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After fifteen years as a Sports Illustrated writer, pleading for interviews with large men in possession of larger egos, Austin Murphy decides to bail out. The time has come, he concludes, to fly beneath the radar of big-league sports, to while away a season with the Johnnies. So, he moves his family to the middle of Minnesota to chronicle a season at St. John's, a Division III program that has reached unparalleled success under the unorthodox guidance of John "Gags" Gagliardi. The Sweet Season is an account of what happens when a family pulls up stakes and spends months in a strange and wonderful place. It is also, not incidentally, the story of the most incredible football program in the country, run by a smiling sage who has forgotten more about the game than most of his peers will ever know.
E-Book Content
The Sweet Season A SPORTSWRITER REDISCOVERS FOOTBALL, FAMILY, AND A BIT OF FAITH AT MINNESOTA’S ST. JOHN’S UNIVERSITY
AUSTIN MURPHY
To Laura My only sunshine
Contents Introduction
v
Chapter 1: The Journey
1
Chapter 2: Architects
8
Chapter 3: Wisconsin-Eau Claire
39
Chapter 4: Macalester
49
Chapter 5: St. Thomas
70
Chapter 6: Augsburg
87
Chapter 7: Prairie View
110
Chapter 8: Bethel
130
Chapter 9: A Walk in the Woods
140
Chapter 10: Concordia
145
Chapter 11: Hamline
166
Chapter 12: St. Olaf
182
Chapter 13: Carleton
199
Chapter 14: Gustavus Adolphus
214
Chapter 15: Wisconsin-Stevens Point
227
Chapter 16: Central
242
Chapter 17: Pacific Lutheran
259
Chapter 18: Last Call
276
Epilogue
289
Acknowledgments
313
About the Author Cover Copyright About the Publisher
INTRODUCTION
T he news itself was less surprising than how my wife chose to deliver it. She had made no secret of her loneliness during my frequent and prolonged absences. Lithe, blonde, and blue-eyed, Laura Hilgers at thirty-seven looks better now than she did as an undergraduate, and she struck me dumb then. It stood to reason that her eye would wander during one of my business trips, that some young stud might take notice, and bust a move. “He’s gorgeous and I’m in love with him,” she told me on that memorable night, the night everything changed. “I looked in his eyes and it was all over.” So much for breaking it to me gently. How helpless one feels, hearing it over the phone! I was in room 102 at the Valley River Inn in Eugene, Oregon. Instead of polishing my notes on the upcoming “Civil War” between Oregon and Oregon State, I was watching a show called Dangerous Pursuits on TLC. A deranged man had commandeered a bus, and was smashing squad cars and turfing lawns all over Beverly Hills. It was damned good television. Then Laura called and rocked my world. She went on about his saucer eyes and curly hair, but I’d stopped listening. I was reflecting on hints she’d dropped earlier in
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the season, clues I had ignored at my peril. A week earlier, I was holed up at the University Inn in West Lafayette, Indiana, one of my editors having decided that America should not go another week without a story on the Purdue receiving corps. Laura and I argued that night. I sympathized with her loneliness, but disagreed with her solution for it. “I want a dog,” she said. “A poodle is not a dog,” I rejoined. Round and round like this we went. Among Laura’s myriad allergies is an aversion to dog fur. If we were to get a dog, she said, it had to be a poodle. While I chronicled the 2000 college football season for Sports Illustrated, sear