Five Seconds of Fame

I first met John in 1990.  However, it was only after I returned to my alma mater 14 years later that I began to chat with him on a regular basis.  I spent a good portion of many mornings in his office discussing pretty much everything except football and marveling at the things I observed or heard from him.  I shared many of these stories with my Dad, who then began to pester me to get a photo with John.  “He’s a legend,” my dad would say, “and you need to get a signed picture with him before it is too late.”

For a couple years, I ignored my Dad’s repeated requests.  I suppose I was embarrassed to ask someone I now considered a friend if he would sign a picture of the two of us together.  But eventually, I relented and  took a picture with John.  I enlarged it to an 8x10 and he signed it, “Warren, you were one of the great ones, on and off the field.” 

What my Dad didn’t know was that the main reason I went through with it was so that I could have John sign a second copy of the picture.  That copy ended up as a gift to my Dad on father’s day a few years ago.  “Mort, thanks for sending Warren to Saint John’s.”

Pleased at how my Dad enjoyed receiving his copy of the picture, I figured I was now done with this autograph-seeking nonsense.  But little did I know, my Dad was on to something.

Fast forwarding to this past spring, I was one of 63 students who enrolled in John’s Theory of Football course, the most popular course on campus.  At the close of the second-to-last class period, I told the students that I would bring a nice camera to the final class and snap an individual picture of them with John.  The excitement level in the room immediately escalated.

I followed this up by telling the class that I’d have John sign the pictures with a personal note.  You’d think I had just told the students that I was going to take them to Disneyland, and it was fun to watch one student pump his first and whisper, “Yes.”  I also took the opportunity to remind the students (well, the male students) that this meant they may want to wear clean clothes and run a comb their hair. 

Forty-eight hours later, the clock on the wall showed ten past two, signifying the end of the course.  But no one left; they all waited to take their individual pictures with John.  And just prior to taking these individual pictures, I gathered everyone for a class picture.

I am pretty sure John developed arthritis in his right hand signing all those pictures, but eventually he made it through each and every one of them.  Over the week that followed, the students came to my office to pick up their souvenirs from the class.  But what John didn’t know was this - while the students were picking up their pictures, they were also signing the class picture with their own personal note to John.  The class picture was a gift to John, and it is now prominently displayed in his office.

There’s a lot more to this story, but as those details could very easily make their way into my book, I am going to wrap-up with a final story about that class picture.

One of the major television news stations in town, KARE 11, was at Saint John’s earlier this week interviewing John - below is a link to the resulting video.   If you skip to the one minute mark, you will see John proudly point out the class picture and read one of the comments that was written.

http://www.kare11.com/news/article/991066/24/Gagliardi-to-coach-600th-game-on-Saturday

Had my Dad not kept on me about getting a signed picture with John, I likely wouldn’t have come up with the idea to do the same for his students.  I likely wouldn’t have taken the class picture either.  And KARE 11 would have needed to find something else to fill those five seconds of their news clip. 

Part of me feels guilty in taking pride knowing that something I was responsible for ended up on the news.  But, John seems proud of the picture and comments, so maybe that's okay. 

I suppose I could mention that the comment John read from the picture during the newscast was written by a student who took an accounting class from me.  And I could also mention that the KARE 11 camera focused longer on the class picture than it did on a signed football from the President of the United States.  But who’s counting?  Well, I guess I am.  Well, today is John’s 600^th game as the coach of Saint John’s, so maybe that's okay, too.