John Gagliardi

I googled to see how Bobby Bowden and joe Paterno were doing in their death match struggle to retire (or die) with the most career coaching wins and came across an article about Joe Gagliardi, coach at St Johns College in Minnesota, who actually holds the record, but since St Johns is a Div III school, he's not competing with the big boys. Still, he's an interesting guy. You can read the article here.

Here's an excerpt:

Gagliardi, 76, began his coaching career at age 16 when his high school coach left to serve in World War II. With no one else available, Gagliardi took over the team and guided it to its first conference championship. A couple years later, he was coaching at Carroll College in Montana. He interviewed for the job at St. John's in 1953.


"They asked me if we needed scholarships to win. I had never had them, so I said, 'No, I don't think so'," Gagliardi says. "Well, I could see the reaction of the 10 priests in the room and I could tell by their faces that I had the job then and there.


"Then one monk says, 'I have one more question. Can you beat St. Thomas and St. Augustine without scholarships?' I had never heard of either team, but I said, 'Sure, I don't see why not'."


Athletic scholarships aren't allowed in Division III sports, so Gagliardi is nothing special there. It's his own rules that separates him from everyone else. When he took over as coach in high school, he did away with every rule that seemed stupid or unpleasant -- "We even drank water during practice" -- and he's been adding to them ever since. The list of 'no's is over 100 by now.


In addition to the no-tackling-during-practice rule, there are no coaches' whistles and no playbooks. No roster cuts. No mandatory weight-lifting. No use of words such as "kill," "hit" or "Coach" (players call him John). There are no long practices. There are no calisthenics. Well, there arecalisthenics, but they include such drills as laying on the ground, looking up at the sky and saying, "It's a nice day."