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

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Students looked at each other in bewilderment, and a woman in the front row gasped. John asked her, “Is that a true story?”

“I don’t know,” was her tentative reply.

“No, it is not true,” he cackled as he released the tension. “But I have told it so many times it could be true.”

When the laughter ceased, John turned to the next order of business. “Let’s watch some film.”

John’s dedication to breaking down game films is legendary. When he was first coaching at Saint John’s in the early 1950s, John noticed that some monks would peek in on the film sessions he was holding for his players, so he asked the monks if they would like their own film session. The sessions’ popularity grew, and ultimately what seemed like the whole monastery would attend. The men in black robes would puff on cigars and listen to John as he walked them through the previous game, play by play. When I asked John why he did it, he said, “Because the monks were interested in football and I enjoyed their company.” John was living on campus in the dorms at the time. Halfway through his first season, when he defeated rivals Gustavus Adolphus and Saint Thomas in back-to-back games, the monks rewarded him by putting a television in his room—the first television on campus. They would join him periodically in watching the Jackie Gleason Show.