Man With the Plan: Winningest College Coach
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Let's move onto no easy feat, shall we say? College football, talk about a grid iron great. St. John's University, John Gagliardi has done it. He is college football's winningest coach.</s>JOHN GAGLIARDI, COACH, ST. JOHN'S UNIVERSITY: People ask me how it's done and I tell them luck and prayers. Thanks very much.</s>O'BRIEN: Shades of pride of the Yankees there. Gagliardi is indeed the man with a plan, and he joins us live on the phone. Coach, good to have you have with us.</s>GAGLIARDI: Thank you very much.</s>O'BRIEN: What is the secret to success? Your record is, as I understand it, 408 wins 114 losses, 11 ties. That is astounding.</s>GAGLIARDI: Well, you have to give us credit for that last win. It's 409 now.</s>O'BRIEN: Oh, 409. I'm so sorry.</s>GAGLIARDI: It was a hard-earned won, so we have to count that one.</s>O'BRIEN: Absolutely. What's the secret?</s>GAGLIARDI: The secret is probably, as I said, a lot of talented ball players through the years. A lot of luck, and probably the answer to a lot of prayers.</s>O'BRIEN: And, of course, showing up, too.</s>GAGLIARDI: Yes, showing up. That helps a lot.</s>O'BRIEN: You have a long series of "no" statements that are a part of your philosophy. I just want to share a couple of them with people. Time does not permit to go through them all. But among the philosophy of your coaching is, no long practices, no meetings, no tackling in practice, and no whistles. This sounds very atypical for a football coach.</s>GAGLIARDI: Well, I guess we just dare to be different. We don't go along what everybody else does. We just do it the way we like to do it and the way that it works for us. And we are satisfied with it. We are not looking to convert the world or anything, or anybody else. I didn't check my messages, but I don't think Bill Parcels (ph) called me today for any advice.</s>O'BRIEN: Have you ever grabbed one of your player's facemasks or thrown a folding chair or anything like that?</s>GAGLIARDI: My name is not Bobby Knight.</s>O'BRIEN: But over the years, I'm sure there have been occasions where you have been frustrated by your players on the field. Have you ever sort of come to the edge of kind of losing it?</s>GAGLIARDI: No, I must say, I haven't gone that far.</s>O'BRIEN: Really?</s>GAGLIARDI: No. Do you think that's unusual? There are very few coaches that do that, I think.</s>O'BRIEN: Well, maybe we pay too much attention to those coaches.</s>GAGLIARDI: I think so.</s>O'BRIEN: Are there more coaches out there like you perhaps that we are not paying enough attention to?</s>GAGLIARDI: Well, I don't. But I don't think that there are many coaches the other way. I don't know. I haven't got a clue. I only know what I do.</s>O'BRIEN: I'm curious, what was it like in the locker room after this 409th?</s>GAGLIARDI: You know something, I never did -- now that you mention it, I never did get to the locker room because there were so many other things going on that I never made it. I will probably see a lot of my players for the first time today at a team meeting.</s>O'BRIEN: All right. Well, I hope you are well received. I am sure you will be. We wish you continued success. Hey, any thoughts about retirement or are you just going to keep going?</s>GAGLIARDI: Well, as I say, I never think about retirement. But every time we lose, I think about suicide, and thank god we haven't lost any this year.</s>O'BRIEN: John Gagliardi, who is the football coach at the Division III St. John's College in Collegeville, Minnesota. Thanks so much for spending a little time with us. And we wish you continued good luck and good work on the field.</s>GAGLIARDI: Thank you very much. Say a few prayers. It helps a lot.</s>O'BRIEN: All right. We'll do that for you. Thanks very much.</s>GAGLIARDI: Bye. TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com