COLLEGEVILLE, Minn. - By the time Bill Osborne got around to playing Homecoming hero in the Saint John's football team's 26-0 win over Macalester 80 years ago, the Marshall High School graduate had already faced tests far more challenging than the Scots' defense.

Osborne earned all-state honors as a basketball player in high school and was part of a state-record winning streak in football under legendary head coach Bernie Cole. 

He enrolled at SJU in the fall of 1942 and started at halfback that season.

But World War II interrupted his collegiate career. Osborne enlisted in the U.S. Army and served as a staff sergeant for a mortar company in the 71st Infantry Division in legendary Gen. George Patton's Third Army, seeing plenty of action in Europe before the German surrender in May 1945.

"He was going to become a paratrooper, but his sergeant talked him out of it which was a good thing because the paratroopers had a really high mortality rate," his oldest son Doug said. "But he saw action on the front lines for 59 days before the war ended on VE Day (May 8). He remembered going to bed on May 7 and hearing Germans talking all around the farmhouse he was sleeping in. My dad and the guys with him thought it was curtains for them.

"But they went out the next morning and saw around 20,000 Germans with their hands up waiting to surrender."

Osborne's unit also had the somber experience of liberating three concentration camps. 

He went on to serve as a prison guard in Hamburg following VE Day, playing on a division basketball team led by player/coach Dale Barnstable, who went on to a stellar career at Kentucky before being implicated in an infamous point-shaving scandal.

"There were 9,000 guys in that division and they all wanted to play," Doug said. "But my dad managed to make the top five as a point guard and they had great success."

He then returned to SJU in the fall of 1946 and picked up his athletic career right where he'd left off, regaining his starting spot at halfback and gaining over 110 yards from scrimmage as the Johnnies won 32-0 on the road at Bemidji State in the season opener. 

He continued to excel in what The Record termed head coach Joe Benda's "Tricky T" formation, rushing for a pair of touchdowns as SJU rolled past Macalester 26-0 before a Homecoming crowd of over 2,000 in Collegeville on Oct. 19.

But his athletic exploits weren't confined to the football field. Osborne was a four-sport standout at SJU who especially shined on the basketball court where the player a headline in The Record once nicknamed "The Wizard of Oz" was elected captain as a junior during the 1946-47 season. 

Despite breaking an ankle in baseball that spring, which limited his action during the 1947 football season, he again was a standout in basketball and baseball for the Johnnies as a senior during the 1947-48 school year.

After graduating in the spring of 1948, he headed west to Billings, Mont., where he coached football, basketball, baseball and track and field at Central Catholic High School. His basketball teams finished 103-32 during his tenure there and made four trips to the state tournament.
 
But, at the beginning of February in 1953, he came back to his alma mater to take over for John "Buster" Hiller as head basketball coach.
 
"He was a very good coach," recalled Bill Sexton '55 in a 2023 interview. "He was very versatile and had a lot of ideas."
 
Osborne coached the basketball team through the 1958-59 season and also served as an assistant in football. In addition, he was the head baseball coach from 1954-59 and his teams won or shared four MIAC titles.

But his biggest service to SJU? That was recommending the school hire a young football coach he'd gotten to know in Montana named John Gagliardi, who'd been having success at Carroll College in Helena.

"I knew him from trying to recruit players," Gagliardi recalled in a 2002 interview with the St. Cloud Times. "He'd go on and on about Saint John's. He was absolutely enraptured by the place. I'd heard Notre Dame people talk like that about their school, but not people from anywhere else."

That passion helped sway Gagliardi's decision to take a chance on the job.

"He never talked a lot about it, but you could tell my dad was proud of helping to recruit such a good coach for the Johnnies," Doug said. "I think he considered that one of his biggest accomplishments."

Indeed, Gagliardi remained the head coach at SJU for 60 seasons. Osborne, though, returned to Billings in 1959 to enter the life insurance business.

But he didn't stop giving back to the community around him. According to his 2002 obituary, he served as state chairman for the U.S. Olympic Committee, and as president of the Billings Central School Board, the Southeast Montana Association of Life Underwriters, the Montana Insurance Education Foundation and the Big Sky State Games Board of Directors.

"He went on to do some really great things," Sexton said in 2023. "He really became Mr. Montana."

And yet his ties to SJU remained strong.

"It had been instilled in him that the best thing he could do was get a good education because they can't take that away from you," Doug said. "So he embraced the education he got at Saint John's. That place really did mean a lot to him."

30 years ago (1996)
Kurt Ramler threw for 293 yards and three touchdowns and defensive tackle Brian Deters recorded 13 tackles (including three of his team's seven sacks) as the SJU football team held off Concordia 39-34 on Oct. 19 in Collegeville.

40 years ago (1986)
John Stevens had a pair of goals as the Johnnie soccer team extended its unbeaten streak to 10 games with a 3-1 home win over Gustavus Adolphus. SJU continued to win, going 14-0 until a 1-0 loss at UC-San Diego in the second round of the NCAA Division III playoffs.

100 years ago (1926)
Matt Miller had four touchdowns as the Johnnie football team crushed Park Region 72-0 on Oct. 9 in Collegeville.