WE DON’T KNOW WHAT IT MEANS EITHER BUT MINNESOTA IS GONNA DO SOME STUFF

On the surface, Minnesota coach P.J. Fleck is merely crazy. This has been a known for a while. It’s good football exists, because otherwise P.J. Fleck would be running a Fortune 500 company with the kind of zeal that either turns underlings into cult members, or alienates them to the point where the board votes to have you removed from the building in restraints. Either one is terrifying, and thank you football for existing for people like P.J. Fleck, who need to be contained before they run a blazing streak through the horizon itself.

We already knew about Row the Boat (all, in response: ROW THE BOAT!), but what we didn’t really realize is that when you hire P.J. Fleck, your football program hires an entire [inhaaaaaaaales because you should try to say this all at once] thing like—

—leadership lifestyle management leadery inspirational Tony Robbins with a neck roll on full scale video course on life and how to live it and the acronyms you will need to make it all happen in order to live the H.Y.P.R.R. culture and experience the process that is the majority of life and which many in our culture today confuse for the results because Rowing the Boat isn’t just for the times when it’s good it’s actually for when things aren’t going well and—

[passes out]

This is our way of reminding you that Minnesota football is a cult now, and P.J. Fleck is its leader, and that we’ve watched the official explanation of what “H.Y.P.R.R” stands for three or four times now, and still have no idea what it means. After about a minute, this noise like fizzing bubbles begins to pop up in the ears. After two minutes, there’s no hearing words, only a kind of mesmerizing patter of things we sort of recognize as human speech, a kind of spellbinding woofing.

At the end we’re ready to just nod and go along with whatever the man said.

It’s not clear why: Maybe we’re hypnotized, or maybe we’re just ready to stop listening to a boiling motivational insanity that might work, because did he breathe? My god, did that man breathe once? We’ll give you whatever you want. Just breathe, P.J. Fleck, before you deplete your body of oxygen so completely you become a perfect vacuum and collapse in on yourself like a dying star.

We’ll do what you want as long as you stop talking. We’ll block whoever you want if you just take a breath. We’ll stay within ten points of a conference opponent if you’ll just stop making acronyms and gesturing.

WHAT DOES IT MEAAAAAAN—