COLLEGEVILLE, Minn. - When Blake Elliott '03 finally takes his place in the College Football Hall of Fame at a ceremony in Las Vegas this December, the record-smashing Saint John's University standout will be thinking of the many mile markers he passed on the trail that led him to that stage.
 
Those magic moments … an NCAA Division III national title, the Gagliardi Trophy and the seemingly endless highlight reel of jaw-dropping touchdown catches and crowd-popping kickoff and punt returns.
 
The extraordinary blend of sweat, labor and natural talent it took to make it all happen … and the people – family, friends, teammates, coaches and other members of the SJU community – who were behind him every step of the way.
 
But Elliott will also be reflecting on the sweet and sometimes saddening serendipity of it all … of the way the peaks to which he's ascended and the valleys through which he's forged each eventually revealed their own purpose.
 
"A lot of dominoes have to fall to get you to this point," said Elliott, who will be officially inducted during the 67th National Football Foundation Annual Awards Dinner Presented by Las Vegas on Dec. 9 at the Bellagio Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. 

Before that, though, SJU will celebrate Blake Elliott Day when the Johnnies play host to Minnesota-Morris in their season opener at 1 p.m. Saturday (Sept. 13) at Clemens Stadium. Elliott will be honored at halftime when he receives his Hall of Fame plaque.

"Those dominoes can be good or bad," Elliott continued. "When I think back on things – even the (car) accident my brother went through, which was the worst thing to ever happen in my family's lives – led me to the career I have now. There were so many things that happened at Saint John's that had to fall just right to make an honor like this possible."
 
Finding a calling through tragedy 
The accident to which Elliott refers occurred in May of 2003, just months before his final season with the Johnnies. His younger brother Adam, then 16, swerved to avoid a vehicle on a rural Stearns County road near the family's home in Melrose.
 
The car struck a fence post and rolled over, ejecting all three occupants. His two passengers escaped serious injury, but the accident left Adam in a fight for his life.
 
"I remember I was at a Twins game with a couple of buddies from Saint John's," Blake recalled. "My sister called and told me Adam had been in a serious accident and they were taking him by ambulance to St. Cloud. She said I needed to get there right away. One of my friends, Mark Brownson, who ironically is now an emergency room doctor, drove. And he drove aggressively. I mean, we were passing cars on the shoulder on I-94 all the way from the Metrodome to St. Cloud Hospital.
 
"We got there, and within 15 minutes he was being airlifted to the Twin Cities. But at least I got the chance to see him. He was in really bad shape, and those are the images that never leave you. They stay etched in your mind forever."
 
Adam survived, but spent 82 days in intensive care with his brother by his side for nearly all of those long and arduous hours.
 
And the brain injury he suffered left him in need of lifelong care.
 
"He's stable, which is really important, but there was still a certain level of loss to that accident," Blake said of his brother, who continues to live with his mother Marit in Melrose. 
 
"The Adam that we knew is not there. He's been in a wheelchair ever since, and he needs help with most physical tasks. He has almost no short-term memory. You can have lunch with him, and five minutes later, if you ask him what you had, he won't remember. So that's hard. But the important thing is he's still here."
 
The experience instilled in Elliott a desire to serve adults in his brother's situation, or far worse. That led to a career working with disabled adults which continues today at DOMA, a Twin Cities-based health and human services company he co-founded.
 
"You're kind of thrown into the disability services realm, and at first you don't know what's going on or what's happening," he said. "But once you're there, it becomes your whole life. I ended up doing a few things in real estate for a while after college. But it was pretty clear this was the path that was calling me. And so much of that had to do with my brother and what he's gone through, of course."
 
Choose your own adventure
Well before that, though, Elliott said his life unfolded a bit like one of those old Choose Your Own Adventure novels - a series of pages where had things taken a different turn, the outcome might have looked much different.
 
It all started on a field adjacent to a rhubarb patch in Melrose where Elliott proved his toughness to a group of older kids that included future SJU stars like quarterback Tom Linnemann '00 and wide receiver Ben Sieben '00.
 
"He was so small," Linnemann recalls. "I mean he was a little runt. But he always wanted to play (football) with us. We let him, but the one rule was he couldn't cry. We were tough on him, but he never did. Even when he got tossed into the rhubarb patch."
 
But coming out of Melrose High School, football wasn't the sport he was focused on. Rather, it was basketball in which he expected to excel collegiately.
 
"My goal my senior year was to get a preferred walk-on spot (at the University of Minnesota) in basketball," he said. "That didn't happen. But someone – and I wish I could remember who it was - told me if you have a chance to play athletics at the Division I level, you should do it. But if not, you might want to consider playing Division III. Because at the Division II level, you still have a lot of the time commitment that you do in Division I, yet without the publicity and perks that come with it all. So that got me thinking.
 
"I mean back then, I was an immature 18-year-old kid still trying to figure everything out. I didn't make my decision to come to Saint John's until June. And the big reason I decided to go there was that guys from Melrose - like Tom (Linnemann), Ben Sieben and Brian Zirbes - were there already and having success (in football).
 
"Beyond that, it was a place where I could conceivably play both sports."
 
His talent was already apparent to the Johnnie coaching staff, including current SJU head coach Gary Fasching '81, who was then in charge of recruiting on the staff of the legendary John Gagliardi.
 
"Daryl Oja was the football and basketball coach at Melrose, and I knew him pretty well from when I'd been the head coach at (St. Cloud) Cathedral," Fasching said. "He told me about Blake, and I got out to watch him play a couple of games his senior year. He only had about three or four catches. But you could still see the athleticism.
 
"Then I saw him play basketball and I was really impressed. That's usually a good indicator of a guy's athletic ability – if he can excel in more than one sport."
 
That was demonstrated by the way Elliott turned heads immediately when he reported for the start of football practice in Collegeville in the fall of 1999.
 
"He made some outstanding catches right away," Fasching said. "You already could see the seeds of what he eventually became."
 
But those seeds needed awhile to take root. Just a couple weeks into the preseason, Elliott was running a crossing route when he tangled with a defender and injured his back, sidelining him the entire season.
 
"It was a fluky thing," he said. "We didn't even have shoulder pads on yet. I landed pretty awkwardly on my head and shoulder, and ended up with a bulging disc in my lower back. They were thinking about surgery, but they decided to try traction first. I had to do that for 45 minutes three times a day. It was pretty intense and terribly painful."
 
While frustrating at the time, the injury did qualify Elliott for a medical redshirt – which he would use to return to lead the Johnnies to a national championship in 2003, a season in which he earned the Gagliardi Trophy – named in honor of his head coach and presented annually to the top player nationally at the Division III level.
 
"There again, you take something that at the time was horrible - your first year in college and you're in pain," he said. "You can barely walk. You can barely sleep. But looking back, you see the way that impacted the whole picture. There were so many things during my time at Saint John's where had they not happened, something else wouldn't have either."
 
Building the legend
Elliott did recover in time to play basketball for the Johnnies in 1999-2000, seeing action in 13 games. But his focus began to switch more toward football. 
 
He earned a starting spot at wide receiver in 2000, recording 60 catches for 967 yards and 14 touchdowns as part of an offense that also boasted high-powered receiving threats in senior wide receiver Jeremy Forsell '01 and senior tight end Nate Kirschner '01.
 
His efforts helped lead the Johnnies all the way to the national championship game before falling 10-7 to Mount Union (Ohio) on a last-second-field goal.
 
"He was the third option on that team," recalls Linnemann, the starting quarterback. "He mainly ran post patterns the whole game. He probably ran close to a marathon some weeks. He didn't have to be a superstar. But he learned how the superstars acted and what it took to get them where they were.
 
"Then, as he went along, it was like he was Mario from the video game and had just eaten a mushroom. He got bigger and stronger, while still being like a water bug - quick and elusive. That turned into a pretty incredible combination."
 
By the following year, Elliott was firmly established as the Johnnies' go-to guy offensively – earning both All-MIAC and All-America honors for the first of three seasons in a row. The 2002 season was particularly impressive as Elliott piled up 1,484 yards receiving and 22 touchdown catches – both of which still stand as single-season school records.
 
"He's the best Division III player I've ever seen," said Ryan Keating '03, SJU's starting quarterback in 2001, part of 2002 (before a season-ending broken arm) and all of 2003.
 
"I know there have been other fantastic players who have gone on to great success. But Blake was as good as they come when it came to making things happen on the field. He was a once-in-a-generation kind of playmaker."
 
Indeed, Elliott set a total of 29 school records during his career, many of which still stand today. He finished his career ranked second all-time at all levels of NCAA football in receptions and second in Division III history in touchdown catches.
 
His NCAA all-divisions record for consecutive games played with a reception (47) wouldn't be broken until 2008. And his 4,826 career receiving yards and 63 career touchdown catches remain SJU and MIAC records.
 
He still holds school records for career kickoff and punt return yardage as well.
 
"We've had a lot of really great players in the 30 years I've been on the coaching staff" Fasching said.  "In my opinion, Blake is at the top of that list.  When you look at the impact he made game-in and game-out with defenses designed to stop him, and the things he could make happen any time he touched the ball, it was pretty incredible. I've been on the lookout to find the next Blake Elliott. But I'm not sure we'll see another like him."
 
SJU advanced to the national semifinals in both 2001 and '02, but lost both times – falling 35-14 at Mount Union in 2001, then 41-34 in heartbreaking fashion at Trinity (Texas) in 2002.

In that game, played on a sunny San Antonio December afternoon, the Johnnies fell behind 28-6 in the first half. But they rallied to tie the score at 34 in the fourth quarter only to fall on a late touchdown run by Trinity quarterback Roy Hampton. Elliott finished with 15 catches for 133 yards and two touchdowns.
 
"That game is the biggest regret of my career," he said. "Our team that year was every bit as talented as the team that won it all the following season. Had we beaten Trinity, who knows what would have happened. But I think that drove all of us coming back in 2003. We didn't want to let that happen again."
 
Magical season
All of that set the stage for one of the most memorable seasons in SJU history as Gagliardi chased down former Grambling coach Eddie Robinson to become the winningest coach in college football history and the Johnnies won their first national title since 1976.
 
At the center of all of it was Elliott, finding temporary respite on the field while helping care for his brother off it.
 
"He got hurt in May when football was still four or five months away," Elliott recalled. "Had it been closer to the season, I may have decided I couldn't play. I mean I didn't leave the hospital for 11 straight days after the accident, and those first 30 or even 60 days, there was no way I could have focused on anything else.
 
"But by the time football season started that August, I felt like I could step away a little bit. And it was nice to have that outlet for two or three hours a day. To be honest, I wish all my family members had been able to have what I had - an environment that was so supportive. I was hanging out with my best friends in the world, getting the chance to laugh and have fun. It was exactly what I needed at the time. That was really helpful and healthy for me."
 
And fortunate for the Johnnies as well. 
 
Elliott finished the season with 117 catches for 1,319 yards and 13 touchdowns – coming up huge when it mattered most. That included a thrilling 50-yard kickoff return to set up the game-winning touchdown in a dramatic 29-26 win over Bethel that sealed an MIAC title and moved Gagliardi past Robinson atop college football's all-time victory list.
 
Elliott finished that game with 15 catches for 163 yards and two touchdowns before a crowd of 13,107 at Clemens Stadium, with around 100 members of the Minnesota and national media gathered to chronicle the occasion.
 
"With Blake, we've learned to expect the unexpected," Gagliardi said of him that season. "He's made a lot of amazing plays."
 
"All players are equal, but some are more equal than others. He's good. He's very good."
 
He proved that again a few weeks later against Mount Union in the national championship game when he rushed for a game-breaking 51-yard touchdown in the third quarter despite battling a hamstring injury.
 
SJU went on to win 24-6, snapping the Purple Raiders' record 55-game winning streak. Elliott – who began seeing time in the backfield during the postseason in an effort to find new ways to get the ball into his hands – was named the game's outstanding player.
 
He finished the day with 11 carries for 110 yards and caught five passes for 51 yards. 
 
"That win was no fluke, you know," Elliott said. "We may have been the underdogs, but we'd been knocking at the door for three seasons before that. And in every aspect of the game – offense, defense, special teams – we were more dominant that day."
 
Legacy lives on
After being chosen to play in the Hula Bowl along with top stars from the Division I level following the 2003 season, Elliott signed as a free agent with the NFL's Minnesota Vikings.
But he broke his leg during minicamp in the summer of 2004, and after spending a year on injured reserve, he was released in the spring of 2005 – launching him into the next phase of his life and career.
 
Meanwhile, first as a trickle, then building to a steady stream, support began to build for a Hall of Fame induction. 
 
Gagliardi, his head coach, had already been inducted into college football's ultimate shrine in 2006. Elliott first appeared on the ballot in 2014, and gradually picked up more and more support.
 
"Getting inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame is, I believe, the highest honor that can be bestowed upon a player or a coach," said Mark Flynn '78, a former standout linebacker for the Johnnies who serves as Campbell Trophy Summit Chairman for the National Football Foundation, the organization that oversees support, administration and operation for the Hall of Fame, now located in Atlanta.
 
"There's a pretty rigorous standard just to be nominated. You have to have been a first-team All-American from a recognized party. Then you go on the ballot with all these other all-time great players. It's hard to break through, especially coming from a smaller school. But, as the process went along, I think people started to see how deserving Blake was. He had an amazing career, but more importantly, he was one of those people who used football as a springboard to go on to do great things in his life. That's been noticed."
 
Which is why, this past January, Elliott finally got the call after 11 years on the ballot - joining a 2025 induction class that also includes coaching icons like Nick Saban and Urban Meyer, and such former standout players as Michael Strahan, Michael Vick and former Vikings tight end Jim Kleinsasser.
 
"It's pretty surreal to see your name mentioned on a list like that," Elliott said. "Those guys are not only all-time greats, but they've gone on to do amazing things in their post-playing days. You can't turn on TV these days without seeing Michael Strahan (who is part of the FOX NFL Sunday pregame show and also hosts ABC's Good Morning America). Michael Vick just became a head coach (at Norfolk State). It's pretty lofty company to be in."
 
But it's company in which Elliott belongs.
 
"What (Gagliardi) did in his 60-plus years of coaching sets him apart. And the things that Blake accomplished do the same thing," Keating said. "They both are unique talents whose careers won't ever be replicated."
 
"Blake was electric to the point where every time he touched the ball, you assumed he was taking it to the house," added Linnemann, who was part of the radio crew during Elliott's final three seasons at SJU. "If he didn't score a touchdown, it had to be because someone made an unbelievable defensive play. He was such an exciting player to watch."
 
Yet Elliott said none of that would have happened had he not first found his way to SJU.
 
"You have to start with (Gagliardi)," he said. "I don't get into the Hall of Fame without his coaching and everything he built over 60 years at Saint John's. Then I was lucky enough to play with a great group of guys at a time when we were as successful as any time in that program's history. And we had so much support from so many other people. So I see this as an opportunity to celebrate all the cool things we did together and the relationships we built that remain strong today.
 
"It's an individual award, but it's also an opportunity to again shine the spotlight on Saint John's football, and that's what makes me most happy."
 
This story will also appear in the fall edition of Saint John's Magazine, which is due in mailboxes soon.