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August 2008
Johnson era began as diagrammed
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Call it the spread offense, call it the triple option, call it whatever you like, the real name is the Paul Johnson School of Offense, and he introduced his addition to the Georgia Tech football curriculum. While it seemed at times he had his uncomfortable moments with some of his students’ classwork, there was little the 45,000 judges seated in the stands at Bobby Dodd Stadium-Grant Field could complain about. Considering, of course, that the game with Jacksonville State was a football equivalent of baseball’s spring training. In my time, I’ve never seen Georgia Tech lose one of these, but let me tell you about the losing coach in this one Jack Crowe.
Crowe was coaching at Arkansas in 1992 when the Razorbacks opened the season against The Citadel, imported, of course, to give the local boys some exercise. Instead, the victim became Arkansas, and Frank Broyles, the athletics director, was so furious he fired Jack Crowe before he could coach another game. This time, Crowe’s team became the well-behaved victims they were supposed to be, and the Paul Johnson Era began as diagrammed.
Georgia Tech subscribers will find Johnson quite different from any coach they have ever known. He has his own style. He doesn’t care what you or I think about him, or any other authorized or unauthorized observer. This has been his system since he was the man wearing the whistle, at Georgia Southern, at the Naval Academy, and now at The Flats. The difference is, he has never had this kind of talent to coach before. Yep, he was a roaring success at Annapolis, plum embarrassed the other service academies, and finally beat Notre Dame. Of course, Georgia Tech beat the same Notre Dame team, but it hadn’t been 40 years between conquests.
There were a lot of things to like about the performance against Jacksonville State besides the score. The Jackets came out throwing. This team that splattered the field with fumbles in the spring game performed with acceptable precision. They put 27 points on the board before allowing J-State to score. Then followed that up with what I considered the absolutely Perfect Johnson Play of the night. Josh Nesbitt, the second-year quarterback from Greensboro, took the snap, broke to his right and as he rounded the corner, flipped the ball to Roddy Jones, a freshman, who finished off a 49-yard play that ran the score to 34-7. Perfect. Reminded me a lot of the old “belly series” that Dodd used to run.
On the sideline, Johnson has his own modus operandi. He does it his own way. First, he’s here, then he’s there. You can’t tell one Tech coach from another. He calls his own plays. No spreadsheet in his hands. During a time-out, he may be busily addressing his troops, or he may be standing on the perimeter, like a casual bystander. I’m pretty sure you’ve never run into one quite like him. He didn’t come here to win fans, he came to win games.
Now, he had one potential problem to deal with Thursday night. Ryan Perrilloux would have been the quarterback at LSU, but he ran up a scream list that cost him his place. So he checked in at J-State and the job was his. He had a fair night, but there were times when I was certain he wished he’d behaved and was back in Baton Rouge. He had his hot spells, but they weren’t threatening. He’ll have a picnic in the Ohio Valley Conference.
So there you have your introduction to Paul Johnson. Nothing fancy, nothing historic, just the kind of guy you might find parked next to your pickup. Be nice. Enjoy him. Get to know the difference between an A-back and a B-back. He’s here for a long time. They’ve finally got it right at Georgia Tech, even if he doesn’t win again until November.
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It’s been over and over for Braves
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Yogi Berra may have had a point when he said, “It’s not over till it’s over.” Well, let me say this: That in the case of the Braves, our Braves, it has been over several times. The loyalists just wouldn’t accept the cruel fact.
It was over first early in the season, when Peter Moylan and Rafael Soriano, aces of the bullpen, went down. You lose a pair like that and you may not accept it at the time, but you’re dead. It ain’t like it used to be, when you sent Warren Spahn and Lew Burdette out there and you got your nine innings out of them. You got to be juiced up in the bullpen.
Not just the loss of your best in the bullpen, but — ho, hum — when the chief of staff gambled on the revival of John Smoltz’s weary old arm, and Tom Glavine’s, and on Mike Hampton’s return to a form matching his stupendous salary. Bobby Cox was left to depend on a rookie from Curacao; another rookie who had never pitched above the Pearl, Miss., level; another rookie with an ERA higher than his hometown population; a 30-year-old Mexican rookie set adrift by Seattle, and, of course, Tim Hudson, a veteran of good standing.
If it’s milestones you’re looking for, then this one was the whopper. Hudson himself went down and Mark Teixeira was traded to the Angels. That was the signal. The white flag was hoisted. They threw in the towel. It was, indeed, over. Frankly, not that they had much left in the tank, anyway.
You know, you have to keep kidding yourself. Just a few days ago the Braves were leading the Phillies by five, and got beat. Then they led the Phillies by six, and lost again. (Oh, how handy that Moylan and Soriano bullpen would have been then.) And how a bat like Teixeira’s might have put some runs on the board. In other words, was it necessary to send him packing so soon? He’d have still been as valuable to the Angels as he was then. Get a little more mileage out of him for those five young’uns they’d sent to the Rangers last season.
Actually, it all came crashing down on this old codger last Saturday night. They were playing the Cardinals and losing. Not just losing. The dam broke, there was I, sitting there watching the disaster on television. What’s this? A flashback to the ’80s? When they devised new ways to lose? When they lined up with names like Blocker, James (first name Dion), Virgil, Oberkfell, Thomas (first name Andres) and on the mound, their leading pitcher Rick Mahler, whose record was 9-16 in 1988.
Fast forward to St. Louis, and it takes Charlie Morton 60 pitches to get the first three outs. Later, the game in placed in the hands of a stranger named Matt DeSalvo. By the time he departed, he had thrown 42 pitches, the Cardinals had scored eight runs and the sad fellow left with an earned-run average of 31.50. And a ticket back to the farm at Richmond, where his record was 2-ll. It has been a long time since I’ve been that depressed. I felt that old ’80s sadness creeping inside me, and I wondered — is this it? Is this really the end? Are we really turning the clock back to those dismal days of 3,402 crowds — on a good night — and Chief Noc-a-Homa?
Then danged if they don’t come back the next night and beat the Cards with Campillo and Buddy Carlyle. Jeff Francoeur had sounded the woeful battle cry: “We Need a Win Bad.” He drove in two runs, but his batting average still lurked around .230. It’s the kind of season you wouldn’t wish on a New York Met. What made being trampled by the Cards in that Saturday game smart more than usual, they’d been beaten by another of those bright prospects they traded away to get a one-season fix. Adam Wainwright, of St. Simons Island. You can’t always blame losing on the ones who got away, you have to step up and face the music for bad decisions.
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Richt not bothered about Georgia’s hype
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Athens — Mark Richt is basically a calm man, not that crazy guy who sent his whole traveling squad surging on the field like a bunch of wild warriors in celebration after Georgia scored its first touchdown against Florida last season. He still apologizes, in a way:
“I just meant the offensive team,” he said. “The rest of them ran out on their own,” not that he’d like to have it done any other way now. “It cost us a 15-yard penalty, then half the distance tacked onto that. We’re probably the only team that ever started a game kicking off from the seven and a half yard line.”
He had noticed something missing in the loss to Tennessee, which was more than a loss — a solid butt-kicking. ” Passion,” he said. “I realized it after the Tennessee game and we went to work on it.”
Not so fast there. First, there was Vanderbilt to be dealt with. The Bulldogs were on the ropes, the Commodores on a drive near Georgia’s goal line when their tailback fumbled. The Bulldogs recovered and eventually kicked the winning field goal, and they were off on a seven-game winning binge that ended in the Sugar Bowl. Little did they realize that what they were doing would have such implications on the season ahead.
“No. 1 in the Nation!” The trifecta! Coaches poll, Associated Press, Sports Illustrated! Everybody’s No. 1 but Playboy, the magazine, whose polling standards vary somewhat from popular football tradition. For instance, Amos Alonzo Stagg would never have been its cover boy.
Usually, coaches react restlessly, shush all that talk and downgrade such a flood of exposure. Not Mark Richt. “We talk about it,” he said. “We’re excited. That means they’ve got respect for us. With such a ranking comes responsibility, and that means that’s up to us.”
Expectant fathers don’t carry on with such poise as did Richt, the expectant coach. He realized this situation was far more to be desired than had he been engaged in the career he’d have chosen if football hadn’t come his way. “I’d have been a builder, either that, or in real estate. My dad was a carpenter before he got into electronics,” he said, “and that sort of rubbed off on me when I was young.”
Actually, it had been Richt’s plan to become a great quarterback. The coach at Boca Raton High School in Florida had him pointed in that direction, Roger Coffey. The Richts originated in Nebraska but moved to Florida when his father’s company transferred him. Mark was about 13. He had gone out for baseball, but the baseball coach’s son was the rival at the position he played, and he never saw the light of day. Enter Roger Coffey: “Come with me,” he said, “I’ll show you the ropes, and I promise you’ll play college football.”
Baseball was his real love, but he took coach Coffey at his word, and sure enough, he became a quarterback at the University of Miami. Unfortunately, a kid named Kelly, from a coal-mining town in Pennsylvania, also played quarterback at Miami, later in four Super Bowls, and Jim Kelly is now in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Surely not having as much fun as Richt now.
“It’s a challenge for us all,” he said, speaking of the surge to No. 1. He could have been speaking of the Georgia schedule, which appears to have been put together by a mad masochist. Check it: South Carolina at Columbia, then Arizona State in Tempe, followed by Alabama and Tennessee, with Vanderbilt next, then crunch time: LSU at Baton Rouge and Florida at Jacksonville, then Kentucky, Auburn and Georgia Tech, not exactly whipped cream and cherry on top.
“If being ranked high can motivate, then we’ve got all the motivation we need. Use it. Go a little harder,” Richt said.
He’ll have his own family gallery cheering him on. He’ll be surrounded by a chorus of Richts. His mother now lives in the region. So do a brother and two sisters, one wed to Brad Johnson, the Super Bowl quarterback now with Dallas. And, his father has joined the fun and now lives nearby. (His parents are divorced.)
How do you get to be No. 1 before the football has even been pumped up? (Georgia’s previous preseasonsí best has been No. 3.) “Well, I guess it’s how you finished, who you have leaving and who’s returning to fill the holes, and star power. It gives you confidence when you have a Knowshon Moreno and Matthew Stafford, and a lot of impressive receivers. Other than that, I can only tell you what I tell my wife before a game: ‘I hope we can make a first down.’ “
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Braves’ season full of surprises, mostly nasty
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
So now we have the answers to some of the puzzles of the spring (and other observations on the Braves):
• In case you missed the seasons of the 1970s and ’80s, you’re getting a taste of how it was back then, when the beleaguered managers ranged from Lum Harris to Russ Nixon — and even Ted Turner got in a lick. (His record: 0-1).
• We now know that John Smoltz and Tom Glavine won’t be 15-game winners. Between them they have won five, and most of the rest of the time have been medical guests and relics of another age. It isn’t easy to turn off your dreams.
• We now know you can’t survive in the NL East with a crew of relief pitchers collected off the street, such as Jeff Ridgway, Royce Ring, Chris Resop, Jeff Bennett, and at the same time, trade away one who has proved himself — Tyler Yates.
• With Rafael Soriano and Mike Gonzalez, two celebrated “closers” in the ranks, they appeared well stocked in that department, but how can they be of value when there’s very little to be “closed”?
• We now know that the envisioned outfield threesome of Matt Diaz, Mark Kotsay and Jeff Francoeur would be operating on only one-third efficiency. Whoever could have imagined Frenchy dawdling along in the .230s batting range, and that Diaz would become a season casualty? Except for Kotsay, the outfield has been cursed.
• We now know that Mark Teixeira was here only on borrowed time, and that the deal giving away five blossoming prospects to get him was a big-time blunder, being aware that he was here only on loan.
• At least we know now that Clint Sammons has a future in the big leagues, probably not as a main man, but as a backup he’s quite an upgrade from Corky Miller.
• You can’t be sure how long Jorge Campillo can carry on, but we now realize that he can pitch in the big leagues, and not only that, but he can swing a rather noisy bat.
• We now realize that Bobby Cox can’t — what’s the term? — “make silk purses out of sow’s ears.” It’s painful to see him suffering through night after night of blowing leads, watching his bullpen self-destruct, and to hear and read the cruel comments floating through the air and on the Internet. The Braves haven’t been this far out of the race since 1990. True, but now we know he’s not dealing with a full deck.
• Now, through the lines and on the street, this speculation: You suppose John Schuerholz saw this coming on and moved out of the general manager’s office just in time? Pure folly. He is a wise baseball man, but he’s no kin to Nostradamus.
• As if it had not already been confirmed, we now know that Chipper Jones won’t be checking in with a .400 batting average. Frankly, I doubt that any major league player will ever do it again, especially in the National League.
• Who’d have thought that one of the Braves would wind up on the world stage? Scott Thorman takes time off from the Richmond farm club to be Canada’s first baseman in the Olympic Games.
• Hey, do you suppose that if Yunel Escobar knew it was going to be like this, he would have endured all those dangers on that boat getting out of Cuba? Silly question.
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Tech looks to its future with patience
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The campus was a-bustle, moms and pops delivering their freshpersons (my word) into the care of Georgia Tech. The stretch of Techwood Drive behind the east stands of Bobby Dodd Stadium had been reduced to a one-way street. It was a clutter of cars jockeying for position, their cargo being unloaded under the guarded attention of campus police, and rug merchants who had set up shop on the busy corner. Growling buses wallowed along through this scene, and strangely enough, no conflicts flared up and no hostile voices rang out. Along Fraternity Row upperclassman were sweeping out, tidying up and fumigating, making their residences palatable for the “rush” season.
I’d clambered through such a scene before myself, when I delivered my own freshman child to the campus. No hugging, no tears, no last-minute counsel. He opened the car door, said a cool goodbye and was gone before I could assemble my platitudes. He knew why he was there, where he was headed, and besides, he was going to be only five miles from home. It’s not the miles that count, to many such youth, I’d say, it would be the first eye-opening day for the rest of their lives.
One parent going through the stage of ” moving on” sat in the office of athletics dirtector. Chris Radakovich was already safely ensconced in a dormitory “just a 9-iron away,” as his father put it. The transition had been quite painless for Dan Radakovich. Chris would be no home body. Campus life for him, and he was already settled in. Chris was the first Radakovich out of the nest, and Ol’ Dad was cool, talking it all in stride. Besides, there were other campus matters that bore more heavily upon him, such as the installation of a new football coach, which brought with it pressure of another nature.
Georgia Tech has been subsisting restlessly on a diet of 7-win seasons and second-level bowl games for five of the past six seasons. During that time the football team had never been able to beat Georgia, seven times in a row the loser. This is searing on the mind of the West Stand populace. Oh, feast on a few big-time headline-fetchers. Beat Auburn, beat Clemson, beat Miami, pound Notre Dame now and then, but no steady diet of classic play. At one home game last season, attendance dipped below 20,000.
The call went out and Paul Johnson was reeled in. Johnson is an astonishing story. Never played a down of college football. Grew up in a small mountain town. Decided his life was football, and went to work building a proper foundation. A winner wherever he has coached; one season, winner of the Dodd Coach of the Year Award, now coaching in the shoes of the man himself. Calm, unpretentious, rarely ever raises his voice, in so many ways, the antithesis of the boom-voiced, boss kind of coach. Wherever he has held the reins, the offense has been the same, a spread option in which the quarterback handles the ball, but rarely passes it. We’re all waiting with passionate curiosity.
On this day, near the end of open practices some of the parents dropped in from delivering their offspring to have a look. “One magazine rated us 86th,” said a father from Baltimore. Not just an occasional patron, either. He buys season tickets and makes the scene for several home games. “I’ve seen Johnson’s teams at Navy, and I think there are good days ahead here,” he said.
Another father, who had played in Bill Curry’s seasons of depression, had dropped by to see his freshman safety at work. Tall, swift, impressively athletic, ol’ dad was rather tense about it all. The scene of a Johnson practice is impressively orderly, each segment like the moving part of a smoothly operating machine. Predictions don’t make a season, can’t dismay alums thirsting for a return to glory, and so it goes, that Georgia Tech looks to its future with calm and patient expectations.
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Missing Caray’s unmatchable personality
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Then sings my soul, my Savior God to Thee,
How great Thou art, how great Thou art.
At about that stage of that grand old hymnal salute, my voice can no longer hold firm. It breaks up and tears fill my eyes, as it did during the recessional at Skip Caray’s funeral. Skip has been gone from among us for several days, but his unmatchable personality still cloys to us. Undetachable. Somehow we are unwilling to let go. Many of us has taken a swing at bidding him farewell, and are not content with how we’ve done it.
It’s not that Skip was the sweet, lovable lap dog type. That, he wasn’t. What you saw and what you heard was what you got. Some broadcasters sit and plan special lines for plays that may come up. I could name some, but I won’t. Skip wasn’t one of them. What he saw triggered what he had to say, and we’ve read one after another of that this week. Spontaneous is the word.
He could be tough and critical, and he could be warm and gentle, and if there was anything that bored him, it was those call-in programs on radio. That was not Skip. He didn’t like to be curt and short, but there was something about that absurd format that turned him into the kind of growler. Mainly because so many of the callers simply called to listen to hear their own voice, and he knew it.
He would not have approved of his final rites at Cathedral of Christ the King. “Embarrassed,” was a term one of his close friends used. Sorry, Skip, but this was one time you weren’t calling the shots. This time, this town, these people, his friends, his admirers, and those who’ll be missing him so much were. Monsignor Kenny saw to it that this was a celebration of Skip’s life, and from some of his witty references indicated that he had known him as well as a lot of those who spent late nights, closed a few bars with him, and came to say their farewells.
It was a revelation to me that he had kept the line open to Rick Camp, the pitcher who fell from grace. Didn’t just send a card or two, but wrote letters and drove to the prison to visit him. That was something that gets you where your heart beats. And we wouldn’t have known if Rick hadn’t come to the cathedral to see his friend off, and tell Tom Stinson his story. Few of us knew of the little things in life that held Skip’s interest. The animals he befriended, feeding the birds. I feed the birds now and then, but because of my wife, and I still spill about as much on the ground as I get inside the feeder. (Squirrels? I beg forgiveness, but I am not their friend.)
When he took himself off the road games this season, that was the signal that this might be his last. Most of us were in denial, and carried on as we usually did, though we could see that his time was getting shorter by the day. The saddest of fates was, we never got to say a proper goodbye. He was the bridge between Harry and Chip, from father to son, and we have that Caray to carry on this family tradition. And not to be forgotten, Josh.
Now I’ve said it.
Then I shall bow in humble adoration,
And there proclaim, my God, how great Thou art.
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Who has the bigger ego: Favre or New York?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
There before us, we see it happening. The strangest transition since that long-forgotten tennis player switched sexes, from Richard to Renee. Brett Favre from Packer to Jet. From Kiln, Miss., to Gotham, the center of the universe, in its own eyes. From blue jeans to Broadway.
One national publication had presumptuously positioned him back in Packer green, with this daring conclusion: “In the end, the Packers made the best decision. If Favre was going to play again, he was going to play for them.”
That would have been the popular evolvement, but off target. Mike McCarthy, the Packers coach, said, that in their final long, drawn-out visitation, Favre “never once said he wanted to play for Green Bay.” We must presume this is straightforward stuff, not the whine of a jilted suitor.
Then, there was the other emotional moment, when Favre was quoted as saying, “I’ll always be a Packer.” He’ll be wearing green, but it will be the Jets green. What kind of hell did he lead the Packers through during this emergence from his tearful retirement oath? Oh, it was poignant, sorrow etched under that scruffy beard. I don’t know that any of us out here doubted him for a moment. By gad, it just shows you: Never trust one of these “retiring” guys while his bruises are still fresh and the teardrops are falling.
Ego is ego, whether in Green Bay or New York. Or Kiln, Miss. (pop. 2,040). After all these years most of us had bought into Favre as the total Packer. He looked it, seemed to mean it, fell right in with these modest Midwesterners whose football team began in a meat-packing plant. Long way from the towers of Manhattan. A press conference in New York draws a thundering, blustering, elbowing herd. In Green Bay, it’s more like the weekly Rotary Club luncheon. A few cameras and a few Wisconsin reporters show up.
Maybe Favre exposed his inner self when he was told that the new “Favre 4” Jets game jersies were out and that 3,000 had already been sold, and he said, “Is that all?” I choose to believe that he was making a small joke.
Forgiveness in Green Bay will be a long time coming, if ever. Had Favre made his “retirement” from the Packers without a bucketful of tears, and all the typical sob stuff that goes with such fake farewells, most of the cheese-head nation might soften up to him. Not now. Favre has become the enemy. Go get the traitorous redneck. All the while, Aaron Rodgers has been twirling in the wind. Packers quarterback, or back to the clipboard and baseball cap one more year? All this precious time spent in suspense while Favre dallied with his old team. Even turned down a $20 million offer to do nothing but be Brett Favre, Packers ambassador to the world.
Well, now that he has made his bed with these erudite New Yorkers, maybe they’ll finally get his name properly pronounced. It doesn’t take a Cajun to to know it’s “Fov,” not “Farve,” but it should help. Anyone can see that the “v” comes before the “r.” A learned Cajun friend named Favre, who grew up in Bay St. Louis, has gone to great lengths to convert broadcasters to the “Fov” pronounciation, with corrective missles, both taped and written, and has come away discouraged. At this turn of affairs, he may have dismissed him as a misguided hick.
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Caray defined baseball
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Before television, there was radio. Before ESPN, there was Red Barber, Russ Hodges, Harry Caray, and a “whole host” of others, as the voices of radio would say into those odd-shaped microphones in front of them. Sometimes they weren’t even in the ball park, or even in the town where the game was being played. The game report came in, one play at a time, on a crackling teletype machine.
Baseball is a radio game. Red Barber, Russ Hodges, and of course, Harry Caray made it so, and Skip came along in their tracks. This is not to say that Skip was of that ancient vintage, but that he was one of the kind, born and bred to broadcasting through the bloodlines of his father. Mark Bradley has painted a post-mortem picture as eloquently as one can of the Caray, as we have come to know him in the South. He was born of the kilocyles and later graduated into high definition, but no matter how many times he came on the air, his voice and style were straight out of the days when teams traveled by train and lived in cheap hotels.
Skip had his own style and it fit us like a pair of brogans. He didn’t come among us in a stretch limo brandishing a city-slick style. In fact, he came with the Atlanta Hawks, and a basketball broadcast is about as riveting as a root canal. He even did his one and only hockey game, filling in for Jiggs McDonald, and you never knew the difference, except for the accent. He made his baseball debut in town broadcasting Crackers games in the International League in 1965, opening season of Atlanta Stadium, while the city waited for the Braves to extricate themselves from legal snarls and make their arrival.
Oh, he was versatile. He even worked the Goodwill Games, Ted Turner’s international toy, once broadcast a game that had never been played before, nor since, as far as I know. It was called Motoball, in which men on motorcycles chased a huge medicine ball around a field, like polo on wheels. It was played in a town outside Moscow and I missed the broadcast, which, happily, he did in English, since he didn’t speak Russian.
In 1976, Skip joined up with the team that became engraved on the hearts of Braves’ listeners, he, Ernie Johnson and Pete Van Wieren, with a sundry of others who came and went. Ernie has retired and Van Wieren carries on, the perfect voice of radio baseball.
“I first met Skip when he came here in ‘65, when I was sort of the advance public relations guy for the Braves,” Ernie said. “Then we had all those years together, and I’ll say this: He never glossed over anything. When the team was bad, he said so. He couldn’t stand ‘the wave,’ and has no patience for fools. One time he had trouble getting to the parking lot because of some barrels that blocked his route, and he got on the highway department during the broadcast. The next day, two highway department men came into our booth and gave us two of those barrels with our names on them.”
He once smoked like a forest fire, until the day Josh was born. The delivering doctor warned Skip that Josh showed signs of asthma. “Smoking around him is not good,” he said. Skip took one last drag off the stub he was smoking, threw it aside and never smoked again.
“I’d thought he was doing better lately,” Ernie said. “His voice was stronger, like the old Skip, but I guess I was fooling myself.”
Yep, I guess you could say he was the walking definition of curmudgeon, but of the delightful order. Once I referred to one of the “waves” as the “Skip Caray Memorial Wave.” It’s in order now. He lay down to take a nap Sunday afternoon, I’m told, and never woke up.
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‘Johnson football’ ready to take over
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
One word describes Paul Johnson: Imperturbable.
Same today. Same tomorrow. Pick your day. Sort of descriptive of impassive mountain folk, of which he is one. Born and raised in Newland, N.C. When he decided his life was in football, he went back to his roots to start, Avery County High School in Newland, assistant to the coach he had played for. Rock bottom. Never played a down in college. At Avery County his education began, and by the time he reached his present state at Georgia Tech, his influence has been felt from the Pacific to the Atlantic.
So it was at Rose Bowl field this weekend, where Bobby Dodd once presided for years. Dodd did much of his coaching from a tower, rarely missing a beat, entertaining press guests there, those who dared attempt the climb. Johnson works at ground level, and in no way distinguishes himself from his staff. No “Coach” across his chest, same garb as all, down there in the mix.
We intruders know all this because, this year, guests are allowed at practice. Even the press. No fear of enemy espionage, epecially considering that few of us would recognize one play from another, a fact that escaped Chan Gailey. It was a pleasant afternoon, following a day in which all were sent scurrying for tented cover when a thunderous storm struck Thursday. It was a symphonic scene, sound and movement seemingly synchronized, blue and white-shirted bodies against a green turf background. Interrupted by an occasional signal from the tower to move on to the next drill. More a beep than a growl, as in Dodd’s day.
Naturally, it is quite essential that concentration for the mission ahead should never be far from mind. On one wall was the printed phrase, “Prepare Like Champions.” On the bar across each tackling sled was the critical admonition ever on the Yellow Jacket mind: “Beat Georgia,” something that hasn’t been done since the year 2000, when George O’Leary coached here. And, one might add, something that has become a mission by this time. Right now, “Beat Jacksonville State” might be appropriate, for the Alabama school becomes a more formidable opponent since the disgraced LSU quarterback, Ryan Perrilloux, has transferred his game there.
The Bulldogs, though, are forever on the mind of Jackets, even more so since the USA Today poll had been published. It was a coaches’ vote, and the Bulldogs were saddled up as the likely national champions. Georgia Tech barely made the top 50, which in itself is rather strong, considering that Johnson is installing his triple-option offense, totally new to this squad, one that has won national championships at Georgia Southern and the Commander-in-Chief’s Cup at Navy — and beaten Notre Dame for the first time since the Studebaker rolled the highways.
It’ll take awhile, as could be seen in the spring game, when fumbles outnumbered pass completions. Not all is happiness among the West Stand patrons, having to do with the team’s garb. Headgear color has been changed to something akin to pastel green, or as some brand it, “swamp water green.” Georgia Tech colors have been, and will always be, Old Gold and White, and the old guard is fiercely defensive of that standard. Jerseys have been redesigned, but given an acceptable grade. It’s the helmets that cause dyspepsia. Fact is, in time “Johnson football” will take over, and all issues will be dissolved.
By the way, did anybody ask Paul how he voted in the coaches’ poll?
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