Whenever American Football Coaches Association Executive Director Grant Teaff thinks of John Gagliardi, Frank Sinatra’s “My Way” comes to mind.

“John is a person who people respect, and coaches respect him, not only because he’s successful, but because he does it his way,” Teaff said.

Gagliardi, coach of the Division III St. John’s University (Minnesota) football team, is the winningest coach in college football history, which in and of itself is a defining moment in NCAA annals. But the 81-year-old who earlier this season earned his 450th career win and has the Johnnies poised for their third consecutive Division III playoff appearance also uses defining characteristics to achieve success.

Teaff said “My Way” is an appropriate tune to put Gagliardi’s career in perspective because his philosophy and coaching style often run contrary to the animated, demanding coach who insists his players place football above all else.

Gagliardi admits he operates under a different premise than many of his coaching peers.
“We do it differently. We’ve got a long list of things — I call it ‘Winning with No,’ ” Gagliardi said.

“No” has many meanings for Gagliardi and his players. Like all Division III schools, it means no scholarships. But it also means no-contact practices, no wearing pads during practice, no compulsory weightlifting, no bed checks or curfews and no addressing him as “coach.” Players call him John.

Tom Stock, athletics director at St. John’s (Minnesota), said he was thankful that he and the other coaches on his staff have been exposed to Gagliardi and his leadership style.

“He has shown there are many different ways to have success. He’s innovative, constantly changing to meet the talent of his team,” Stock said. “His style has worked, his philosphy has worked. He’s proven there are many different ways to win football games.”

Early influence
Gagliardi said he solidified his philosophy when a star player was injured during practice in the 1950s, causing the team to struggle for the rest of the season.

“After that, I swore we’d be lucky to have a great star, and we had to keep him free from injury,” Gagliardi said. “So everything we do goes on those principles. We take some chances in the sense that we may not be quite as ready as some coaches think we should be. Maybe we are and maybe we aren’t.”

For the last 40 years, Gagliardi’s Johnnies have been more than ready. His team hasn’t had a losing season since 1967.

Gagliardi is a legend among football coaches — the trophy honoring the most outstanding Division III football player is named for him. He was one of the first active coaches to be inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame. In addition to the all-time wins record, Gagliardi holds the record for the longest career at 59 years (55 years at St. John’s and four at Carroll College in Montana).

When he was about to pass the 450-win milestone earlier this year, Gagliardi said he was always happy when the “big wins” were over, less so in the days and weeks leading up to them. He recalled when, leading up to his 400th win — which was to occur on the road on what could be the final game of the season — the school organized a large delegation of fans replete with signs for the big game. All he could think about was what would happen if the team didn’t win and all the signs had to be put away for the next year.

“These milestones scare me. I’ve seen so many of them,” he said. “Post-milestone is OK, but I keep thinking about pre-milestone, especially in Major League Baseball, where they have to keep putting the champagne away.”

Stock said the school respected Gagliardi’s feelings about the milestones and tried to keep the celebration low key.

“He’s such an intense competitor, he’s just looking ahead to his next game,” Stock said.

Not done yet
Gagliardi said he expects to have a lot of “next games” in his future — he has no plans to stop coaching. His career began in high school when the football coach fought in World War II. The school considered dropping the sport, but Gagliardi stepped up to coach the team and play tailback. He said the position was “thrust upon him” and he “didn’t even think about it when I was doing it” because he was focused on playing.

After graduating from Colorado College, he took a job coaching at Carroll College in Montana. He coached every sport at the school and served as athletics director for four years. When St. John’s (Minnesota) offered him twice as much money as he was making in Montana, he jokes that he “signed a lifetime contract.”

Sometimes he misses his previous job, and the simplicity of small-college athletics in the late 1940s and early 1950s — it was a time when one person coached all the sports and the same student-athletes that were the stars in football made the starting rosters in basketball and baseball, too.

When he came to St. John’s, he served stints as track coach and ice hockey coach and, from 1976 until 1994, as athletics director. He held a similar position at Carroll.

Being athletics director and football coach at St. John’s was difficult for him, he said, because he never wanted to give the appearance of favoring the football program.

“At Carroll, it wasn’t much of a factor because I was the only coach (of all the athletics teams),” he said. “But (at St. John’s) being AD hurt in a sense because you were always looking after other sports because you didn’t want them to feel you were putting everything into football. In many ways, it probably shortchanged football (during that time).”

Gagliardi was glad to give up the AD title and focus on football. He credits his players with his success as a football coach.

“You’ve got to have good players. I coach a lot better with good players,” he said. “They’re the ones out there doing the job. We’re very good at graduating people and every year we graduate irreplaceable players. But fortunately for me, more irreplaceable players show up every year.”

Teaff said Gagliardi’s longevity, desire to coach and commitment to the student-athletes are great contributors to his success on the football field, even though he breaks most of the traditional “rules” associated with coaching.

“The one key thing that I have observed in him through the years is his commitment to do the things that he believes are best for the student-athletes,” Teaff said. “He’s a humble person, he is unassuming. The ‘big time’ for him is not as important as the time he spends with the players.”

That coaching philosophy fits well within Division III, which strives to highlight athletics as part of the overall college experience and as an activity more for the development of the participants than for the entertainment of onlookers.

Gagliardi said being a part of Division III has been a rewarding aspect of his career. Many of his former student-athletes have gone on to be surgeons and bishops and lawyers and create lives of great accomplishment.

“(In Division III), you’ve got real, bona fide student-athletes who can’t get in (to the school) or stay in unless they are really good students. They are good guys from great families,” he said. “I’ve seen guys become college presidents, go into every field you can think of. It’s amazing what they can do. It’s hard to believe they go on to do so many different things, and I’m still at the same job.”

Those former student-athletes might say that the truly amazing thing is what their coach once taught them — that doing things your own way might just be the right way.