If All Football Coaches Coached Like John Gagliardi We Would All Be.......

No doubt that Coach Gagliardi is a man of great character but that was not my point/ question.

Contrairy to what The Times thinks there are many men of character at D 1 level.

Again--The Gagliardi style would not work at D1 level.

 

There's no way to know that. It might work, it might not.

And what do you mean by work? Winning the same number of titles and games? Graduating players? Posting 7-5 seasons with trips to minor bowls?

 

Whoo-whoo. As a St. John's grad, and a former member of Gagliardi's Theory of Football class, I feel compelled to weigh in. First, he probably is overexposed, as overexposed as a Division III coach can be. It's humorous when other St. John's people sometimes complain about the media perhaps not giving them enough coverage. The coverage they receive locally and in national publications is greater than every other D3 program combined, and that's with Mount Union in the mix.

But again, overexposed in this case means a story in the Times or washington Post every four or five years. The last time the Times wrote about him, I think, was when he broke the record for wins. That was 2003. Now he's coaching his 600th game. It's a decent hook to revisit the story.

As for whether it would work, I actually think it would work better at a higher level. Yes, better. The more talented the players, the better the system would work. St. john's gets great D3 players from high school. That allows them to not spend time tackling or doing stupid drills. They run plays in practice. That's it. Defensively, they teach the players where to be. They don't worry about tacking in practice or playing crunch or doing ridiculous bear crawl drills because those have nothing to do with getting first downs, or preventing them. They assume people can tackle.

So at a higher level - D1 or the pros - the players would obviously be even better. They know how to tackle. So what good does it to do pound each other all week? Why not just run plays and work on the other team's plays and teach players where to be?

If being physical in practice is so important - and crossthreading with overdone stories, how about the ones where a new coach puts the guys in pads and they beat each other up, proving their toughness! Yeah! - then why do D1 or NFL coaches ever go in just shoulder pads? Shouldn't they be pounding each other all week? For 16 weeks, and the playoffs? Why do they let up toward the end of the season?

Or do they just feel the need to be physical one day or two days of the week, because every one else does it and it's always been done that way? That's Gagliardi's thing. Why do you have to do what's always been done?

and every year, St. John's has one of the best D3 defenses in the country - they're the only team to hold Mount to 10 or less points in about 20 years. And they've done it twice - and one of the best tackling teams. Offensively, St. John's has a small playbook. Actually they don't even have a playbook, just cards. Ok that might not work. But the small playbook, running few plays? They do that because they practice the ones they are good at over and over and over. Why have 150 plays and run 40 of them pretty well, when you can work on 50 and run all of them really well?

Who else does that? Oh, Peyton Manning and the Colts. From his interview with Dan Patrick:

Manning might have plagiarized that quote from Gagliardi, who's been saying the same thing for literally 50 years.

Why can other "systems" work, but Gagliardi's wouldn't, when Gagliardi's makes more sense than just about any of them? Discipline issues? Maybe. I don't know. But Gagliardi's teams are plenty disciplined and they do it without running ridiculous wind sprints as punishment after practice.

Again, at a lower level, the system would be harder to operate, because you would have to spend time on things like teaching guys how to tackle. But the better the player, the better it would work.

For what it's worth, at the highest class of Minnesota state football, Eden Prairie is the dominant program, winning five or six state titles in the last decade (they usually beat Cretin-Derham Hall, including when Joe Mauer was there and two years ago with Michael Floyd. But Eden Prairie is so much better coached). The coach is Mike Grant. Bud's kid. And a former player under Gagliardi and assistant under him. he uses the same methods, with a bit more contact early in the season. He says Gagliardi has more of an influence on his coaching style than his own dad.

Again, why wouldn't the style work at a higher level? Boom, you prove the point. Gagliardi always says they don't want converts, they don't need other people to think their way works. But why do you insist that it has to be taught in a brutal way, even if it is a brutal game? It's not about proving manhood, it's about scoring points and preventing the other team from doing that. Would Auburn fans care if their team was winning 10 games every year, but wasn't doing hitting drills in practice? Really? They'd fell less manly?

The funniest part, though, is that you think the stories are for the Upper West Side liberals, which sort of implies Gagliardi himself must be some hippy-dippy liberal tree-hugger. The same guy who spoke in support of W at a rally before the 2004 election.

It's amusing when people from bigger schools watch a St. John's game and at first are usually convinced, "These wacky ways are cute but they'd never work where real men play!" Chris Spielman did the color for the 2003 title game and kept talking about how he couldn't have played with not tackling in practice. he "needed that" to be a great player. No you didn't, Chris. You were taught that you did, but you didn't. And he kept expressing skepticism. Until the fourth quarter, when St. John's had held Mount to 6 points - they were averaging 50 - and didn't miss a tackle all game.

More St. John's trivia: Tom Burnett of United 93 fame played at St. John's, though didn't do much there, and current security advisor to Obama, Denis McDonough, was a really good safety in the 1990s.

St. John's fanboy rant over.

 

Good stuff Small Town. Thanks for providing further insight on the SJU program.

Just wondering what is typical racial makeup of SJ U Football team.

 

Well, there's the occasional Iowegian.

But otherwise, pretty much Minnesota white, with a handful of exceptions each year.

I think Murphy wrote in his book that the lack of diversity in the entire MIAC started driving him a little crazy by the end of the year.

 

Try that in D 1. Surprised that The Times did not mention in their feel good story.

 

Enjoyed the post. Thanks.

 

Are you implying Gagliardi is racist because he doesn't have more blacks on his team?

 

No - not at all. I am implying that it's easy to not miss tackles if there are no ankle breakers in the backfield.

 

Small Town, from one D-3 brethren to another, you nailed it to a T on Coach Gags and SJU. Boom and Joe, the only reason why Gags gets talked up so much is because the more publicity he receives, the more attention D-3 athletics gets.

And as Small Town said, he's no fake. He's the real thing. Pierre Garcon should be getting some pub after his Monday night performance. He's from Mt. Union.
As far as diversity is concerned, I'm black and I attended Wartburg, which is in the Iowa Conference. You can't blame the MIAC, the IIAC, or the WIAC for lack of trying to recruit minorities.

Wartburg was trying to get my classmates to attend up there, but they passed it up. It was too white for them. And we went to high school in a larger city 20 minutes south of Wartburg...in fucking Iowa!

Boom, you have a point about if Gags routine will work in D-1. Probably not, but a smaller D-1 may take a risk and try it.

Soccer? Get a life, Boom. I've been to major college games, including Iowa and Iowa State. I can't stand that atmosphere, because it's too insane and fucking wild.

Small colleges is what I prefer. Smalle tailgates offer a chance to talk to my buddies without putting up with drunk fans all over the place. Plus, I can watch the game, without TV timeouts, distractions, and sitting with 70,000+ people. 2500 is much better, thank you.

That might be all well and good, you say, but now that you made this a thread, you're giving us more free publicity and attention than you expected!

I'm a whore for Division III sports.

 

Good stuff D-3. Don't get me wrong I love football at any level. I'm happy watching a 4th grade youth game but I much prefer watching someone like Percy Harvin steaming around the edge given the choice.

My beef is really with the NY Times. I think they could have provided a much more balanced story that would have served their readers better.