat” with “Ski-U-Mah,” Minnesota’s longstanding rally cry.
“The story of ‘Ski-U-Mah,’ there’s a canoe, which is a boat. You got a paddle, which is an oar, and we’ve got the Northern Star, here which is our compass. And I’ll tell you a quick story. The minute my wife Heather and I read Wikipedia together, because I’ll be honest with you, I had to read it, I don’t want people to have to look up ‘Ski-U-Mah’ on Wikipedia. I want it to be a national brand and a national saying,” Fleck said.
“Now, it’s going to encompass a little ‘row the boat’ in there, here and there, okay, I promise you some how, some way, but that is our vision. The minute we saw that, and there was a paddle and there was a canoe, and there was a star, we looked at each other and said, don’t ignore the signs, and we didn’t ignore the signs, and that’s why we’re here.”
Despite Fleck’s comments on Wednesday, Western Michigan athletic director Kathy Beauregard told MLive.com she hasn’t heard from anybody at Minnesota regarding the trademark. Still, she made it seem like it won’t be a point of contention, there’s just a certain legal process associated with a potential change.
From MLive.com:
“Nobody’s contacted me about it,” she said.
Beauregard said she called and left a message with Fleck’s agent, Bryan Harlan, about discussing the topic and she hasn’t heard back from him.
“Honestly, I’m not exactly sure where we’re going to go, it’s not like we want to stand in the way but we also need to make sure that we’re handling it the way it needs to be handled,” she said.
Fleck was officially introduced as Minnesota’s coach on Jan. 6. Since then, he has landed 11 verbal commitments for the Gophers’ 2017 recruiting class, many of whom flipped from WMU.
Overall, Fleck had a 30-22 record at WMU. The Broncos went from 1-11 in his first season to 13-1 in 2016.
For more Minnesota news, TheGopherReport.com.
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Sam Cooper is a writer for the Yahoo Sports blogs. Have a tip? Email him or follow him on Twitter!
