In 1928, Notre Dame football coach Knute Rockne delivered one of the most famous speeches of all time to his student athletes, urging them to “win just one for the Gipper.”
P.J. Fleck, the University of Minnesota’s football coach, has…a somewhat different approach.
Fleck amped up his team before their Saturday game against the University of Illinois by reading them—this is not a joke—Taro Gomi’s children’s book Everyone Poops, the Star Tribune reports.
“I know that sounds crazy,” Fleck said, accurately, “because we didn’t play very well [in previous games], but poop can be used as fertilizer if you grow. And in Minnesota, we’ve got lots of farms, and the poop is actually the manure, and it can help with crops and the best fruit and vegetables.”
Tanner Morgan, the team’s quarterback, said the team appreciated Fleck’s decision to wax literary, the Pioneer Press reports.
“That’s Coach Fleck; it hit perfect,” he said. “It hit perfect in being able to grow and how it connected with our week’s theme. I think our guys really took to it.”
Evidently so. The next day, the Golden Gophers beat the Fighting Illini, 41-14. The result must have left the team feeling like they’re No. 1. Or, you know, No. 2.
Michael Schaub is a Texas-based journalist and regular contributor to NPR.
