ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1995, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, December 8, 1995 TAG: 9512080063
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B-6 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: Jack Bogaczyk
SOURCE: JACK BOGACZYK
The Gagliardi Trophy may be presented annually to the best player in small-college football, but there's nothing little about it.
The Gagliardi dwarfs the Heisman by 39 pounds and 9 inches. The Heisman produces hype. The Gagliardi, all 64 pounds of it, produces a hernia.
That's probably why Chris Palmer didn't carry the award that goes to the Division III football player of the year out of the Salem Civic Center on Thursday afternoon.
Surely, the Gagliardi will be more than a doorstop one day in the home of Dr. Palmer, we presume. He may cherish the Gagliardi more than its other recipients before and after this third annual presentation, too.
``What makes this really special to me,'' Palmer said, ``is that I'm not just getting an honor named for a man named John Gagliardi. Others may take it as a name. I know him personally. He's part of the reason I'm here.''
The award is presented annually by the letterman's club at St. John's University in Minnesota, where Gagliardi has become No.2 in coaching victories in college football history. This season, he passed two men of whom you may have heard - Bear Bryant and Pop Warner.
Palmer played for Gagliardi, and he's obviously a St.John's letterman, but don't think for a minute that the senior wide receiver won the award because it was all in the family.
The Gagliardi balloting is done by a nationwide panel of Division III coaches and administrators, others with solid football pedigrees and a few media members, including one pictured above.
Like this year's Heisman race, the Gagliardi was a close one, and a guy with 4.4 speed won - by, if you're scoring in football, a safety over Hanover quarterback Terry Peebles.
Among the 26 ballots cast, Peebles had more first-place votes, 7-5. Palmer's performance was more consistent. Not to mention that a 5-foot-10, 175-pounder deserves something for running pass routes over the middle anyway.
You can argue for the 43 years that Gagliardi has coached at St.John's about who's the best player in Division III, but is there a better self-portrait of a student-athlete than the one painted by Palmer?
Majoring in biology, Palmer has a 3.95 grade-point average. Hey, nobody's perfect. A farm boy from Fairfax, Minn., he's been an all-America and Academic All-America choice. Besides starring in football as the Johnnies' career receiving leader, he also starts in center field for the baseball team.
He's a dorm resident assistant and works in the Dean's office. He's in the biology club, is a teacher's assistant in anatomy classes and a church hospitality minister. He served an internship at an Arlington, Minn., hospital last summer, shadowing doctors for one month and aiding nurses for another.
He helps out on his family's farm. He's a good son, brother, brother-in-law and uncle. He's from a town of about 1,500 residents. His high school had only 85 in the graduating class, and that was only after a merger of three schools.
When he accepted the award Thursday, in conjunction with the Amos Alonzo Stagg Bowl - chains and snow tires aren't optional, obviously - he apologized for ``bringing down 10 inches of snow from Minnesota in his suitcase.'' Then, with aplomb and no obvious nervousness, he credited Gagliardi, his family and his teammates.
After spending this weekend in Salem - he'll he helping at the NCAA's YES Clinic for youth, of course - Palmer will be heading to New York for another honor.
No, not the Heisman. He'll be getting something more valuable.
On Tuesday night, Palmer will be named one of 17 postgraduate scholarship recipients by the National Football Foundation and College Football Hall of Fame. You think the Gagliardi is huge?
Palmer and Alex Scott of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., are the only Division III honorees. Palmer will accept an $18,000 grant. He has applied to several medical schools, but it's apparent he's already written a prescription for success.
``I've met a lot of great people already and I'm sure I'll be meeting more,'' said the sandy-haired Palmer. ``There may be other special times ahead but it will be hard topping these next few days.''
Undoubtedly, he'll try.
LENGTH: Medium: 82 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: STEPHANIE KLEIN-DAVIS/Staff. Chris Palmer (right) ofby CNBSt.John's (Minn.) accepted the Gagliardi Trophy on Thursday, which
is named for St.John's coach John Gagliardi (left).