Quarterbacks Eric Watt and Kyle Ray performed on the football field at such high levels in 2010 that it was not surprising each of them was a strong nominee for the Gagliardi Trophy (shown above in photo by Ryan Coleman of d3photography.com), the honor awarded annually to the most outstanding college player in NCAA Division III competition.
The Gagliardi is often compared to the much-better known Heisman Trophy, which is awarded to the top football player each year in Division I competition. Division II also has an annual award for its most outstanding player. It is known as the Harlon Hill Trophy.
The D3 Gagliardi Trophy, first awarded in 1993, is named for John Gagliardi, best-known as the legendary Hall of Fame head football coach – for 60 years – at Saint John’s University in Collegeville, Minn. Before coming to Saint John’s, Gagliardi had coached for four years at Carroll College in Helena, Mont.The Gagliardi Trophy selection process has changed enough over the years that the simplest way to explain it is to convey how it is done today. All of what follows about that process is according to Jim Gagliardi, director of athletic marketing for Saint John’s and director of the Gagliardi Legacy Fund at the university. He also is a former player and son of the late coach.
Each year, as the football season dawns, Saint John’s J-Club booster organization sends out award nomination forms to schools that were ranked in the previous season’s Top 20 or Top 25 polls. Other schools can submit nominations, too, simply by filling out a form accessible online. The vast majority of nominations come from a player’s head coach.
In mid-November of each year, the Saint John’s J-Club Board of Directors (about 35 people) whittles the nominations to a target of 10 finalists, and the finalists’ names are announced. Ten is a target number but not a requirement; on occasion, there have been as many as 15 finalists. In arriving at its list of finalists, the board tries to represent all six D3 geographic regions (until recently, there had been just four regions).
The finalists can include an athlete from Saint John’s, a Division III program. In fact, the Johnnies have had the third most finalists since the award’s inception, and four of those won the trophy. Needless to say, with John Gagliardi as its head coach, Saint John’s has had many successful teams and seasons through the years.
Finalists are announced publicly in mid- to late November, after which a panel of voters, also spread throughout the six regions, casts ballots to pick a winner. The voting panel of about 40 people includes coaches, school administrators, former winners, some members of the news media and representatives from d3football.com. Each voter votes for one athlete (no second- or third-place votes). Since 2007, fans also have been able to go online and vote, although the top vote-getter of all fan votes is treated as just one vote in the final tally.
In early December, the top four vote-getters are announced, and about 10 days later, the first-place vote-getter among those top four is announced as the trophy winner.
Precisely how (and where) the winner is announced also has been handled differently through the years. For several years, almost exclusively within the period when the Rotary Club in the city of Salem, Va., was hosting the event, trophy winners weren’t announced until the night of a reception held for the top four vote-getters.
In other years, the winner was announced a couple days before the reception. And in a few of those years (1993-2017) when Salem was hosting, the winner’s reception was held on the same weekend in Salem as the Amos Alonzo Stagg Bowl, the game played for the NCAA D3 postseason tournament championship.
Places other than Salem also have hosted the reception and Stagg Bowl.1 Although Salem has hosted both the reception and bowl game the same weekend, the reception and game are not always held at the same locale. But they were in 2010.
The Gagliardi Trophy is presented to its winner by a representative of trophy sponsor Jostens Inc., a manufacturer of memorabilia such as school yearbooks and class and sports championship rings. It is based in Minneapolis, Minn., which is about 80 miles southeast of Collegeville.
By late-season 2010, it should have been obvious to followers of Division III football and members of the J-Club Board and Gagliardi Trophy voting panel that Watt and Ray, as well as their respective teams, Trine University and Franklin College, were having remarkable success. Both schools had nominated their quarterbacks for the award.
On Nov. 23, 2010, after the J-Club Board had made its first review of the nominees, it was announced that Watt and Ray were indeed among 10 finalists. Watt was the first Trine finalist for the award; Ray was the second from Franklin (quarterback Chad Rupp had made it in 2008).
A few weeks later, in early December, the J-Club announced that Watt and Ray also were among the top four vote-getters and would be invited to the winner’s reception on Dec. 16 in Salem. The two other top-four vote-getters invited to Salem were quarterback Ben McLaughlin of Louisiana College and defensive end Matt Hoffman of Rowan College in Burlington County, N.J.
At Trine University, the promotion of Eric Watt to win the award began early – at the start of the season. A modest-sized committee consisting of head football coach Matt Land and representatives of the school’s marketing department and the office of university President Earl D. Brooks II met weekly to discuss strategy and ways to promote Watt, Land said. The weekly meetings continued at least through the point when the list of 10 finalists was announced.
The Trine strategy involved sending, after each game of the 2010 season, Eric Watt’s updated statistics to the J-Club Board of Directors, the people who would select and announce the 10 or so finalists in mid-November.
“We ran a Division Three version of the Heisman (Trophy) campaign that entire year,” Land said. “Our marketing department, and the president, and I basically creeped on the Gagliardi selection staff and sent email updates – like a marketing thing – really nice weekly updates to them. … We thought we had the best player in the country, and we were going to make sure that everybody knew it. Or at least knew that we thought he was (the best), and then (we’d) see what happens.”
There was no such organized campaign at Franklin College to promote Kyle Ray for the award.
Then-head coach Mike Leonard said he would have been involved in submitting the nomination form for Ray, but if there were any promotional campaign thereafter, it would have been handled by the school’s sports information director.
In 2010, Kevin Elixman was the school’s SID, a position he had held for more than 20 years at the time. Elixman died in 2015, so there was no way to ascertain for this project whether Elixman’s office did any such promotion.
Franklin College does have a marketing department today, but it did not have one in 2010. Its staff today is small, and if it had existed in 2010, it would not have been involved with anything to promote an athlete for a national award, a person at the department said when contacted in September 2022.
The school’s athletics director at the time, Kerry Prather, today is the college president. Attempts were made to contact him to learn whether he remembers anything about the school’s promotions of Ray or its two other Gagliardi nominees, Rupp (in 2008) and wide receiver Kyle Linville (in 2013).
The author’s attempts to talk to him were filtered through an executive assistant, who asked that questions be placed in an email that she said she would forward to Prather. After a significant amount of time had passed since sending her that email without receiving a response from the president, the author contacted the executive assistant again. If Prather did not respond, she said, she “assumed” that meant he had no memories of the situation.When Mike Leonard was told details about Trine’s organized efforts for Eric Watt, the coach said he knows he wasn’t involved in any such thing at Franklin College for Ray.
“I chose to do things differently than self-promotional things,” Leonard said. “I think just to be a finalist (like Ray was) is a big deal. Kyle had an absolutely great year that season. He was the leading passer in several national categories and as such was a no-brainer. I nominated him, and I think his stats speak for themself.”
Jay Moseley, who left the Franklin College presidency in June 2015 and is now retired, was contacted at his home in Durham, N.C. He said he did not remember any campaign on behalf of Kyle Ray for the Gagliardi honor and, unlike his Trine University counterpart, Earl Brooks, did not attend the Gagliardi presentation ceremony in Salem, Va.
Ray did feel that people in his hometown of Trafalgar cast a lot of votes for him using the online fan voting procedure.
Trine University President Brooks left Indiana by plane early to attend the Gagliardi award reception. Eric Watt said he flew separately – and alone – and joined the three finalists in Salem the day before the reception. He roomed overnight with fellow finalist Matt Hoffman.Trine coach Land and offensive coordinator Dan Pifer traveled together the day of the reception. So on Dec. 16, Land, clad in a formal suit while Pifer wore a sweatsuit, thinking he’d change once they got to Virginia, drove through snowy weather from Angola to Indianapolis where they planned to catch a flight to Virginia. But the bad weather caused them to miss their flight, Land said.
They arranged for a new flight, and along the way, they also missed a connecting flight and sat through a delay in take-off, he said. The obstacles pushed the coaches considerably behind schedule, so that when they finally arrived in Virginia, Land said, there was little time to spare before the start of the reception.
Land said he collected their luggage and Pifer summoned a taxicab, and they headed directly to the reception venue. Land walked in wearing his suit and Pifer was in his sweats. At Eric’s table, they joined Eric’s parents, Ron and Luanne Watt, and South Newton High School’s offensive coordinator, Blaine Durham, who had ridden along with the Watts in the couple’s Ford Expedition. Eric said his then-girlfriend and her mother, who had driven from Athens, Ohio, also were there.
Kyle
Ray and his family – his mother; brother, Justin; sister, Leslie; and Kyle’s paternal
grandparents – attended the event and sat together (see Leslie Ray photo of their group below). Also attending were Franklin head coach Leonard and offensive coordinator
Josiah Sears, Kyle said.
Kyle roomed overnight with fellow finalist Ben McLaughlin of Louisiana College, and he said the two quarterbacks hit if off immediately.
“He’s a cool guy. He has that Southern charm. We still text each other once in a while.”
Both Watt and Ray were moved by the other finalists’ stories. Watt, in particular, was humbled. “After hearing everyone else’s stories that night, I figured I was in fourth place for sure,” Watt said. Hoffman, for instance, missed the final game of his junior year at Rowan College to donate marrow to a Texas father with non-Hodgkins lymphoma. Hoffman, shown at right during his Gagliardi reception interview in a photo by Ryan Coleman of d3photography.com, had been among 370 students at his school who had registered for the National Marrow Donor Program.
In a 2016 newspaper interview, Hoffman said he had been in contact with the recipient, who was still in Texas and doing well. “He’s been in remission for years,” he told the Courier-Post of Cherry Hill, N.J.
In 2021, Hoffman learned that he was a match for another individual in need, and Hoffman went to New York to donate again. He said donors are allowed to look in on recipients no sooner than 12 months after the transplant procedure. Hoffman said he reached out in 2022 to inquire about that second recipient’s status but has not received a response.
After college, Hoffman worked for eight years as an assistant coach in charge of the defensive line at Rancocas Valley Regional High School in Mount Holly, N.J. In 2019, he moved to Cherokee High School in Marlton, N.J., to teach, serve as head track coach and assistant football coach in charge of the defensive line.
He came back strong in 2009 and even stronger in 2010, setting school career records for passing yardage, touchdowns and passing touchdowns in his junior year and excelling in the classroom.
In his senior season, McLaughlin, shown watching his Gagliardi nomination video at right in a photo by Ryan Coleman of d3photography.com, became the American Southwest Conference career passing leader and led all divisions of football with 3,770 yards passing and 42 touchdowns.
Rob Ray had inspired Kyle in his final years in college, and Kyle mentioned that he changed his jersey number from 10 to 26 his senior season to honor his dad, who had worn that number when Rob played at Franklin College 30 years before him.
Saint John’s website credited Kyle Ray for his dean’s list academics, major in journalism and his help with Habitat for Humanity projects and raising funds for Special Olympics while in college.
Trine University’s video in support of Eric Watt can be found on YouTube. It also had been available on the university’s website since the 2010 season.
In
the promotional video, Trine head coach Matt Land described his
quarterback as a quiet leader on the football team, someone who let his actions
do his talking. “He doesn’t say a lot, but when he does speak, (teammates) listen.” Land and Todd Saylor, who is identified in the video as the team’s motivational speaker, are quoted crediting Watt for a good amount of community service during his years at Trine.University President Brooks spoke highly of Eric on the video as well: “’I’m pleased to share with you the character and leadership of an outstanding young man and an excellent football player in Eric Watt. Eric has had tremendous institutional impact and has been a program changer in every sense of the word since his arrival on the campus of Trine University in the fall of 2007. Eric is an exceptional leader who sets high expectations for himself and has tremendous influence on those around him.”
At Trine, Eric was active in community and campus activities. He was a four-year participant in a community reading program at Carlin Park Elementary School in Angola; took part in clean-up efforts at Pokagon State Park and was involved in on-campus charity fundraisers as well as the American Cancer Society’s annual Relay for Life and the football program’s annual talent show.
One way to illustrate Watt’s impact on the Trine football program, head coach Land said in the tribute video, is to compare attendance at Trine home football games in Watt’s first year to that in his senior year. The first year, attendance was over 8002 per game, he said, adding that by Watt’s senior season, it had grown to 5,000.
“It
takes a village to rebuild a football program, and our village in Angola is
strong, and Eric is a great big part of that,” Land says in the video.
“When Eric leaves, I’m probably going to be very nervous. He’s a great football
player. … (he’s) going to be very difficult to replace.”
At the reception that evening, Saint John’s J-Club and representatives of Jostens Inc. ended the suspense and announced that Eric Watt was the 2010 Gagliardi winner. Ryan Coleman of d3photography.com photographed Watt with the trophy below. All of Ryan’s images are used here with his permission.
Saint John’s Jim Gagliardi said that the J-Club and Jostens do not disclose how any of the other nominees for the award finished in the final balloting.
Here is a list of all 14 Indiana players who made the finalist cut for the trophy through the years since the first award in 1993:
1993
– Chris Conkling, QB, Anderson College
1995
– Terry Peebles, QB, Hanover College
1997
– Trey Holcomb, LB, Manchester College; Kevin O’Donohue, LB, Hanover College
1998
– Chris Stormer, QB, Hanover College
2005
– Russ Harbaugh, QB, Wabash College
2007
– Adrian Pyneberg, LB, Wabash College
2008
– Chad Rupp, QB, Franklin College
2009
– Spud Dick, QB, DePauw University
2010
– Kyle Ray, QB, Franklin College; *Eric Watt, QB, Trine University
2013
– Kyle Linville, WR, Franklin College
2017
– Evan Wyse, QB, Trine University
2018
– Lamar Carswell, RB, Trine University
* Gagliardi winner
Jim Gagliardi was asked if any two or more Gagliardi finalists have played opposite each other on the gridiron – like Watt and Ray had done on Sept. 26, 2009.
It is less common for Indiana finalists to square off against each other. There have been only four years (1997, 2007, 2008 and 2009) when Indiana players who would become a finalist played against another Hoosier finalist.
On Oct. 4, 1997, future (’98) finalist Chris Stormer of Hanover, a quarterback, and teammate and ’97 finalist Kevin O’Donohue, a linebacker, played Manchester, whose defense included linebacker Trey Holcomb, also a finalist in ’97. Hanover won the home game, 45-7.
It happened three times in 2007. The first was on Sept. 8 when future (’08) Gagliardi finalist Chad Rupp, the quarterback for Franklin College, and ’07 Wabash finalist Adrian Pyneberg, a linebacker, met for a game at Wabash, which the Little Giants won, 35-33.
The next occasion that season was on Sept. 22, when Tri-State, quarterbacked by freshman Eric Watt, played at Franklin, quarterbacked by future (’08) finalist Chad Rupp. The Grizzlies won, 38-14.
Later that season, on Nov. 10 at Greencastle, Ind., Pyneberg was opposite future finalist (’09) Spud Dick, the quarterback for DePauw University, in the annual Monon Bell Classic in which DePauw beat undefeated Wabash, 24-21, on a 47-yard field goal as time expired.
The 2008 instance came at Trine University on Sept. 27, when Watt and Rupp faced each other again in a game that Trine won, 30-27. At the time, Watt was two years away from being a finalist, while Rupp would become a finalist at the end of that season, his senior year.
The only other verifiable time two Gagliardi finalists who played for Indiana schools went opposite each other on the gridiron was the Franklin-Trine meeting on Sept. 26, 2009, Watt vs. Ray.
In addition to those games, Watt played in games involving two non-Indiana finalists, Case Western Reserve quarterback Dan Whalen in 2009 and Wisconsin-Whitewater wide receiver Aaron Rusch in 2010.
Watt graduated cum laude from Trine with a B.S. in finance with an emphasis on international business. He was the 2010 recipient of the MIAA conference’s annual Albert L. Deal Scholar-Athlete Award, issued annually to recognize athletes who have excelled in academics and athletics and displayed outstanding leadership qualities. It is named for former MIAA commissioner Albert Deal.
Watt was a three-time member of the MIAA Academic Honor Roll and was active in Delta Mu Delta, a business honor society, and Alpha Chi Omega, an athletics honor society.
Dan Simrell, Trine’s quarterbacks coach during Eric’s time at Trine, was effusive in his praise of the quarterback.
“He was the best player in Division 3,” he said. “He was a sponge with information. I never had to get on Eric or to raise my voice. He was late for practice once, and I told him, ‘See that silo over there? Run to it and around it and come back, then let’s go.’ He was a joy to coach. We still are friends. We’ve played golf together.”
Eric was interested in continuing to play football after college. Simrell tried to get his protégé a spot in an NFL combine and wrote to both the Denver Broncos and Chicago Bears on Eric’s behalf, to no avail. He said the Bears responded by saying Eric lacked the physical size to withstand the beating of NFL hits from much bigger defensive linemen and linebackers.
Simrell had better luck with his connections in the Italian Football League, particularly those with the Bologna Warriors, which Simrell had coached in 2008 and ’09 (their seasons are in spring). In fact, Bologna team representatives liked what they saw in Watt when they first came to Angola to see Eric play for Trine. (The picture below, provided by the Watt family, shows Eric in his Bologna Warriors jersey with his Aunt Kay, Uncle Bob and parents Ron and Luanne Watt.)
Simrell said each team in the Italian league is allowed to sign and play up to three American athletes, and Italian league teams are always looking for quality quarterbacks. A summary of Eric’s 2012 season with the Warriors appears in the Epilogue of this series. Below is a picture, courtesy of the Watt family, of Eric taken in Italy during his time there.
In 2016, Eric was inducted into the Trine University Athletic Hall of Fame, and two years later the 2008 Trine team that Watt led to a 10-1 record in his sophomore season was inducted into the hall3. In 2019, Eric was named to Trine’s Quarter-Century Football Team. Joining him on the team were former head coach Matt Land, receivers Paul Curtis and JaVontae Hence, defensive backs Aaron Selking and Aaron Shoemaker and punter Nate Fitzsimmons. Watt’s football jersey No. 13 has been retired by the school.
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
While still attending South Newton High School, Andy Rodriguez began dating Devan Whitaker, a very good friend of Bobby Hanna – the Rensselaer Central High School alumnus introduced in Chapter 3.
At the time, Hanna had no love for Andy, Eric Watt and Ryan Care, just like those three South Newton friends had none for Hanna. “They were from a rival school, so we disliked them,” Hanna explained. “But my friend (Devan) said to me, ‘Hey you idiot. You guys are exactly alike. You guys are just stupid. You guys would love one another if you just hung out with each other.”
Devan’s words proved prophetic, although the thaw first involved just Andy and Ryan, with whom Bobby started to hang out, “and I got close to them senior year in high school, and we had a good time.”
Eric didn’t break into the friendship ring fully until after high school.
Hanna briefly attended Franklin College in 2007 then transferred to Purdue University in West Lafayette, where he obtained a degree in technology leadership and innovation. When Hanna moved back to Lafayette after transferring from Franklin College, he moved in with Care, who also was attending Purdue.
After graduating Trine in December 2010, Eric moved to West Lafayette.
“I was in the area,” Hanna said, “and that’s when we started hanging out quite a bit really to where we are now, and I call him my best friend, and he probably would do the same.”
At this point of his interview, Hanna joked that it was somewhat surprising to him that he and Eric reached the point of being “best friends” because, as Hanna explained, “he doesn’t give out a lot (of information) all the time. He’s a pretty reserved guy. I mean … that’s why we really didn’t get along at first. I thought he was standoffish and cocky, but then I thought like, no, that’s just his personality. He’s just a laid-back, quiet guy.”
Eric and Bobby played basketball together in Subaru and church leagues in the area in the late 2010s, COVID proving to be an unfortunate disruptor of that pastime.
Bobby says they still get together occasionally to shoot hoops and play HORSE and see each other about once a month although they often will talk daily – either by phone or text.
Above is a contemporary family photo of three Watt siblings with their mother taken in March 2023 at the Watt Trucking Inc. vendor station of the Mid-America Truck Show in Louisville, Ky. From left are Eric's older brother Keith; mother Luanne Watt; brother-in-law Bo Clement; Bo’s wife, Michelle Watt Clement (Eric's sister), who is holding her and Bo's son, Jimmer; and Eric with his girlfriend, Dennise.
___________________________________________________________________________
Footnotes:
1 - In 2022, North Central defeated Mount Union, 28-21, to win the Stagg Bowl, played Dec. 16 at Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md.
2 - If attendance data in the Trine football team's archived statistical records online is accurate, the average attendance at the five home games in Watt's freshman year, 2007, was 2,917. Average attendance at the five home games in his senior season, 2010, was 4,783. It should be noted that average attendance in 2006, the year before Watt arrived on campus, was 950.
3 - Curiously, neither of the two subsequent teams, 2009 and/or 2010, both of which (like the 2008 team) won MIAA championships and qualified for the NCAA Division III postseason tournament, has been similarly honored.
Tomorrow: Epilogue and Acknowledgments
(in the Epilogue, catch up on what all the people featured in these chapters are doing today)
Previously in "On Hoosier Gridirons":
Chapter 2: Mastering the Spread
Chapter 3: The Kicker With the Ever-Present Smile
Chapter 4: Like Father, Like Son
Chapter 5: Where Legends Played
Chapter 6: A Moonlight Graham Moment
Chapter 7: 'Clearly the Best' Small-School Teams in Indiana
Chapter 9: Farewell, Levi ... and Welcome, Pup!
Chapter 10: Waiting Their Turns
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