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GRETA CUNNINGHAM: With news from Minnesota Public Radio, I'm Greta Cunningham. The owner of a Nevada brothel, says Governor Ventura used the name of his business to sensationalize his book. So he says he should be allowed to put the governor's name on a bedroom in his brothel.

Ventura wrote about his experience with a prostitute at the Moonlite Bunny Ranch in his autobiography. The brothel's owner, Dennis Hof, says he's angry about a letter from Ventura's lawyer asking him to stop using the governor's name on advertisements.

DENNIS HOF: All I did was put a sign out in front just like hotels have, that says "George Washington Slept Here." And mine says "Jesse Ventura Had Sex Here." It was just a joke.

GRETA CUNNINGHAM: Hof said he initially named a bedroom suite in the governor's honor. Now he's going to rename the featured bedroom the governor's suite. Ventura's lawyer has not mentioned the possibility of a lawsuit against the brothel.

Superior National Forest officials will allow logging or burning of about 3,200 acres in northeastern Minnesota to reduce the risk of fire. The areas are outside the Boundary Waters Canoe area and sustained heavy damage from a 4th of July windstorm.

Logging of dead and damaged trees will be conducted in a corridor along the Gunflint Trail by the end of the year. A temporary road will be built and then removed later. The superior forest supervisor says long term fire prevention plans are currently being designed.

Southbound traffic on Interstate 494 near Edina has been diverted for most of the morning due to a fatal accident. A Minnesota Department of Transportation spokesman says southbound lanes on Interstate 494 from Highway 62 to Valley View Road should reopen this afternoon. The State Patrol confirms at least one fatality.

The forecast for Minnesota calls for sunny skies statewide, breezy and warmer in the west, high temperatures near 68 in the north to near 80 in the south. At this hour, in the Twin Cities is a report of partly sunny skies and a temperature of 58 degrees. That's the news update. I'm Greta Cunningham.

GARY EICHTEN: Thanks, Greta. Six minutes now past 12 o'clock. Programming on NPR is supported by medformation.com, your link to local health news, information, and health care professionals. Medinformation.com, a Minnesota health resource.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Good afternoon, and welcome back to Midday on Minnesota Public Radio. I'm Gary Eichten. I'm glad you could join us.

Well, enough talk. Let's play, or at least get ready to watch, this weekend. After all the buildup, it's time for the big football game. It certainly has all the elements, outdoor stadium, beautiful autumn afternoon, a heated rivalry featuring two of the best teams in the nation, fans from all around our region all fired up.

No, we're not talking about the Vikings-Packers game in Green Bay this Sunday. We're talking about the annual St. John-St. Thomas Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Association game.

Once again this year, the Johnnies and Tommies are among the best small college Division III teams in the nation, and they'll be renewing their rivalry tomorrow afternoon at 1 o'clock at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul.

Now, if you go, soak up the atmosphere and enjoy the football. Even though the players don't get scholarships and hardly ever go on to play professional football, the quality of play is top notch.

And one other thing, if you go spend some time watching John Gagliardi, the St. John's coach. He has won more college football games than any other active coach anywhere in the nation at any level.

In fact, only one other coach in the history of college football has more wins than John Gagliardi. Working at a relatively small school in Collegeville, Gagliardi hasn't received the national attention of other successful big name college and pro coaches. But in football circles, especially in Minnesota, John Gagliardi is a living legend.

Part of it is that Gagliardi's teams hold unconventional practices famous for what's missing. There's no tackling, no weightlifting regimen, no hollering at the players. Gagliardi's methods have served him well with more than 350 victories and three national championships to his credit.

It's been 50 years now since Gagliardi started his college coaching career, and he sat down with Minnesota Public Radio's William Wilcox for a Voices of Minnesota interview, explaining that he was born in Trinidad, Colorado, near the New Mexico state line.

JOHN GAGLIARDI: I was born in 1926 and, obviously, grew up during the depression. I didn't realize I was in a depression till afterwards, but I didn't. I guess we were hurting, but everybody else was.

But anyway, it was a great town, a coal mining community that had a tremendous mixture of all kinds of nationalities. And diversity was-- we didn't ever hear of the word, but we were living it.

And it was a really, I thought, glorious town. It still is a wonderful town, great climate, great area. Only trouble is it's a lot like our iron range, a place, a nice place, without much of an industry. But it should become a great tourist attraction.

Well, anyway, that was the town I was brought up in. And I can't really think of a better place to grow up. I loved it and still do.

WILLIAM WILCOX: What did your folks do?

JOHN GAGLIARDI: Well, my dad was an immigrant who came over from Italy as a 16-year-old guy. And he went and joined his brothers in the coal mines, but then didn't like that very well and figured he had to get out of there, extricate himself some way. And so he figured the only way he could do that was a third-grade education.

It was to learn a trade, which he did. He became a blacksmith and did that very well until he saw in the 1930s that that was going out the window. But he started a body shop, an auto repair shop. And that's where I thought I'd be when I was in high school.

That's where I worked. As the farm kids, worked on the farm, I worked in the body shop. And when World War broke out, and everybody was getting drafted, my uncle who was working there, everybody. My brother-in-law and brother all went into the service.

I was the only guy left but thought I was doing a great job and did that for a year or so after high school. And I actually thought that that's what-- I never had any aspirations to go to college. Here I am in college all these years.

But at that time, of course, I'd been coaching a high school team because there, too, the high school coach had been drafted and gone to the service. And this is 1943. There are no able-bodied guys around, just us young guys that weren't ready to go in the service.

So I was 16 and somehow talked to people into running the high school, the Catholic high school there, instead of dropping football the way they had planned, and to let us run it as being captain, myself and my buddy.

We were captains, and we run the team, captains practice as they call it. So we were player coaches. We never thought of ourselves as coaches. We just thought of ourselves as players.

Well, we actually did very well and won the championship. And so the following year, 1944, with the War still raging-- and I was still working at the body shop-- and the principal comes over and asks me if I wanted to-- it was only a block away from the school, the body shop.

He asked me if I wanted to coach. Well, that wasn't my first thought. That was in August. I hadn't thought about it. I thought, gee, that's great. But I said, no, I can't do it. I'm working here at the shop. So I said, you'll have to talk to my dad, who, of course, was-- anything the priest would ask, he'd say, fine.

And so at 4 o'clock, I'd quit working and walk over and coach football. And so we did that and did very well again. And in the meantime, the war is ending in 1945 or so. And it's a complicated thing because when I was in high school, again, as a senior in high school, our basketball team was very good, and we beat the local junior college.

And at the end of our season, they still had about five games to go. Their coach asked myself and my buddy to play for them. And the only way he could do that is to enroll us in a class there, a night class, a typing class, which is a very good class, by the way, which I used all my life. So we enrolled in Typing 1 night class, and played the last five games of basketball with them.

And so the next year he wanted me to play again. So I said, gee, I'm working. I'm working. I can't do that. And so he said, well, we'll practice after 5 o'clock. And so I got enrolled in Typing 2.

So in the meantime, I had two years of college basketball, never having really gone to college yet.

WILLIAM WILCOX: But you must have been a good typist.

JOHN GAGLIARDI: Well, that was a great-- that's the best class I ever took. Those two classes is the only ones. It's really good.

So anyway, the following year, he comes to me. He wants me to play basketball. Now he wants me to enroll. But everything came together perfectly because everybody's getting out of the service.

I hadn't really thought about going to college, but he had thought about it. The coach wanted me to play basketball. So he talks to my dad.

Boy, in those days, you talk to my dad. He runs the show. He says, gee, this kid should go to college. He says, he's throwing it, and he's a great coach. It's the first time I'd heard I was a great coach. He says he's doing a great job over there. That should be his career.

So my dad thinks about it. He says, you know, he says, I think he's right. He says, your brother's coming back. Your brother in law's coming back, your uncle. He says this business will never be able to support five people, five families. He said, maybe you should try that if you like to do that.

Well, I thought about it. I said, well, that sounds good to me. So that's how I got into college. It was all kinds of miracles happening around me.

So I graduated from college, junior college. I was a graduate. So now I've had four years of football coaching experience and, actually, four years of basketball experience.

So in the meantime, we're playing St. Mary's of Colorado Springs High School, and I got acquainted with a priest there, Father Cavanaugh, great guy. And he asked me what I was going to do next year because he knew my situation. I didn't have a clue what I was going to do. I had some people who wanted me to play basketball for them.

So I said, I really don't know. He says, well, he had this idea. He must have thought about it. He said, why don't you come up to Colorado Springs and go to Colorado College and coach our teams at St. Mary's?

Gee, that sounded good to me. So that's what I did. I went to enroll there. He made nice arrangements. He paid for my lodging and room at the YMCA for two years. That's what happened there.

That was a great experience. I really went to Colorado college, but I didn't really-- I just went to classes there. That's all. Most of the time, I just rushed back down to St. Mary's High School.

I was the only coach at St. Mary's High School, the football, basketball, and baseball. And so that occupied me pretty well, and I loved it. And frankly, other than going to classes, it was wonderful. You just couldn't beat it.

Tough school, that was the only fly in the ointment. Colorado College is a very, very tough school. And academically, God, I had to work hard. But I made it through there.

And now at age-- whatever age I was about that time, I think 22-- I finished, and then another lucky break came along. Monsignor Kelly of St. Mary's High School was a friend of-- see, these Irishman are thick.

He's a friend of Monsignor Riley. these two Irish Monsignors knew each other. And this Monsignor Riley was the president of Carroll College in Helena. And in some conversation, he was talking about their football demise there and how it was going downhill, and he was thinking about dropping it.

And Monsignor Kelly said, I got this young kid that I think you could get up there for-- I don't know if he said peanuts, because it was peanuts. What it was, what it was for me was a glorious opportunity.

So without ever having seen the college or they having seen me, a few little correspondence and phone calls, I was hired, sight unseen, for $2,400 a year as their coach, football, basketball, athletic director, everything. So to me, it was a tremendous break.

$2,400 is not what it sounds like in those dollars, because you could buy a car for $1,500. And fortunately, we did extremely well there. We lost, I think, one game, football game, the first year. And then we won three straight football championships and two straight basketball championships and a couple of baseball titles.

So in the meantime, again, luckily, everything was happening in place. I met a great guy, Bill Osborne, who was coaching. He was a coach at Billings Catholic High School, and I met him when we played in Billings.

And he was a St. John's graduate, a great player, a great athlete here. He told me that St. John's needed-- they needed a football coach the next year, after I'd been four years at Carroll college.

And then he informed St. Johns to contact me. So sure enough, at the end of the basketball season, they invited me here to get interviewed. And I liked it.

It was a much bigger school, and, gee, I was, I think, making $2,500, $2,600, or $2,700 by that time at Carroll. These guys offered me $4,200. It sounded like-- as a kid, It sounded like the world, double my salary, instantly. I liked it so much that I signed a lifetime contract and still at $4,200.

[LAUGHTER]

WILLIAM WILCOX: Was football very different in those days?

JOHN GAGLIARDI: Oh, yeah. Football is-- yeah, sure. First of all, no face masks, that's the first thing everybody-- everybody had broken noses, a lot of broken noses, teeth missing, stuff like that. It was ridiculous.

And of course, it wasn't-- you didn't throw the ball as much. It was like comparing a car. Cars at that time we thought were magnificent. But when you compare them to today's cars, they lack a little bit. Although, the other cars got you there too. It took a little longer, but they got you there.

WILLIAM WILCOX: What did you like about coaching? What do you still like about coaching?

JOHN GAGLIARDI: Well, the part I liked about coaching, number one, and that's-- first of all, it's like running your own business. You can do what you want, and you can be imaginative if you want. And of course, you're dealing with good people, I think.

I started with my teammates, really. They're good guys. And of course, I couldn't order them around. They're my buddies. Some of them are older than I am.

I sure couldn't command them around like a drill sergeant. So we'd have to ask them a lot of questions. Well, what do you guys think about doing this? You We still do that, and I think you get a lot of input.

And if they say, well, we don't want to do this or that, well, you don't do it. Maybe you do it. Maybe you don't. But you sure take that into consideration.

One thing, and the one thing I always remember is there are a lot of taboos that coaches had or people had, I suppose. One of them, believe it or not, was you're not supposed to drink water when you're a high school coach-- playing in high school or any athlete.

I don't know how that originated. Until very recently, they still had that idea. Don't drink. Something will happen to you.

Well, I was around the coal mines. I'd see those sweaty horses and mules coming out of the mines. Hell, if they didn't give them some water somehow-- I don't know how much water they gave him or anything, but they had to give him water, otherwise I figured they were going to die.

And the plow horses, we had a lot of plow horses. The fields were being plowed. They couldn't do it without water. And I figured, jeez. So the coach, no water, he'd say.

Well, I'd sneak some water when he wasn't looking. These other guys would think I was going to die. They thought, oh, God, this guy.

So when I took over, that was the first thing. We got tired, and I said, water break! Jeez, nobody moved, except me. I was the only guy at the water fountain.

These other guys were looking at me like I was going to die. They were ready for me to die. So when they saw that I didn't keel over, they started nibbling at the fountain. Pretty soon, they all ignored it and all drank.

So that's the first thing we put to rest. And we had all kinds of things that coaches-- to this day, I do things the way I wanted to do them as a player, not the way-- here I am, a 16-year-old guy, no coach, no adult to supervise me. But I knew-- we didn't know how to do everything, so we did a lot of things the way he told us.

But things that I thought that we shouldn't do, such as goofy calisthenics and knee-- all kinds of duck walking and sprinting and things that I hated-- we liked to play ball. We didn't like to do all this ridiculous stuff. So we just didn't do it.

Well, I'd ask our players, you guys want to do this? Well, most of them didn't want to do it either, so I was in good shape, see. I wouldn't just say, we're not going to do this. Other than the water fountain, that was the only thing-- that's the only thing that I did that they weren't so sure of. Otherwise, I had them all rallying behind me, see.

WILLIAM WILCOX: You get rid of the duck walk?

JOHN GAGLIARDI: Jeez, I hated that. I hated that stupid duck walk. Later, we learned that was really bad for you, to be in this deep, complete knee bend. It was very bad for your knees. You're actually doing something that was going to hurt you and did a lot.

Then the other thing, he'd punish you by-- if you screw up or something, or he thought you'd screwed up, he'd punish you by running laps. Well, I don't know. There were all kinds of things.

WILLIAM WILCOX: Well, that is certainly one of the stereotypes I think about football coaches, generally, is, that they behave like drill sergeants, they get in your face, they yell at you, they punish you, things like that. Is that a part of coaching?

JOHN GAGLIARDI: Well, I think that a lot of things, particularly coaching, was, I think, adapted from the military. And who knows? I'm sure they know what they're doing. I was never in the military, so I don't know how it works.

I see enough horror movies that-- I say, jeez, I don't know how those poor guys endure that kind of stuff. But anyway, I sure couldn't treat my buddies-- they would've thrown me out of there if I tried to treat them like that.

And I don't like to be treated that way, and I, generally, don't like to treat people like that. You got to coach them and correct the errors. And sometimes I like treating them like raising your own kids. Sometimes you get a little more irritated than you should, then I always feel worse than they do. So try not to get too carried away.

GARY EICHTEN: You're listening to Minnesota Public Radio's William Wilcox's Voices of Minnesota Interview with St. John's University Football Coach John Gagliardi. Later this hour, we're going to hear from Minnesota music arranger Red McLeod. But right now, let's return to that interview with John Gagliardi.

WILLIAM WILCOX: You got to St. John's in the mid '50s?

JOHN GAGLIARDI: In 1953. Well, when I came here for that interview, the legendary Johnny Blood was the coach here. Johnny Blood, my god, people today don't know who he is, probably.

He's one of the-- well, I'll tell you this. He's a charter member of the National Football Hall of Fame. That's how good he was. So here I am, a guy who never played college football interviewing for a job with The Johnny Blood. He was still on campus, fortunately.

WILLIAM WILCOX: How did he--

JOHN GAGLIARDI: Well, how did he arrive here? That's a good story. See, he had played here as a freshman, sophomore. I don't know what year it would be, 1920 or '30. Who knows?

And then he left school and went up to the Duluth Eskimos, I think it was. They had a professional team. So his name is John McNally. So he and a buddy went up there to try out.

But to retain their amateur standing, they try to use synonyms or whatever you call them. He said they were going by a movie. It was called Blood and Sand.

He says, OK, you I'll be blood. You be sand. So John McNally became Johnny Blood. The other guy, Sand, didn't make it, so it never did matter.

So Johnny Blood, to retain his amateur standing, he didn't want to be known as John McNally. But he wound up with the Green Bay Packers. He wound up player coach of the Philadelphia or Pittsburgh Steelers or Philadelphia Eagles, one of those teams.

And he actually coached-- he was a player coach there. He coached Whizzer White. Now, this guy, Johnny Blood, was extraordinary. Well, in the meantime, he had never finished college. A brilliant guy, but he had a pro career.

And so he comes back to St. John's in about 1948 at age 51 or 52 to finish his degree. And in the meantime, I think they had a good coach here named Joe Bender, who was dying of cancer of some kind for two years.

So Johnny Blood was helping him. I think he helped him for two years while the poor guy was dying. And when he died, Johnny Blood, in the meantime, completed his junior and senior year, so they hired him as an economics professor and football coach.

So fortunately for me, he didn't want to coach anymore. He was 53 years old, and I don't know what else he had in mind. So I knocked on his door with hat in hand-- I didn't wear a hat, but I very meekly said-- introduced myself to this great coach. And he was a very nice guy. And I told him who I was.

He said, well, I don't know if it's possible to win here. He says, these monks are very-- these are German guys. You got to understand these Germans. They're very tight.

[LAUGHS]

I remember him saying that. He says they don't believe in scholarships. He thought you had to have scholarships.

And of course, that's one of the reasons I got the job because when I was interviewed here, they said, you need scholarships, because you're allowed to have scholarships in this league, and a lot of schools had them. St. John's would have preferred not to have them. I don't know whether they had them or not.

But when I said, well, we're winning at Carroll College without scholarships. They didn't have any there. And I never had a scholarship, so I didn't think it was important. Boy, they thought that was good. I knew I had the job.

Two questions, the other question was can you beat St. Thomas and Gustavus? They were dominating the league. Well, I'd never heard of them, so what was I going to say?

I said, well, I think so. I said, we're winning out at Carroll college. There's some awful tough teams there, and we've been able to beat them. So boy, that was it. I got the job.

Well, now Johnny Blood says, I don't know. These teams are tough because St. Thomas, they've got scholarships. And St. John's doesn't want to match them. And by that time, I figured, well, $4,200 here. Jeez, that's a lot of money.

And I told Johnny Blood-- I said, John, I don't know if I really want to stay in coaching. I really wasn't sure at the time. Body men were making more than my money. I was a good body man, and I figured, I don't know.

So he said, well, that's the way I approach it. Give it a couple of years. If you like it, stay with it, and if not, move on. And I said, I think I'll do that. So that's what I did, and I'm still here, unfortunately.

WILLIAM WILCOX: You haven't moved on yet, so you must be liking it.

JOHN GAGLIARDI: I've become a body man yet.

[LAUGHTER]

WILLIAM WILCOX: Well, what kind of students are you dealing with here at St. John's?

JOHN GAGLIARDI: Well, at St. John's and at Carroll College-- I will say that at Carroll College, I had the same type of good guys, top notch people.

Now, the key to it-- looking back all the way back through all my college career, I have to include Carroll college because they were very, very good-- they came from great families. That's the key thing.

They came from small towns, big towns, every place, big kids, small kids. But for the most part, they were good kids from good families. Yeah, we didn't have many bad apples at either place. I don't know if we had any. We must have had a couple, but I don't remember them.

The top notch guys, guys like, right off the bat, Jim Lehman, father Tom Lehman, was here waiting for me at St. John's. He became the leading scorer in the country, and he's still a top guy.

Matter of fact, Tom himself was headed to come to St. John's. In 1976, he was a very good quarterback at Elec. And at the middle of August, he decided to go to the university to play golf.

And I always say to Jim, jeez, he's lucky I didn't jump in that car and tell him, for God's sakes, Jim, have him come down and follow your footsteps. What kind of future could there be in golf for a kid from Minnesota? It's my great contribution to the Lehman's and to golfdom.

WILLIAM WILCOX: So you still don't have scholarships? Have you ever had scholarships.

JOHN GAGLIARDI: No, no. See, we were way ahead of the game. We never had-- in my career at Saint John's, we've never had a scholarship. I don't know. I think before that they might have had. They were happy to hire me so that they could get rid of those scholarships.

But now in 1976, we joined the NCAA Division III, which now does not permit scholarships. Now, there's still a lot of interpretation of that financial aid. But I'll tell you we're Simon Pure as ever. Johnny blood was, right.

These guys want to win, as he said, but they don't want to do much. Well, they want to win, and they still want to win. And I think they got the right idea. They treat the student the way they're supposed to be treated, the athlete.

You really shouldn't give an athlete any different break than any other student. What is that other-- what is an athlete do? We actually give them the opportunity to play a great game.

And our guys don't ask for anything. Our students here and at Carroll College, they have never asked for any more. They just ask for the opportunity to play football or sports and go to class and get a good education.

And when they get out of here, they've done a lot of great things with their lives. And that doesn't just mean financially. You don't have to be-- I could have been happy, as my brothers were, being a bodyman and my dad, a blacksmith. And all you got to do is raise a good family and have a good life.

WILLIAM WILCOX: Is it hard to get-- the academic standards are pretty high here, and we're probably 100 miles from the Twin Cities. We're at a monastery, in a wetland here. Is it hard to get kids interested in coming to school here?

JOHN GAGLIARDI: I don't know. I've never seemed to have much trouble. Maybe we're not going to get everybody. That guy that wants the bright lights, his not going to come here.

We get certain guys who say, well, they want to go where there's more social activity or this or that. But we get the kind of guys I like who like it out here. We tell them, what nicer place can you be?

Talk about Madden's Resort. Everybody pays these big bucks to go to Madden's Resort. This is better than Madden's Resort, better facilities. The only thing we don't have that they have is a golf course.

But we got a lot of other things they don't have, and it's a beautiful setting. And frankly, we tell the kids from the Twin Cities, at the end of the day in the Twin cities, you're all trying to get to places like this.

WILLIAM WILCOX: You talked about no special treatment of athletes here. Do you find that it's difficult for these guys to juggle sports and school and whatever else they have going on in life?

JOHN GAGLIARDI: Not if they have the ability to do it. First of all, we get a smart kid. They don't just take anybody in here. And then after all, college is not like high school.

They got a big adoption because they might have three classes in one day, maybe two classes someday. That's not a bad schedule. If they can't balance life and get to study in between-- what other people go to class, go to work for two or three hours an are off for four or five hours or the rest of the day.

College is a different life, a pretty darn nice life. You've got to learn to take that-- I don't think it's that difficult. It's not easy because you're judged constantly by profs who want to grade you, but who, incidentally, never want to be graded themselves.

WILLIAM WILCOX: I wanted to ask you about your practices. I visited one of your practices once. There was little, if any, tackling. Is that pretty customary?

JOHN GAGLIARDI: Well, if there's any tackling, there shouldn't have been any. We don't go full go. We don't ever bring anybody down. We're trying to avoid injuries.

That's the biggest bugaboo of all, the people, all the injuries. And we can control that in practice. We can't control it in the games, but we can sure control it in practice.

Now, we take a big chance, and it's something that nobody else in the history of football has ever done the way we do it. We're going to play in another week. We never tackle anybody. We we've been doing that all the time.

A year ago, we did it. And all we did was go undefeated, win 11 straight games, and we lost in the final game. We led the nation in defense last year, and we've led them in offense a number of times. So it works for us.

And what I like best is we cut down the injuries. Unfortunately, game time and even if you're playing touch football or basketball, pick up basketball, you'll get injured. I've had guys get injured playing kick the can.

We have had guys get injured falling out of the top bunks of their beds here. So people get injured just walking off a curb. So we're going to get injuries, but I think we have reduced them dramatically.

WILLIAM WILCOX: And the thinking is, by the time kids get to college, and they've played high school football, they know how to tackle?

JOHN GAGLIARDI: No, I don't think it's so much that they don't know. They might know how to tackle, but there's more to it playing defense than just tackling. You could be a great tackler.

But if you get blocked, if you get fooled, if you get injured-- a lot of things can happen to you, and you're sure not going to make a tackle if you're injured and not playing.

So if you can't get to the ball carrier, you're not going to make a tackle either. If they've blocked your-- so we're teaching them all these other things, and we're going to get to the ball carrier. Then we figure, well, hopefully, you'll tackle. If you don't tackle, then how can you think that you can play defense?

We do a lot of things differently. And our guys like it. We like it. And it seems to work. So I don't think you have to follow the mainstream all the time. We don't follow the herd always, very rarely.

WILLIAM WILCOX: You're doing it a little bit differently than most football programs, and it sure seems to work for you. Have things caught on elsewhere? It doesn't seem like--

JOHN GAGLIARDI: Well, we're not out there trying to make converts. Now, people who have played for me and believed in the program, such as Mike Grant, who has had a tremendous career at Eden Prairie, Gary Foshee, when he's coaching in Cathedral, Jim Mader up at Albany does it pretty much, guys that know and believe in what we do have done it well.

But there are a lot of ways to get it done. There's a lot of guys who are drill sergeants, and they're winning pretty good too, Lombardi and Parcells. And I think Joe Paterno is a little bit that way. They can win pretty-- they don't need my advice at all, at least they haven't called me for any.

WILLIAM WILCOX: Now, you've won one or two championships, national championships even.

JOHN GAGLIARDI: We've won three of them, yeah. And we've been knocking at the door many, many times but haven't been able to-- well, we won three, at least, and we could have and should have and might have won more. But we have won three.

A year ago, we were in the running and got knocked off in the last second by-- well, that's the way it is. We're capable of doing it if you got a little luck. But it's not easy.

It's like winning the Super Bowl. There are only 36 teams. I don't know how many teams. 32 teams go after it. We got 300 teams, and it's not so easy. So to have one at once, twice-- we've won it three times-- and be in the running once in a while, it's not bad.

WILLIAM WILCOX: Have any of your players played professional football?

JOHN GAGLIARDI: We haven't had too many that have. We've had a few of them, but nobody that really ever made it big. So the odds of anybody, even the guys out of University of Minnesota or Notre Dame or Nebraska, making it are pretty remote.

But a guy from our level, it's even more remote. But that doesn't mean it doesn't happen. It happens. And first of all, they got to get a break, and then, secondly, they got to be good enough.

No, a lot of them are good enough. It's like saying-- it's like almost getting a medical school. There are a lot of guys who never got to medical school, who might have made great doctors, but they never got in. They never had a shot. There are a lot of people out there capable of doing great things and either never get the chance or never get the second chance.

WILLIAM WILCOX: So your players, since they're not going toward professional football, they're all out there getting real jobs, you might say?

JOHN GAGLIARDI: They don't make the kind of money that the pros make now.

But the one time they-- I think guys are-- it turned out a lot of guys become doctors, lawyers, very successful businessmen. They do pretty well, I think.

WILLIAM WILCOX: How does having played football here help them in the rest of their life, do you think?

JOHN GAGLIARDI: I don't know where it helps anybody to do anything. To me, it's like a successful businessman or a professional person or anybody that plays golf or hunts. I don't know if it helps him or not, but it's something he likes to do. And if it doesn't interfere with his job, I think it's great. If it isn't-- I think it's just another thing that he can do and enjoys doing.

WILLIAM WILCOX: Were you ever tempted to leave St. John's or to get out of coaching once you started?

JOHN GAGLIARDI: Well, the greatest temptation I ever had was after many years of surviving the Minnesota winters. The University of San Diego offered me that job. And I went out there in the winter and looked at that place, and I thought, my god, what would life be like? This is the dead of winter here. It's so nice.

But by that time, my family had-- three of my kids were married and living in Minnesota. And I thought, it's a little ridiculous to split up a family. The first thing that's important is family.

The only thing that in retrospect they had was nice weather, milder weather. And we got plenty of nice days, but not as many as they do. And so after giving a lot of consideration, I just figured that it wasn't enough to move because there were plenty of drawbacks and all this, all the traffic, and all the other things. They had more money. But then again, I never was in this thing for the money.

WILLIAM WILCOX: Were you ever interested in becoming an assistant coach in the Pros?

JOHN GAGLIARDI: No, I never was. I liked the kind of life I live when I can do what I want to do. As an assistant, I don't know exactly what you have to do. I think you have to ask for permission to go to the toilet, maybe. I don't know. I don't know.

I like to be my own boss. I'm like the farmer. He may not be doing very well, but at least he does what he wants to do.

WILLIAM WILCOX: What makes you want to keep doing it? Why are you still here?

JOHN GAGLIARDI: I don't know. What else is there to do? I'm not interested in golfing or fishing or anything else.

See, I know a lot of people that retire, and then they start looking for-- after a while, they start looking for-- the first thing they say, they're going to visit to spend more time with their family or travel.

Well, I've done enough traveling. We got plenty of travel to do. My family, I see enough of them. I see them all the time. And how much can you see them? You go to visit your grandkids. They're in school mostly. What are you going to do there? Go to school with them?

So OK. So then they start looking for volunteer work. They start to volunteer or do this or get-- well, again, I got work. I got plenty of work. At least I know a little bit of what I'm supposed to be doing now.

If I go volunteer, I do what? Go give haircuts to somebody? Or what do you do? I don't know how to do that. So I'll do what I know what to do.

WILLIAM WILCOX: You're just going to keep plugging away at it, you think?

JOHN GAGLIARDI: As long as I can or as long as they don't fire me. I got this lifetime contract here. Of course, they can declare me dead and give me the last sacraments and say, you're dying, in case we start losing.

WILLIAM WILCOX: So have you gotten a raise from $4,200, or are you still--

JOHN GAGLIARDI: We're up to $4,300. I've got all the bread I can eat.

[LAUGHTER]

GARY EICHTEN: St. John's University Football Coach John Gagliardi speaking with Minnesota Public Radio's William Wilcox is part of our Voices of Minnesota interview series. Only one other coach in the history of college football has won more games than John Gagliardi. This year, his team has won its first two games of the year. Tomorrow, they play arch rival St. Thomas at St. Thomas.

["THE MINNESOTA ROUSER" PLAYING]

Minnesota, hats off to thee

To thy colors, true we shall ever be

"Minnesota Rouser" is one of the best known tunes in the state of Minnesota. And now on Midday as part of Our Voices of Minnesota interview series, we're going to hear from the man who arranged that song, James Red McLeod arranged the "Rouser" when he was a University of Minnesota student and marching band member.

Fortunately, he didn't stop there. In his more than 60 years of music arranging, Red McLeod has pretty much done it all, arranging for polka bands. He worked for the Golden Strings at the old Minneapolis Radisson Hotel, and for 25 years, he was Director of Halftime Shows for the Minnesota Vikings when they played outdoors at Met Stadium in Bloomington.

McLeod, a native of Virginia on Minnesota's Iron Range, is well known in the music world for his band methods book, a text still used in the high schools. Red McLeod talked with Minnesota Public Radio's Dan Olson.

DAN OLSON: It was the depths of the depression. You, apparently, wanted to go on to college, to the University of Minnesota. How could your family afford this?

RED MCLEOD: Well, the family, by luck, could afford it because I had been playing-- all through high school, I would take jobs. I was arranging even then. I can remember the-- I arranged for local bands. If the Eveleth band needed something or somebody needed something, I had a chance to arrange, and I would earn money.

I peddled papers. I peddled papers. In the night, I graduated from high school. I went home, got on my blue suit, and went, and marched up, and got my honors when I graduated.

But I've always been able to write, and I always made money on my writing, things like that. So when I came down here, I wrote for orchestras. I wrote for campus orchestras. I did things.

As a matter of fact, university fixed me up tutoring, kids that couldn't get-- and I would charge $0.50 for writing your harmony exercise if you couldn't do it, stuff like that.

And I did tutoring quite a bit, and then I went to graduate school because I didn't get a job. No one could get a job in 1932. It was the depths of the depression.

DAN OLSON: What would you have been interested in getting a job in?

RED MCLEOD: Well, I went to school as a bandmaster, to be a high school bandmaster. But thank God I didn't get the job.

DAN OLSON: Why do you say that?

RED MCLEOD: Well, I went to the-- they told me that if you went to school a little longer, went to the graduate school, and got another degree, it would help you in your job search.

So I joined a graduate school. But in the middle of the spring quarter, Ormandy was here with the symphony. You probably heard this story. And he hired me to-- he wanted to play a number with the university band with the symphony. 1812 Overture, it was. And he wanted a special arrangement just exactly as he wanted 1812.

So Ormandy called me in. Or he asked Prescott, who's your arranger? Prescott says, we got a kid that can do it. And I was the kid.

And so Ormandy called me in, and he went over 1812 Overture and says, this is what we need. So I wrote out 1812 overture for the band. And I think Ormandy wanted-- because we wore maroon uniforms at the time-- he wanted that nice maroon back up to the band or to the orchestra.

And so we played it, and it worked very, very well. And this was the turning point in my life. I quit school, teaching. Ormandy paid me $85 for that arrangement.

And $85 was more in 1933-- it was more-- it was about-- I'd say February, 1933 was more than I could earn going out and teaching for a whole month in peanut butter brittle Wyoming or something like that. And so I said, if I can make this much arranging, I'm going to quit school and be an arranger.

DAN OLSON: Every aspiring composer and musician is listening to you and thinking, you can make money at music.

RED MCLEOD: You can make money at music.

DAN OLSON: Eventually.

RED MCLEOD: Eventually, yes. Well, I would say look at this house. But the things I wrote-- I didn't stay with one thing only. You know who paid for this house? Whoopee John. Did you know who Whoopee John was?

DAN OLSON: This is the polka band leader?

RED MCLEOD: Polka band leader. I wrote for Whoopee John for about-- I started in 1937, and I wrote for Whoopee John all the time. I got a salary every week if I wrote or not. But I was Whoopee John's writing boy.

DAN OLSON: But there's no polka blood in your background, is there?

RED MCLEOD: No, not at all. But the thing about it is you learn. You have a polka band to write for, so you write a polka band.

DAN OLSON: For those of us who are a little weak on our polka history, you better explain Whoopee John and the whole Whoopee John phenomenon. This was big-time polka.

RED MCLEOD: Big-time polka, Whoopee John out of New Ulm. And he had the Whoopee John Band, three saxes, three brass, four rhythms. His son played drums, and Edna played piano. That was his girlfriend, shall I say.

But they toured Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, North and South Dakota, continually. They played every night, except when it came lent. He didn't play on Ash Wednesday, and he started again Easter Sunday. That was the boys time off.

But the thing about it is, no one got paid except me. My checks came by the week. And when Whoopee John took his time off during lent, my checks came because I was supposed to continue writing.

And I had a contract. I would write so many polkas for him and things like that. And I followed it.

DAN OLSON: Now, polka fans are going to send me death threats for this next question. But really, after you've heard and written and arranged one polka, haven't you done them all? Be careful now what you say.

RED MCLEOD: I'd say no because we had a good deal with polka-- I not only wrote polkas. I wrote schottisches, waltzes, landlers, and things like that. I wrote what was necessary.

And if I can-- God, I hate to say all this stuff. But when Lawrence Welk started out his business, he published his first polka. I wrote his first arrangement.

DAN OLSON: You're a music machine. You're a music man.

RED MCLEOD: A music machine is one of my big troubles. That's all I know. If we go ride in the car-- my wife, who's in Sweden right at the moment, drives the car. If we had a flat tire, she'd have to go out and change it because I couldn't change it.

I don't do anything around the house. I have to hire everything done. I can't go out and rake the yard. I don't do a good job.

DAN OLSON: Let's talk a little bit about the difference between composing and arranging. I assume you do both, although you're better known for your arranging, which is what? Taking a piece that already exists and--

RED MCLEOD: And arranging it. And I did much of that with the Golden Strings at the Radisson. I did nothing but arranging. There was no original tunes there at all.

DAN OLSON: You'd take a standard and add the McLeod touch to it.

RED MCLEOD: Add the McLeod touch or add the-- tell the strings, write the music so the strings knew what they were doing. Oh, yeah, I wrote a waltz. I would write something every once in a while.

Vienna seasons, I wrote a waltz that was a very good waltz. I wrote my own version of the Lord's Prayer. And I've got to get the-- look at that thing on the end. I'm Catholic, and I wrote a mass for the Catholic Church.

We were in Europe, and I heard a mass there. And when we walked out, I said, I can write one like that. So all through Europe, I wrote the mass. I wrote most of it in Romania. And we came home, and I did the mass here, Dixieland mass-- it was Dixieland, In Dixieland, by James red McLeod.

DAN OLSON: What are the distinctive McLeod touches in an arrangement that a lot of people would say, oh, I hear the hand of James McLeod on that piece?

RED MCLEOD: I think that one of the things that I was very good at is my obbligatos. I was able to give the melody, and I was able to hear something that went counter to it, my counterpoint. And I would say, with the Golden Strings, it was very prominent in what I was doing because I would have those--

[MUSIC PLAYING]

[HUMS] I would be against the countermelody, and I was known for my countermelodies because my countermelodies were nice.

DAN OLSON: It is a gift. It's a genetic gift. It's something in your head, something you hear.

RED MCLEOD: It's all in my head. It's all in my head. And as a matter of fact, I write more arrangements at night than I do anything else. Because when I can't sleep at nights, I hear-- and oh, God, I shouldn't say this. My wife will kill me.

I used to keep a guitar under the bed. So when I had anything to do, I had an idea, and I wanted to really work it out, and not come down to the piano, and just reach and get the guitar, I played a little four string guitar.

And I would sing along with the guitar, but my wife put a stop to that. I couldn't do that anymore. She got rid of the guitar. As a matter of fact, I think my kids busted it up, so I don't have it anymore.

DAN OLSON: I suppose it's a sign of our times that now professional football teams use arrangers. And you were the Vikings arranger for how long?

RED MCLEOD: Well, I was the entertainment director. I did write the Viking song that they use now, but I was Entertainment Director for 25 years.

DAN OLSON: Wow.

RED MCLEOD: And I quit-- well, you put on the halftime shows, what they did in the halftime, and Jim Finks gave me the ring for that. But I would have to make sure that the band got on at a certain time and got off at a certain time.

Because if the band stayed over-- and I had bands that, when they-- 60,000 people are looking at the band, and this guy says, boy, I'll show them what we can do. And he would like to stay a little longer, see. And then the referees would come, get that band off!

Oh, I had a good time here with the band. We had some, I'd say, wonderful shows. The only thing was bad about it is we had to play shows in the middle of the winter.

What would you play for entertainment when the band couldn't play? But we had a way of doing it. We did a couple of things.

I used skating quite a bit. They would-- the Vikings would see that I had skating rinks on the side. And so we would play some records, and I had some girls who would go out and skate. That was a halftime show.

And then we got a different way. We would have the band play in their own auditorium. We would have them play their halftime show and put it on tape. And when they came here, we would put it on tape.

We would play the tape, and they'd go out and play like crazy. Nobody knew the difference because we were playing the tape. We had to. 20 below zero, what are you going to do?

DAN OLSON: You've just explained something that should be obvious to everyone. But isn't, of course, because now we're used to football games in stadiums that are 70 degrees with a roof on top. You're talking about the old Metropolitan stadium.

RED MCLEOD: Old Metropolitan stadium. And I put on the first band show in the current stadium.

DAN OLSON: Can you imagine being a player out in zero? Snow is flying. You're expected to go all over the scale and make a song.

RED MCLEOD: Well, we did what we could. And I'll tell you a funny one with the band when we used to-- one of my favorite bands was a band from La Crosse. La Crosse University had an excellent band. And the bandmaster there was a good friend of mine, and so we came up with this record. So he would record at home, see, and we would play the tape.

Although, the thing about it is it was so cold-- I think we played one postseason game in January that got to be about 25 degrees below zero. But the band was out there playing. But I had the tape recorder out there too.

The tape recorder began to freeze and to slow down. And the band was playing, [VOCALIZING], and right in the middle of it. But Ericsson, the guy that took care of it, he knew exactly what to do.

He pulled that thing in, and we put it in a barrel with a light. And the light gave the heat, and so the band was out marching slow and slow. So the [VOCALIZING] went up. They marched away. Everything was wonderful.

DAN OLSON: (LAUGHING) Those poor band members as they heard the music getting slower and slower and slower, literally freezing on the spot.

RED MCLEOD: Yeah, the biggest thrill I got-- the biggest deal we got, that's the time that we hired this man with the balloon. We had a balloon ascension on the field, in the middle of the field, and the balloon got away. And it had his son in it, and they had to chase the balloon.

The balloon was just about to go in the Minnesota River when it came down. But the kid had been up in the balloon before, and he knew how to handle it. But it was in the newspapers all over the country. But that was my show.

DAN OLSON: (LAUGHING) And the balloon had taken off with the guy's kid.

RED MCLEOD: No one hung on to it, and the balloon went up.

DAN OLSON: The kid must have been terrified.

RED MCLEOD: Well, it was his father that owned the balloon, so he knew what he was doing.

DAN OLSON: You escaped by the skin of your teeth with that one, didn't you?

RED MCLEOD: Yes, yes. Well, I had lots of things. We had lots of things go on.

DAN OLSON: James "Red" McLeod, a pleasure talking with you. Thank you so much.

RED MCLEOD: Well, thank you for what you've done. And I feel like I've boasted too much, but it's one of these things. You ask me what I did, and that's what I did.

GARY EICHTEN: James "Red" McLeod talking with Minnesota Public Radio's Dan Olson is part of our Voices of Minnesota interview series. Dan is the producer of that series. Well, that's it for our mid-day program today.

By the way, if you missed part of the McLeod interview, or for that matter, if you missed part of the John Gagliardi interview that we had on earlier this hour, we're going to be rebroadcasting both interviews at 9 o'clock tonight here on Minnesota Public Radio. The rebroadcast is at 9:00 tonight with the Voices of Minnesota interview series.

That pretty well does it for Midday today, and for this week, for that matter. We sure hope you'll be able to join us Monday. I think you're going to find the program very, very interesting and informative.

Tom Brokaw is in town. Of course, he's now a best-selling author with his reflections on the greatest generation, the story of World War II, the folks who won the war, and then built a superpower. He's delivering the Carlson lecture on Monday, and we'll have that over the noon hour.

Sarah Meier is the producer of our Midday program. We had helped this week from Elizabeth Winter. I'm Gary Eichten. Thanks for joining us. Stay tuned now. News is next and then Ira Flatow with Science Friday.

Join National Public Radio's Neal Conan and Leanne Hanson Monday, September 27 at the Macalester College Chapel in St. Paul. Tickets are free and available at Lake Wind's Natural Foods in Minnetonka and Linden Hills Co-op in Minneapolis.

SPEAKER: You're listening to Minnesota Public Radio. We have a sunny sky. It's 62 degrees at KNOW FM 91.1 Minneapolis and St. Paul. It should be sunny all afternoon with a high reaching 75. It's a beautiful day.

There's increasing cloudiness tonight, maybe some light rain with a low in the mid 50s. It's partly cloudy tomorrow with a high temperature near 70 degrees.