That Adams was football obsessed had been obvious from the time he had arrived at Andover and had sat in the back of some of his classes--more often than not science classes--and had pleased the teacher by seeming to be the most diligent and enthusiastic note taker in the class. Sadly, it would turn out, and much to the irritation of the teacher, these were not science notes but turned out to be the sketches where eleven Xs took on eleven Os. In time the teacher notified Helen Adams, Ernie's mother. She was not surprised, because Ernie's housemaster, Hale Struges, had already written her of his own concerns about the narrowness of her son's interests: 'I wish he would expand his horizons. His interest in football has assumed such proportions that it seems to be closing doors on other areas of endeavor.' (At virtually the same time, an eerily similar scene was taking place at Annapolis High, where Bill Belichick was taking French; some thirty-five years later Jeannette Belichick happened to stumble over some of her son's old notebooks, including one from French class, and eager to see what he had been doing in a subject that she had once taught, she opened it, finding inside not very much in he way of French verbs but a lot of football plays that had been diagrammed, part of his secret world of Xs and Os.) (The Education of a Coach, 2006)
David Halberstam, author, Summer of '49, October 1964, The Making of a Quagmire, The Best and the Brightest, The Teammates, and most recently, The Education of a Coach, has been killed in a car crash at the age of 73.
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