St. John's coach John Gagliardi retires after 60 years

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This will brush aside AJ Barker (who?) 15 minutes of fame. The most winning coach in NCAA History, John Gagliardi, is announcing his retirement according to Star Tribune, John Millea.
 

Wow, a legend, what a career, who knew Minnesota would house the coach with the most wins in history.

If you want more to see this, you might wanna make that title a little more attention grabbing lol.
 

thanks for the update. what a great career for him. we have friends who went to SJU. they have a lot of respect for john gagliardi and always enjoyed going to SJU football games when they were at school there. said it was a great D3 football experience. much better than st. thomas.
 

Monty519 said:
Wow, a legend, what a career, who knew Minnesota would house the coach with the most wins in history.

If you want more to see this, you might wanna make that title a little more attention grabbing lol.
Click to expand...

No kidding.
 

Great coach. Interesting guy. A know several guys who played for him who can attest to the fact that his calm sideline demeanor masked a real competitor. Had a great run. Curious to see what happens up there now that he's retiring. They've slid a little.
 


AJ Barker even drove Gagliardi out of the business.
 


If St. Johns joins the B1G and Barker transfers to Maryland, we can combine all Gopher Hole threads into one.
 





Yep, this is real MN football news. I had the pleasure of meeting John Gagliardi when I was a SR in HS. I had very briefly kicked around the idea of playing football at St. Johns and I was recruited (as much as MIAC recruits) to play at St. Johns. My dad and I took the visit up there one Saturday morning and it was an amazing experience. He was just full of football knowledge but he kept wanting to talk to me about basketball (it was basketball season at the time). A good friend of mine (Beau Labore who is now the Stillwater Football Coach), showed me around and gushed about how amazing of experience it was to play for "John". It was an amazing experience, I ultimately didn't want to go to a small school and I went to the U.

He is a living legend for all of college football.
 

My father-in-law played for him at Carroll College in MT. You are talking about WWII era. He is the same age as my father-in-law. According to him, Gagliardi is a great coach, and even a greater person. I like his idea of non-contact practices. Why kill yourself in practice when you have a game on Saturday?

If you really want to have a great autumn football experience in October, go to a Johnnie football game in the outdoor St. Clements stadium. Make sure you buy Johnnie Bread and eat it with some wine or hot apple cider while watching the game under the the swayed Norwegian pine trees and the colorful desidious trees of the Saint John's Abbey forest across the football field.
 




I played for John and I can't say enough good things about him. As a coach he was truly a shepherd of young men. He was always talking about being great - not just on the football field, but being a great person, a nice person, a great student, an achiever, a person that a community would value. "Ordinary guys, doing ordinary things, extraordinarily well-not just in football, but in life", he would always say. And he kept people laughing. Still, there were coaching moments when he would dog individuals to motivate them - no different than Jerry Kill. I don't remember him every screaming at anybody, but he could bear down. The guy wanted to win. I think that AJ Barker would have had a problem with him. In my mind it goes to show that life is tough, but in the end toughness and character matter.
 

hungan1 said:
My father-in-law played for him at Carroll College in MT. You are talking about WWII era. He is the same age as my father-in-law. According to him, Gagliardi is a great coach, and even a greater person. I like his idea of non-contact practices. Why kill yourself in practice when you have a game on Saturday?

If you really want to have a great autumn football experience in October, go to a Johnnie football game in the outdoor St. Clements stadium. Make sure you buy Johnnie Bread and eat it with some wine or hot apple cider while watching the game under the the swayed Norwegian pine trees and the colorful desidious trees of the Saint John's Abbey forest across the football field.
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great story and thanks for sharing. btw, not to nitpick, but it is called clemens stadium. not st. clements. no harm, no foul. :)
 


hungan1 said:
My father-in-law played for him at Carroll College in MT. You are talking about WWII era. He is the same age as my father-in-law. According to him, Gagliardi is a great coach, and even a greater person. I like his idea of non-contact practices. Why kill yourself in practice when you have a game on Saturday?

If you really want to have a great autumn football experience in October, go to a Johnnie football game in the outdoor St. Clements stadium. Make sure you buy Johnnie Bread and eat it with some wine or hot apple cider while watching the game under the the swayed Norwegian pine trees and the colorful desidious trees of the Saint John's Abbey forest across the football field.
Click to expand...

Actually I was wrong. My father-in-law is two years older. The funny thing was he thought John was the towel boy when he first saw him and asked for a fresh towel. When Gagliardi told him he is the coach, he was flabergasted. He looked so young.
 

Eligibility cheating is his only problem, playing some guys for 5 years. not 4.
 

Heard EP's Mike Grant would be one of the top candidates. Would be a very good fit.
 

My favorite Gags moment: He pulls the ref aside after St. John's was called for a holding penalty. He says, "Son, what did you call?"

Ref: "It was holding on your left tackle."

Gags: "That's impossible, we don't teach holding here at St. John's."


haha Classic.
 

goldenman said:
Heard EP's Mike Grant would be one of the top candidates. Would be a very good fit.
Click to expand...

Would think Gary Fasching and Kurt Ramler would be top as well. Fasching is the d-line coach and consistently coaches all-americans. He was a very good high school coach at St Cloud Cathedral.

Not sure if Grant would be a candidate. He used to be annoying (in my opinion) and stand on the SJU sideline with the team even though he wasn't involved directly with the program, but I haven't seen him in about 8 or 9 years. Not sure he's in the greatest health either - the last time I saw him he looked like he was having trouble walking, but he could've also had an injury.
 

My brother played for him and was on two national championship teams; he said Gag's unconventional preparations worked very well as the players were really eager for contact by Saturday. Like Bierman, he drilled the same plays over and over until they became second nature.
 

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