John Gagliardi was a speaker at several coaching clinics that I attended long ago. It usually took about a week for my ribs to quit hurting from laughing at him. From this week's issue of Sports Illustrated:

THEY SAID IT John Gagliardi, St. John's football coach, 82, on his job security after 56 years at the Division III Benedictine school: "The monks give me a lifetime contract. But if we start losing games they can give me the last sacraments and declare me dead."

I'm not sure who is leading now but Gagliardi, Joe Paterno, and Bobby Bowden trade places regularly as the active coach with the most career wins.

Everybody has a story and Gagliardi's is remarkable. Early in his sophomore season in high school the coach (Yes kids, at one time football teams had one coach.) was drafted into World War II and the principal told the team that the season would be cancelled. Gagliardi convinced the principal to let him coach the team that Friday night and if the principal didn't like what he saw he could cancel the rest of the season. Gagliardi finished the season, and the next two, as player-coach. They won the conference for the first time in the school's history and Gagliardi was hooked on coaching. It's beginning to look like he is going to make a career of it.