Last weekend John Gagliardi went mainstream. The 77-year-old coach at Division III St. John's of Minnesota deservedly attracted national attention for winning his 409th game, more than any college football coach in history. It's a nice story about a man who long ago discarded coaching convention -- most notably, no tackling in practice -- and won just the same.

Half a continent away, there was another little-school story unfolding at the same time. On pristine Weston Field, in the shadow the Berkshire Mountains in Williamstown, Mass., Williams defeated Amherst, 14-10. Five days later Dick Farley stepped down as head coach at Williams after 17 years during which he won football games at a higher rate of success than all but five college football coaches in history at any level.

After taking over for onetime Penn All-America Bob Odell in 1987, Farley went 114-19-3, a winning percentage of .849. Among active coaches, only Larry Kehres of perennial Division III power Mount Union has a higher mark. (Two of the other three in front of Farley are Notre Dame legends Knute Rockne and Frank Leahy; the third is former Augustana coach Bob Reade, another Division III title machine). Five times Farley's teams went a perfect 8-0 and four times he was named New England Coach of the Year. His first team opened 0-3 and the Ephmen didn't again lose back-to-back games until the third week of this season, when an upset loss to Bates was followed by a loss at Trinity (which would finish 8-0).

In response to these defeats, Farley took a decidedly un-Gagliardian approach: For 15 to 20 minutes a day, he lined up his first-team offense against his first-team defense and let them play football. It was the same thing he did 17 years ago. "I remember that first season like it was yesterday," he said Friday morning, the day after making his official retirement announcement. "I asked the kids, 'What do we need to do?' They said wanted to be challenged. We didn't beat the s--- out of them, but for a few minutes every day, we played like it was Saturday. Best against the best. Somebody said to me, 'What if somebody gets hurt?' I said, 'Maybe if the right guy gets hurt, we'll start winning.'"

This was vintage Farley: A good, passionate man playing the hardass. Full disclosure here: I went to Williams a long time ago, back when Farley was an assistant coach, in charge of defensive backs (he spent 15 years in this capacity before taking over as head coach). I was a quarterback on the freshman football team (with absolutely zero future in the game); Farley was a looming, menacing presence, a former star DB at Boston University who played two years with the San Diego Chargers and would have played longer if not for a career-ending back injury. All of the freshmen who provided daily fodder for Farley's varsity defense feared him like darkness. He was big and tough and we were young and clueless. We were the scout team, running the upcoming varsity opponent's offense.

One afternoon I threw a wounded duck that sailed in a flat spin over the head of the intended receiver. One of Farley's varsity defensive backs, a reserve named Pat Landers, drifted over from free safety, eyed the ball and then dropped it. There was a moment's quiet, and then Farley's distinctive, Boston-North Shore rasp: "Patrick! You could have had your name in The Record!" (That's The Williams Record, the campus newspaper). Farley came away smiling and so everybody else smiled, too. This was even more vintage Farley and, in some small way, a microcosm of the style he employed for three decades.

Williams is a college of approximately 2,000 undergraduates tucked into the Northwest corner of Massachusetts. It is among the most rigorous and selective academic institutions in the country, ranked the No. 1 national liberal arts college in America by US News and World Report. The average SAT score is well into the 1400s and while some football players are admitted with lower scores than that, it is not the type of place where the phrase "partial qualifier" is spoken. Farley came to Williamstown from the NFL. He was a better football player than nearly every player he coached (he did send several to the NFL), and nearly every player he coached was a better student than he was. Yet the marriage worked, because Farley found the delicate balance between serious football and serious education.

He demanded hard work from his players, yet he never forgot where they were. Among his best tools was dry humor, delivered in such a way that the players could never be entirely certain if he was telling a joke or not. "If you can't play here, you can't play anywhere,'' he once told his team. "There's no Division IV.''

Farley competed as fiercely as any coach, yet his priorities were in line with the school that employs him (he will remain at Williams as an assistant track and field coach). Football is the only sport in which members of the New England Small College Athletic Conference (NESCAC), which is made up of 11 elite schools, are not allowed to advance to NCAA Championship play. (These teams have been successful in other sports: Williams won the Division III national title in basketball last spring). Instead, Williams closes the autumn every year with games against Little Three rivals Wesleyan and Amherst. "We'd be hard-pressed to play anybody in America after we play Amherst,'' says Farley. "Plus, by November, a lot of kids have gotten behind in their academics. They've got papers and tests. It's never bothered me that we couldn't move on.''

In recent years, Ivy League and NESCAC schools have come under fire for their athletic endeavors, as questioned in the book The Game of Life. Yet Farley says this firestorm is not what compelled him to move on. His reasons were, in fact, much more conventional.

"I missed a lot of birthdays and I missed a lot of funerals because I was locked in a stupid office,'' Farley says. Last Saturday, when he finished his career with the win over Amherst, his daughter, Colleen (a national-class track athlete), finished her high school soccer career with a 2-0 loss in the Western Massachusetts finals. "She was in the right place. I was in the right place,'' Farley said. "But we weren't in the same place. I've always preached to my players that family comes first, but I haven't lived it in my own life. Now I'm going to try to do that.''

It's funny that Farley was in his office on Friday morning, checking up on early decision recruits. Separation will not be an easy thing for him. He likens himself to Bill Parcells and Dick Vermeil, guys who ran hard and then took time out to recharge before returning. "But in 32 years, I never recharged,'' says Farley. "That's why this is the right thing to do.''

Every year before the Williams-Amherst game, Farley would deliver a pregame speech to his team. He wasn't a big fire-and-brimstone guy, but there's one thing he always made sure to say: "Sixty minutes to play, a lifetime to remember.'' It is, of course, the coach whom they will remember most.

Sports Illustrated senior writer Tim Layden weighs in with a Viewpoint every Friday on SI.com.