P.J. Fleck, the head coach of the Minnesota Golden Gophers, turned a phrase etched in U.S. currency into a team-building exercise. Speaking at Big Ten Media Days, Fleck shared how he used the Latin phrase 'E pluribus unum' — meaning 'out of many, one' — as the centerpiece of a group accountability push this offseason.
Fleck handed every player on the roster a dollar bill and a quarter. According to Fleck, the exercise served both to highlight the phrase’s presence and to connect it to unity within the team. 'You should have seen that team meeting, talking Latin to your players,' he said with a grin.
Each player wrote a personal message on their dollar bill — what they aimed to prove to themselves — and the notes were later collected into a jar. Fleck said the jar now sits at the front of the team meeting room, a physical reminder of the collective mission.
This wasn’t the only offbeat motivational tactic. Fleck said the team watched clips from the Artemis 2 space mission and a John F. Kennedy speech as part of a broader effort to frame the season around purpose and legacy. Whether those dollar bills, moonshots, or historical rhetoric have helped, only time will tell.