By Frank Rajkowski, SJU Writer/Video Producer

COLLEGEVILLE, Minn. - When Pat Mayew '91 first arrived in Collegeville in the fall of 1988, the Kenosha, Wisconsin native didn't know all that much about the Saint John's-St. Thomas rivalry.

He was brought up-to-speed fairly quickly.

"I didn't realize how intense it was," said Mayew, the Johnnies' starting quarterback in 1990 and 1991.

"I wasn't from Minnesota, and I didn't have friends who went to St. Thomas or really know anyone on their team. But as soon as I got up here, I saw pretty quickly how big (the rivalry) was.

"All you had to do was look up at the stands and see how many people were out there. No matter where the game was, the crowd was overflowing. You could tell right away that this was a big deal."

This year's "big deal" is scheduled to kick off at 1:10 p.m. Saturday before a sellout crowd at Allianz Field in St. Paul. The Johnnies lead the all-time series 52-35-1 (50-31-1 in MIAC games).

It was Mayew who, in the fall of 1991, turned in one of the top performances by a Johnnie in a matchup against their archrival. In that early season showdown played before a crowd of well over 8,000 at Clemens Stadium, he finished 26 of 34 passing for 408 yards and four touchdowns (left).

At the time, it was a single-game school record for passing yardage, and it remains tied for sixth place (with Ross Denne, who threw for 408 yards in a 48-28 victory over the Tommies before a crowd of 11,027 in Collegeville in 2002).

"What I remember most was that I didn't think my parents would be able to be there because they had a wedding in Kenosha that night. I called my Mom afterward and I asked to talk to my Dad. She said 'Didn't you see him at the game?'

"He had gotten up at 3 or 4 in the morning and driven up there. But he had to leave at halftime to get back in time. So he drove seven hours each way just to see me play one half of football."

Huge Crowds
The crowd his father was part of that day was a large one. Attendance has only grown in scale in the years since.

Every Johnnie-Tommie game since 2009 (except for a playoff matchup at St. Thomas on Thanksgiving Weekend in 2015) has drawn crowds of 10,000 or more.

An NCAA Division III record crowd of 37,355 was on hand two years ago when the game was played at Target Field in Minneapolis. 

Last year, a crowd of 16,922 jammed into Clemens Stadium to see the Johnnies beat St. Thomas 40-20 in an emotional game played six days after legendary Saint John's coach John Gagliardi passed away at 91.

This year's game will bring a sellout crowd of well over 19,000 to the home of Major League Soccer's Minnesota United.

But big crowds have always been a part of a rivalry that dates back to 1901 (left) when the Johnnies beat the Tommies 16-6 on Thanksgiving Day at St. Paul's Lexington Park – a minor-league baseball stadium.

Crowd counts reported by the Minneapolis Tribune for a number of games in the series in the 1930s, '40s and '50s ranged from 5,000 to 8,000 or more. 

A back-and-forth 1949 battle won by the Tommies 28-27 in Collegeville drew a crowd estimated at over 7,000 to watch what was the final game for Saint John's coach Joe Benda, who died at age 45 the following summer after a battle with Hodgkin's lymphoma.

"It wasn't quite as big as it's become these days, but it was always a huge game for both teams," recalls Ralph Opatz '49 (right), believed to be the oldest living Saint John's football alumni and an All-MIAC selection at end in 1946.

"There was always a big crowd there. We played them in 1946 (an 18-0 loss in St. Paul) and they had a guy I played with at St. Cloud Cathedral – Virg Trewick – on their team. And I knew a few of the other guys because I had played against them in high school.

"So there was a little extra motivation there."

Gaining the Edge
St. Thomas certainly had a commanding edge in the rivalry's early history, winning eight straight games between 1940 and 1950. But the Johnnies snapped that losing streak in 1952 when Mike O'Brien returned an interception for a touchdown and Tom White scored on a 78-yard run in a 13-7 victory in Collegeville.

The next year, Gagliardi arrived on campus and SJU gained the upper hand. The winningest coach in college football history finished 43-17 against the Tommies in his 60 seasons as the Johnnies' head coach.

That included an emotional 32-6 win before 7,000 fans in St. Paul on Nov. 2, 1963 – a game played just days after SJU freshman Matthew Christensen was struck and killed while riding his bicycle.

His older brother Nick was also on the team. And he and lineman Rich Froehle '65 arrived at the field just before kickoff after serving as pallbearers at the funeral that morning.

Froehle's blocking proved key in freeing running back Bob Spinner '64 on more than one of the four touchdowns he scored that day (two rushing, one receiving, one on a punt return) against a St. Thomas team that included Vince Lombardi Jr., the son of the legendary Green Bay Packers coach.

"It's always been a huge rivalry," said Spinner, whose team went on to win the school's first national championship that season. "The attention it gets has certainly grown over the years. But St. Thomas was always a very good team when I was playing. And we knew a lot of the guys on their team.

"So it was always a game that everyone was really excited about."

Memorable Scenes
A vivid description of the atmosphere at a Johnnie-Tommie game – or a game in Collegeville in general – was offered by then-Minneapolis Tribune reporter Joe Soucheray (who went on to a well-known radio career in the Twin Cities) following a 37-20 Johnnies' win in September of 1974.

"Football at Collegeville is a joy in the afternoon," Soucheray wrote. "The spectators, mostly alumni, arrive early and reminisce on the wooden paths around the stadium. The men wear English road caps, and with their wives, huddle under plaid blankets in the open bleachers.

"The field is surrounded by an old fieldstone wall and set down low in a grove of green birch and red oak and maple trees. After the game, everyone congregates on the field. There is no hurry, no place to go. The crowd was estimated at 8,000 yesterday and the cheering didn't stop."

Saint John's pulled away in the fourth quarter to win that game. But Gagliardi's teams sometimes needed to win in even more dramatic fashion against their rival. That included a 16-15 victory in St. Paul in 1985 decided on a 42-yard field goal by Don Pribyl '87 with three seconds left on the clock.

Eighteen years later in 2003 (left), the Johnnies were back at O'Shaughnessy Stadium seeking Gagliardi's 408th career victory – which would tie him for first with former Grambling coach Eddie Robinson atop college football's all-time list.

The underdog Tommies gave the Johnnies all they could handle before Saint John's – which would go on to win the last of Gagliardi's four national titles that season – won 15-12 on a 35-yard field goal by Brandon Keller '04 with eight seconds remaining in regulation.

"If he'd have missed, I think we would have strung him up from the bell tower," Gagliardi joked to reporters afterward.

The Johnnies won 12 straight games in the series from 1998 to 2009. The Tommies – under head coach Glenn Caruso, who arrived at the school in 2008 – won three straight times from 2010-12. 

Saint John's won in 2013 and 2014 before St. Thomas came back to win the next four (including a playoff victory in 2015). But the Johnnies came away with a 40-20 victory last season.

What's Next
The future of the matchup is uncertain after recent events led St. Thomas to examine moving to the Division I level (likely FCS in football).

The school has already received an invitation from the Division I Summit League to join beginning in the fall of 2021, though a home for football and hockey would still have to be found. The NCAA must approve the waiver that would make such a move possible.

But no matter what the future brings, former Johnnie players said they will always remember what being part of the rivalry was like.

"Obviously, winning a national championship was the No. 1 highlight of my career at Saint John's," said Jeff Norman '78 (left, in 1977), who helped lead the Johnnies to a national title in 1976 and whose teams went 4-0 against St. Thomas.

"But coming right after that would be each St. Thomas game. They were all pretty competitive games, and the atmosphere around them was so cool. It was always the biggest game of the year. The crowds weren't as large as they've gotten today, but they were record-setting even then.

"Anytime you can play a game in that kind of environment, it's memorable."