P.J. Fleck is in his second season as NIU’s wide receivers coach and first season as recruiting coordinator.

Fleck played at NIU as a wide receiver from 1999-2003 and played briefly with the San Francisco 49ers after leaving DeKalb. He also spent a season coaching future NFL players Ted Ginn Jr. and Anthony Gonzalez as the wide receivers coach at Ohio State.

At Kaneland High School, Fleck won two state championships in football and earned All-State in football, basketball and track.

The coach sat down with the Northern Star to talk about being back at his alma mater, as well as playing in the NFL.

Northern Star: What’s it like being back at NIU?

P.J. Fleck: It’s always nice. You ask any coach in the country and I think everyone would say that they would like to be back and coach at their alma mater sometime in their career. I’m just very fortunate to be coaching at my alma mater so early in my career.

NS: What was your NFL experience like?

PF: Obviously it was a dream come true for me. I was lucky enough to get an opportunity and make the most of my opportunity.

Most of my memories are away from the field, just with the relationships I formed and the people I met.

NS: Who are some of the people that you ended up meeting?

PF: Just the coaches I was able to basically work for. Dennis Erickson, who’s now the head coach at Arizona State and all his coaching staff; then Mike Nolan came in. We’re all Chicago Bears fans; Mike Singletary was our linebackers coach.

NS: What made you give football up?

PF: I’ve had to make some tough decisions based on opportunities that create themselves. I ended up getting hurt in my second year going into my third year. That was my fourth shoulder surgery already. Mike Nolan offered me a coaching job and then Jim Tressel offered me a coaching job.

Here are two top jobs for a young 25-year-old kid that wants to get into coaching. I was happy with stepping away and starting my new career.

NS: What was the experience at Ohio State like?

PF: Being able to work for Jim Tressel and his staff was incredible. It was great; they were phenomenal players and the best of the best. But they’re also really good people.

NS: Does the loss against Florida in the 2006 BCS National Championship Game still hurt?

PF: There are a lot of games that I played in that I still think about and get sick about. The national title game – talk about going from the high of highs to the low of lows. In my mind, for my coaching career that game was good for me personally. Just to see a great team get beat by another great team, and get beat pretty well. I had put Ohio State on such a pedestal; to see you come quickly right back down to earth really humbles you.

NS: You were part of the 2003 NIU football team, which put together one of the best seasons in school history. What did that season mean for the program?

PF: It was definitely a special season. We had so many players on the team that bought in, and they were all blue-collar, hard-working guys that knew people didn’t think we had a shot.

Any time you have two 5’9″ little kids, Dan Sheldon and P.J. Fleck starting at wide receiver, a lot of people don’t give you a chance. We’ve had a lot of very good teams since then; the only difference is we made a few more plays than those other teams. I still think about that year all the time.

NS: Does it still irritate you that the 2003 team didn’t get to go to a bowl game?

PF: It was good to have a year like that because basically a year like that set the table for the MAC and really said ‘hey, we have to change some things.’ So the next year they added a bowl game, the next year they added another one, and now I think they have another one. We feel we were able to sacrifice for the good of the cause.