I made the terrible mistake of signing up for Japanese in my first college semester -- telling myself dumbly that it was a good "business decision," as if I possessed even a remote clue of industry. This move haunted my every moment. Two days into university life, I was tasked with learning three separate Japanese writing systems -- Kanji, Hiragana and Katakana -- which served as unruly harassment for a person plagued hourly with the question: Why am I even here?

My second megaton mistake was registering for a deep-dive science class based on Ohio-area trees and shrubs, a subject matter that felt dangerously useless on every possible level.

The only enjoyment I found in the classroom that ill-fated autumn was a tantalizing course entitled "Football Studies 101," which seemed sent from God, despite being worth a measly half-credit.

It was flush with Miami of Ohio football players -- huge, monstrous humans who seemed seven years older than me -- plus maybe two girls and myself. Taught by head coach Randy Walker, who went on to coach at Northwestern before passing away in 2006, the once-a-week affair delved into coaching strategy and team-building tactics without asking me to learn a language that would set me up comfortably in Tokyo. It was a joy. I found it fascinating to be in the same room with a real, established football coach who took his craft seriously.

Walker treated me as an equal to his players. When he handed out assignments -- diagramming a famous college offense, for instance -- my instinct was to blow him away with a 40-page, nuanced exploration of the Single Wing. As part of the final assignment, we were tasked with reaching out to a real coach -- anyone -- to seek out their philosophy.

It could have been one of Walker's assistants or an old high school coach. I played football in high school, quite poorly, but had also burnt bridges with the staff after killing the team in a string of critical columns for the local paper the year before. Besides, my target was clear: Bill Belichick.

I got down to work on an overly long, gushing, uneven letter to the coach of the Browns. It included much of the nonsense I've shared here and operated as an appeal to what I believed was his mission in Cleveland, which I was largely guessing about in the pre-Internet dark age.

I shipped off the packed envelope, and suddenly, the world felt alive. While I watched my scant collection of college friends vanish into a wormhole of fraternities, sororities, "grab-a-dates" and bubbling social lives, existence for me was centered on one pivotal, make-or-break question: Would Belichick write back?