St. John’s (Minnesota) coach John Gagliardi is college football’s all-time wins leader with 453 career victories.  Remarkably, he is getting ready to begin his 60th season as a college head football coach - his first four seasons were at Carroll (Montana) and the last 56 at St. John's.

Gagliardi has a career record of 453-122-11 in his 59 seasons on the sidelines. On the list of the 10 college football coaches with more than 300 career wins, Gagliardi's .782 winning percentage is tops, just ahead of Paul "Bear" Bryant's .780 mark. He has also won four Division III national championships at St. John’s.

In our conversation, Gagliardi shares how he initially got involved in coaching, the biggest change in college football in his 60 years, whether he ever considered leaving St. John’s and what has given him the most satisfaction in his career.

Get connected with John Gagliardi.

An excerpt follows:

Q: Well, you don’t just win a few games here and there, you’ve had a consistent run of success for a number of years. You’ve averaged just over two losses a season. How have you been able to have this type of success at St John’s?

A: We get players who seem to come and rise to the occasion. As we say, we lose irreplaceable people every year through graduation and fortunately for me and our team, more irreplaceable guys show up. There’s no question that’s the key having any success, you gotta have the people to do the job out there. I’ve never made a tackle or a block or a pass out there, it takes a good team.

Q: What has given you the most satisfaction in your years of coaching college football and interacting with student-athletes?

A: The fact that I’ve been around 18 to 22 year old people all my life. First of all, college students are the cream of the crop, especially at our level. You have bona fide students who can’t get into school unless they are good students. They have to pay their own way so they really have to be like every other student. We don’t get any prima donnas here and they’re real students, smart kids, come from good families. We just don’t have any discipline problems. It’s a pretty nice situation.