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To place an obituary, please include the information from the obituary checklist below in an email to obits@pioneerpress.com. There is no option to place them through our website at this time. Feel free to contact our obituary desk at 651-228-5263 with any questions. General Information: Your full name, Address (City, State, Zip Code), Phone number, And an alternate phone number (if any) Obituary Specification: Name of Deceased, Obituary Text, A photo in a JPEG or PDF file is preferable, TIF and other files are accepted, we will contact you if there are any issues with the photo. Ad Run dates There is a discount for running more than one day, but this must be scheduled on the first run date to apply. If a photo is used, it must be used for both days for the discount to apply, contact us for more information. Policies: Verification of Death: In order to publish obituaries a name and phone number of funeral home/cremation society is required. We must contact the funeral home/cremation society handling the arrangements during their business hours to verify the death. If the body of the deceased has been donated to the University of Minnesota Anatomy Bequest Program, or a similar program, their phone number is required for verification. Please allow enough time to contact them especially during their limited weekend hours. A death certificate is also acceptable for this purpose but only one of these two options are necessary. Guestbook and Outside Websites: We are not allowed to reference other media sources with a guestbook or an obituary placed elsewhere when placing an obituary in print and online. We may place a website for a funeral home or a family email for contact instead; contact us with any questions regarding this matter. Obituary Process: Once your submission is completed, we will fax or email a proof for review prior to publication in the newspaper. 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If the ad is under 12 lines it will be charged the minimum rate of $162. Obituaries including more than 40 lines will receive a 7.5% discount per line. On a second run date, receive a 20% discount off both the first and second placement. Place three obituaries and the third placement will be free of charge. Each photo published is $125 per day. For example: 2 photos in the paper on 2 days would be 4 photo charges at $500. Deadlines: Please follow deadline times to ensure your obituary is published on the day requested. Hours Deadline (no exceptions) Ad Photos MEMORIAM (NON-OBITUARY) REQUEST Unlike an obituary, Memoriam submissions are remembrances of a loved one who has passed. The rates for a memoriam differ from obituaries. Please call or email us for more memoriam information Please call 651-228-5280 for more information. HOURS: Monday – Friday 8:00AM – 5:00PM (CLOSED WEEKENDS and HOLIDAYS) Please submit your memoriam ad to memoriams@pioneerpress.com or call 651-228-5280. College football’s coaching carousel is spinning faster and faster as the regular season enters its final month, and the breeze coming off it can be felt in Minnesota. There are currently 13 job openings at FBS schools. Nine within the Power Four conferences, including some of the most marquee brands in the country — LSU, Penn State, Florida and Auburn. National speculation is this cycle suggests there might be more than 40 head coach vacancies when the dust settles, meaning the breeze coming off the carousel now could rise to gale-force winds come December. Even in less turbulent years, Gophers head coach P.J. Fleck is name-dropped for openings, primarily because of how he has outperformed his predecessors at Minnesota and done so relative to his current peers while having fewer NIL resources at the U. Already this fall, Fleck has been named on coaching hot-board lists in The Athletic, Sports Illustrated, On3 and Football Scoop. Gophers Athletics Director Mark Coyle, having lived through it before, knows Fleck will keep getting mentioned. He told the Pioneer Press that in September, when there were only three major openings. “You hear all these names,” Coyle said Saturday on KFAN’s pregame show before the Gophers’ 23-20 overtime win over Michigan State. “Who’s going to Penn State? Who’s going to LSU? I’m not saying P.J. is going to one of those places. But his name is going to pop up in places. It’s going to create a trickle down effect.” Fleck’s resume won’t do enough to stir fan bases in, say, Happy Valley, Pa., or Baton Rouge, La., but it might hold appeal in spots such as Fayetteville, Ark., or in Blacksburg, Va. Compared to what they’ve had, Arkansas and Virginia Tech might like Fleck’s consistency, culture and ability to spike with a dream, championship-chasing season that ends in a big bowl game. Across the previous 75 years of Gopher football, Fleck’s winning percentage (.603) is higher than any of his 12 predecessors. While Fleck has produced only one outstanding season, 11-2 in 2019, he has two other nine-win campaigns and this season’s Gophers are on the verge of his sixth winning record over his nine total seasons. Two of those losing years were in his first campaign (2017) and the pandemic-shortened season (2020). While things have been far from smooth this year, the Gophers’ 4-2 conference record has been good enough to sit sixth in the 18-team mega conference heading into the second week of November. They were tied for seventh last year. This fall, Minnesota’s best win is a dominant 24-6 victory over then-25th ranked Nebraska (6-3, 3-3 Big Ten), but the Gophers have been run off the field by Ohio State, which debuted at No. 1 for the College Football Playoff rankings Tuesday, and 20th-ranked Iowa. The U also took a disappointing loss at Cal (5-4, 2-3 in ACC). Fleck’s resume also includes a 7-17 record against teams ranked in the Associated Press Top 25. While he is 4-4 against rival Wisconsin, he is 1-8 versus Iowa. This season, the Gophers have required comebacks for ugly wins against some of the worst teams in the conference: Rutgers, Purdue and Michigan State, which are a combined 1-17 in Big Ten play. The Gophers were pegged by oddsmakers at 6 1/2 wins in the offseason. Currently sitting at 6-3 overall, they are bowl eligible going into this week’s bye. They will be huge underdogs at No. 9 Oregon next week, but can reach eight wins with victories over Northwestern (5-3, 3-2) at Wrigley Field on Nov. 22 and at home versus Wisconsin (2-6, 0-5) on Nov. 29. On a near annual basis, Coyle and the U have awarded Fleck with contract extensions. The latest came in July, which keeps his annual salary at $6 million through Dec. 2030, while increasing his annual retention bonuses. That total sum ($7 million) remains outside the top half of the highest-paid coaches in the Big Ten, and Coyle regularly comments on how he feels the need to be a good financial steward on behalf of the university. “We feel really fortunate to have P.J. here, and our goal is to keep him here at Minnesota as long as we can,” Coyle said on KFAN on Nov. 1. (Note: The athletic department is, by and large, financially self-sufficient from the rest of the university system.) Fleck’s new contract revised down the buyout for him to leave — from $7 million to $5.5 million this year. In the current era of exorbitant coaching buyouts, that sum is paltry, especially compared to the huge sums paid by Penn State and LSU to have James Franklin and Brian Kelly leave their programs. Some sitting coaches named in the rumor mill for other vacancies have already received highly lucrative contract extensions this season: Curt Cignetti at Indiana, Matt Rhule at Nebraska and Rhett Lashlee at Southern Methodist. So, another contract extension for Fleck seems like a possible route. “We will continue to have conversations,” Coyle said on the radio. “Our goal is to make sure that he and (wife) Heather feel valued here.” Fleck has said he “loves” it in Minnesota. He continues to preach about “cultural sustainability” and that he is built to have more success with less resources. But if this coaching cycle is as volatile as it’s setting up to be, dominoes could fall across the nation, and Fleck could be poached by another program. The value in sitting coaches is considered higher as schools are shelling out more than $13 million in revenue sharing dollars to pay players. “I don’t see it slowing down,” Coyle said. “I think with the first year of rev share, the pressure on these coaches, the pressures on these programs. I mean, the Governor of Louisiana (Jeff Landry) was making comments about the whole situation (at LSU), which is just bonkers to me. I always say, ‘You can’t make it up. It’s college athletics.’ ”
