Paul Johnson is on whirlwind tour in the days leading up to his Hall of Fame induction.
Johnson, who spent five years as Georgia Southern head coach and 11 as head coach at Georgia Tech, will be honored tonight at Georgia Southern’s game at Paulson Stadium against Georgia State. Tech will honor Johnson on Saturday night in the Yellow Jackets’ home game against North Carolina.
Navy, where Johnson coached for six years, honored him during last Saturday’s game against Air Force.
“It’s a tremendous honor and it’s one you don’t achieve by yourself,” Johnson said earlier this year. “There are a lot of people who helped you get there. My wife and daughter sacrificed a lot. At the end of it, the culmination of a career, it’s quite an honor to be voted into a group that is very special.”
Johnson got his start in the collegiate ranks at Lees-McRae Junior College, but it was at Georgia Southern where his career took off. After a year coaching defensive line, he was moved to the offensive staff and it was there he got Erk Russell to put in the spread option offense.
“Georgia Southern certainly launched my coaching career,” he said. “I didn’t even know if I wanted to coach college football. My basic thought was I’ll give it try. There wasn’t a lot of money involved and I could have made more as a head high school coach and AD somewhere.”
His wife Susan convinced him to take the Georgia Southern job and Johnson said he figured he would coach college until he turned 30.
“By then, I was offensive coordinator at Hawaii,” he said, “and it all kind of worked out.”
He was offensive coordinator for the Eagles’ first two I-AA national championships in 1985 and 86, and came back to be head coach for their final two titles in 2000 and 01. In his five years at the helm of the Eagles problem, Johnson’s teams won or shared first place in the Southern Conference every year and Southern went 62-10 with three national championship appearances.
From 2002-07, Johnson skippered Navy’s program and the Midshipmen won the Commander-in-Chief ’s trophy – given to the best team among the service academies – in each of his last five seasons there.
Johnson had been the offensive coordinator at Navy, before returning to Statesboro to be the Eagles head coach. In 2008, Georgia Tech hired Johnson to take over from Chan Gailey and bring his patented option attack with him.
Beset with barbs that the offense would not work at that level and that he couldn’t recruit for it, Johnson’s Yellow Jackets teams went to three ACC championship games, winning one, and went to two Orange Bowls, ending a 40-year drought of Tech appearing in a major bowl game.
Georgia Tech won its second of two Orange Bowl spots under Johnson, beating Mississippi State 49-34 to end the 2014 campaign at 11-3, just one of five 11-win seasons in Tech’s annals.
He retired after the 2018 season, compiling an 82-60 record at Tech and posting an overall mark of 189-99.
“For the most part, this validates what we did and I’m proud of the players and the assistants that we won so many games,” he said.
Perhaps the best team he coached was one that didn’t win a bowl game or a national championship, though it came close. The 1998 Eagles team, his second, finished 14-1, falling to Massachusetts 55-43 in the I-AA championship game.
“The ones you lost stick in your mind,” he said.
As much as Johnson enjoyed coaching, he’s not in a hurry to become an athletic director.
“I’d rather stick my hand in a fire than do that,” he said.
Now, there are no openings of the office door before 6 a.m. to start the day for Johnson. He might even sleep as long until 8 a.m. these days, he acknowledged.
“I miss the competition and I miss the camaraderie with the staff and the players and their families,” he said.