The Saint John's football team has won four national championships in the program's long and successful history.
But of those four, it is the 1965 NAIA national championship team that may be the least-discussed.
• The 1963 Johnnies had won the school's first national title two seasons earlier, knocking off a heavily-favored Prairie View A&M squad loaded with future NFL talent in that year's NAIA championship.
• The 1976 Johnnies won the NCAA Division III national title with a dramatic last-second field goal to knock off Towson (Md.) State.
• And the 2003 Johnnies won the championship by upsetting perennial Division III titan Mount Union (Ohio) in the same memorable season during which head coach
John Gagliardi became the winningest coach in college football history.
In contrast, the 1965 Johnnies kept things relatively drama free, going 11-0 and recording seven shutouts – including a 33-0 drubbing of Linfield (Ore.) in that year's national championship game in Augusta, Ga. (
left).
"I suppose for the fans, some of those games were kind of ho-hum," said Terry Hartman '66, a senior who split time at quarterback that season with junior Tom Gillham '67.
"But that was a fun team to be part of. We did a lot of things really well."
Starting with an outstanding defense that allowed a total of just 27 points in 11 games and never allowed an opposing team to reach double digits.
Saint John's began the year with four-straight shutouts, including a 10-0 win at St. Thomas before a crowd of 6,000 fans.
The following week, Hamline scored on the Johnnies early, snapping a streak of 21-straight quarters dating back to the 1964 season in which Saint John's had not surrendered a single point. But the Johnnies then rallied to score 34 points unanswered and hand Gagliardi his 100th career win in front of a Homecoming afternoon crowd.
Next up was a showdown at Minnesota-Duluth, in which the Johnnies fell behind 8-0 in the first quarter before cutting the gap to 8-6 on a 6-yard touchdown run by sophomore halfback Jim Shiely '68 (
right) in the second quarter.
They then jumped on top for good when Hartman kicked as 28-yard field goal after halftime – going on to win 17-8 to take over sole possession of first place in the MIAC.
"Our defense was always there," said Joe Mucha '66, a senior who started at both tight end and defensive end. "Offensively, we struggled to score early on. But getting that win up at Duluth was kind of the turning point in that season.
"That win gave every player the confidence and belief that we were not only a very good team, but one that had the potential to be a great team."
The offense had lost a key piece when senior fullback Stan Suchta '66 dislocated his elbow in week two against Bemidji State. He did not return to action until the Johnnies defeated then-defending NAIA national co-champion Concordia-Moorhead (the Cobbers had tied Sam Houston State 7-7 in the 1964 title game) to close out the regular season and wrap up the MIAC title.
"I went to John and said 'I've been with you four seasons now,'" Suchta recalls. "'You have to let me back in the game.' I was so motivated to get out there and help us end the season strong."
Meanwhile, Gillham was hampered by a shoulder injury suffered in a touch football game late in the regular season and Hartman eventually took over as the starter in the playoffs.
"But the real strength of that team – both offensively and defensively – was up front," Hartman said. "Both tackles and both ends (seniors Mucha and Michael Collins '66, sophomore Dave Griffin '68 and junior Fred Cremer '67) went both ways. And those guys were really good."
The Johnnies' dominance at the line-of-scrimmage showed in the postseason, starting with a 28-7 victory over Fairmont (W.Va.) State in the NAIA semifinals at Metropolitan Stadium in Bloomington.
The temperature that day was just 15 degrees with a chilly 23 mile-per-hour wind blowing. The game's 1 p.m. kickoff was delayed by half-an-hour when the grounds crew had trouble removing the tarp from the icy field.
"It was brutal," Suchta said. "I remember waking up that day in my dorm room on the first floor of Mary Hall. I could usually tell how cold it was going to be by how high the frost was on the window. And that morning, the frost went two-thirds of the way up the windowpane.
"The field was in the worst possible shape. From 20 yards out, it was basically frozen. You were skating."
But the conditions didn't slow the Johnnies down in the slightest. Suchta – who was voted the game's Most Valuable Player – carried the ball 24 times for 124 yards and a touchdown, while Shiely had 20 carries for 95 yards. Mucha added a 23-yard touchdown reception.
That performance sent Saint John's back to the national championship game for the second time in three years. In 1963, the game was played in Sacramento, Calif., at Hughes Stadium, which had a seating capacity of around 20,000.
But in 1965, the game was played in Augusta, Ga. – a city best known as the home of Augusta National Golf Club, the site of the Masters each spring.
But the Johnnies had little time to inspect Amen Corner or Rae's Creek. They remained focused on the task at hand – beating a Linfield squad that had overcome a two-touchdown deficit to rally past Sul Ross State 30-27 in Midland, Texas, in the semifinals – ending the Lobos' 16-game winning streak.
The Pirates were coached by Paul Durham, whose tenure at the school stretched from 1948-67 before he left to become the athletic director at the University of Hawaii.
The game – played under sunny skies with a temperature of around 65 degrees – started close as Linfield came out in a defense Saint John's was not expecting. But Mucha, Collins and the rest of the line were soon able to figure it out, opening up a running game that helped the Johnnies pile up 20 points in the second quarter alone.
"We had a smart team," said Suchta, who rushed for 91 yards and three touchdowns en route to being named the game's MVP. "These were guys who went on to get PhDs and master's degrees. That makes a difference when you have smart players who are capable of figuring things out on the fly."
Saint John's recorded 449 yards of total offense (setting an NAIA record) – 307 of that total on the ground. The defense held Linfield to just 28 yards rushing and did not allow the Pirates to advance past midfield until the third quarter.
The Johnnies recorded four interceptions en route to the win before a crowd of 4,873 at Richmond Stadium.
Shiely rushed for 114 yards while Hartman finished 4 of 9 passing, rushed for a touchdown and kicked two extra points. Gillham entered the game in the second half and completed a 52-yard touchdown pass to Mucha with 4:27 remaining to close out the scoring.
"No group has conquered so much of Georgia's land since Sherman's march to the sea," wrote sportswriter Bob Fowler dramatically in the next day's
Minneapolis Tribune.
It marked the third-straight season an MIAC team had won the NAIA title and Saint John's became just the second team to win it twice – joining Pittsburg State (Kan.), which won in 1957 and '61.
Collins, Cremer, Gillham, Griffin and defensive back Pat Whalin '67 were all named All-Americans. It was the third undefeated season in four years for the senior class, whose only three losses came in a rebuilding year in 1964.
In all, that class finished their careers with a most impressive record of 34-3– including the two national titles.
"I always tell people I was lucky enough to play in the golden age of Saint John's football," Suchta said.
A golden age capped off by a dominant 1965 season that doesn't always get remembered as much as it should.
"Maybe we should have made a few of those games a little closer," Mucha said with a chuckle.
"But really, that team was so good because we all trusted and liked one another. We didn't have that many superstars. But the sum of that team was greater than its individual parts. We played as a unit the way (Gagliardi) always dreamed about a team doing."
