Читать книгу A Legacy Unrivaled. The Story of John Gagliardi онлайн

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This isn’t my story. This is the story of John Gagliardi.

John’s office door was wide open when I arrived on the Tuesday after spring break in March of 2012. It was half past twelve, thirty minutes until the beginning of the most popular course on campus, “Theory of Coaching Football.” I stepped in to find him staring at one of the three computer monitors in front of him. Right away, I could tell that he had much more energy than usual.

“So, is it okay if I sit in on class?” I inquired.

“Sure. As long as you can find a seat,” he replied. And he wasn’t joking: the room would be packed. At a school that boasts a student-faculty ratio of twelve to one, John’s class would be filled with sixty-three students, including me, with dozens more turned away. Perhaps it’s because of this course that the college advertises a median instead of an average class size.

I made the short walk down the hallway to Palaestra classroom 256. A handful of early arriving students were already seated and passing the time by fiddling with their smart-phones. I selected a spot in the front row on the far side of the classroom, good enough to see but well out of the way.