For Chicago Bears head coach Ben Johnson, numbers were more than just something you learn in school... they were an early obsession.

Some of Johnson's first memories are tied to math, sparked by the rhythmic multiplication drills his mother, Gail, would recite to help his sister with homework on their way to school. While most kids doodled, according to ESPN's Courtney Cronin, Johnson filled entire spiral notebooks with neat, sequential columns of numbers, writing from one to 10,000 simply for fun.

His father, Don, a high school principal and football coach, recalls the dedication: "It wasn't addition or subtraction or any of that kind of stuff, but he went through the numbers and made sure he had them all right. He really did get to be a pretty bright kid in terms of the different math

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