Jim Harbaugh’s secret motivational weapon for his players against Florida

It looks like Jim Harbaugh’s pre-game speech is exactly what the Wolverines needed to hear.

Michigan and Florida squared off Saturday, and the Wolverines outplayed the Gators in every facet of the game. Michigan won by a final score of 33-17 but looked more dominant than the final score shows.

As it turns out, the inspiration for Michigan and Harbaugh came from an unlikely source.

Aaron McMann with MLive.com reports sergeant Anthony Riddle of the U.S. Marine Corps sent an encouraging  letter to Harbaugh and the team ahead of the opener.

“This is in response to all the naysayers out there that think that Michigan football is too young, too inexperienced,” Riddle wrote. “Your young men have worked their tails off in summer…They have sweat and bled together. You tell your men that every down they play could be their last. Every down that they play, they’ll never get that down back.”

Harbaugh said he does receive a number of letters, but his team needed to hear the message in this one.

“I get a lot of letters,” Harbaugh said. “But there’s been a few through the last couple years that I read to the team, and this was one of them. The message — it’s irrelevant what the age is. His Marines and what they did and what they sacrificed and they were able to do (is what matters). It’s a group of guys in a unit or on a team that come together and do their job.”

Michigan Football tweeted a photo of the two-page letter Sunday:

This is the letter @CoachJim4UM read to our team last night. #GoBlue pic.twitter.com/BlaWrDnGDP

— Michigan Football (@UMichFootball) September 2, 2017

Michigan held Florida to 192 total yards and outscored the Gators 20-0 in the second half. The Wolverines will continue to use sergeant Riddle’s message as motivation moving forward.

Paul Harvey

Paul Harvey lives in Atlanta and covers SEC football.