For most, however, Landry’s demise proved heart-wrenching. Here was a decent man who embodied a life of rectitude. “He wanted you to be a great football player,” says Jeff Rohrer, a Cowboys linebacker from 1982 to 1989. “But he really wanted you to be a great person.
“The way they did him at the end, it just wasn’t right. You don’t treat a legend that way. Jerry Jones and Jimmy Johnson had a lot to prove. Not to me and not to the players, but to all of Dallas.”
Chapter 3
THE RIGHT MAN
Jimmy didn’t know any of the damn plays, but you could break your arm and that dude would make you believe it didn’t hurt.
—Kevin Gogan, Cowboys offensive guard
WHEN JOURNALISTS FIRST learned that Jerry Jones would be hiring Jimmy Johnson to coach the Dallas Cowboys, they all but attacked their keyboards in an effort to paint the portrait of a pair of lifelong best friends triumphantly taking the reins of America’s Team.
The story line was irresistible—teammates and roommates at the University of Arkansas who had learned at the knee of legendary coach Frank Broyles and were now, nearly thirty years later, making good. Jones was the studious financial whiz who would go on to earn millions, Johnson the gridiron guru destined to pace the sidelines of the nation’s elite football powerhouses. Wrote William Oscar Johnson in Sports Illustrated: “The Jones-Johnson friendship is a heartwarming thing, to be sure, going back a quarter of a century to their college days. They used to lie in bed at night talking about how much they wanted football always to be a part of their lives.”
Indeed, Jones and Johnson were friendly at Arkansas, and—based on the alphabetical proximity of their surnames—roomed together on road trips. They may well have even discussed their futures once or twice. But the stereotypes were, at best, far-fetched. Boasting a 149 IQ and a degree in industrial psychology, Johnson stood out as Jones’s intellectual superior. He was the forward thinker. The deeper thinker. The one who would likely go on to a successful career as an industrial psychologist. As for the kinship, Johnson found Jones to be an arrogant braggadocio. Jones considered Johnson aloof and dismissive. “We haven’t done half a dozen things socially since we’ve known each other,” Johnson once said. There was “like” between the two. Just not strong like.
Well schooled in Jones’s Madonna-esque need for attention, Johnson—drawn by the prospect of an NFL dream job—went along for the ride. He’d drink beers with Jones, pose shoulder to shoulder, hug and laugh and guffaw. He would put up with Jones’s antics because this was the Dallas Cowboys.
To Jones’s credit, he was bringing in the ideal man to deal with the scrutiny of replacing a legend. Born on August 14, 1943, Johnson was raised in the Texas boomtown of Port Arthur, where blue-collar whites and blacks attended separate schools, used separate toilets, ate at separate restaurants, yet bonded over similarly arduous existences. As his peers were choosing to stick mostly within their racial boundaries, color rarely seemed to occur to young Jimmy. If you could play ball, you could play ball. “Jimmy never thought there was any difference between him and the blacks,” his father, C. W. Johnson, said. “And he didn’t like it when anybody said anything about it, either.”
Perhaps that’s because, economically, C. W. and Allene Johnson’s family had more in common with blacks than whites. Jimmy grew up poor, the youngest son of a father who toiled for the Gulf Oil refinery and, later, the Townsend Dairy. While he didn’t earn much, C. W. worked hard and expected the same from his two sons. It was this ethic that helped Jimmy emerge as a big man at Thomas Jefferson High, which he attended with a certain sloppily dressed, music-loving gal named Janis Joplin. (In a typical jock-meets-hippie clash, Johnson mockingly tagged Joplin “Beat Weeds.”) With rare exception, Johnson was respected across social and economic lines as the school’s top athlete (he earned all-state honors on the offensive and defensive lines) and as an accelerated student who, in the words of Sports Illustrated’s Ed Hinton, “could solve algebra problems at a glance and write term papers worthy of A’s the night before they were due.” He was nicknamed “Scar Head” by a childhood buddy named Jimmy Maxfield—an ode to both his eternally cut-up noggin (largely the product of wrestling matches between Jimmy and older brother Wayne) and the determination that inspired him to attack all challenges.
During his senior year at Thomas Jefferson in 1960–61, Johnson was heavily recruited by two dozen major colleges, including Alabama and its tenacious young coach, Paul “Bear” Bryant. Given that his parents were born and raised Arkansans, however, he signed with the Razorbacks. Johnson’s freshman coach, a twenty-four-year-old novice named Barry Switzer, was immediately impressed by the noseguard’s ferocity, and his varsity coach, the esteemed Broyles, looked upon Johnson as a team leader. As a senior against Nebraska in the 1965 Cotton Bowl, Johnson accumulated twelve tackles as the Razorbacks won 10–7 to capture their first national championship. “I got my first taste of the concept of winning it all,” Johnson once wrote. “I thought, ‘Now that’s the way to end a playing career.’”
With the Razorbacks’ success, collegiate programs from across the country came to Fayetteville to learn the vaunted “Arkansas Monster Slide Defense.” Intelligent and articulate, the soon-to-graduate Johnson was asked to explain the intricacies of Broyles’s system. One of the men to sit in on a Johnson lecture was Louisiana Tech head coach Joe Aillet, who was taken aback by the twenty-one-year-old’s maturity. When Tech’s defensive coordinator suffered a heart attack that would cause him to miss the ’65 campaign, Aillet offered Johnson the job. At the time, Jimmy was spending the summer working as a shipyard welder, desperate to earn some extra money to support his new wife, Linda Kay (whom he had met as an undergrad and married the summer before), and their toddler son, Brent. “They said they’d pay me a thousand dollars a month for three months,” Johnson wrote. “One thousand dollars a month, in 1965! I said, ‘Hey, I’ll be there.’”
In his three months at Louisiana Tech, Johnson shed his aspiring psychologist skin and transformed into an aspiring football coach. He loved the plotting and the strategy—taking a concept, writing it on a chalkboard, and watching it come to life. That Tech finished a mediocre 4–4 mattered little to Johnson. Through four years of college he was never quite sure where life would lead him. Now, he had an idea.
Johnson spent the spring of ’66 as a graduate assistant at Arkansas, and that fall moved his family to Picayune, Mississippi, best known as the world’s tung oil capital. As an assistant coach at Picayune High School, he helped a team that had gone 0–10 the year before…to go 0–10 again. “With all my expertise in coaching,” he wrote, “we came close to winning a game.” Though Johnson cherished tung and its mystical healing powers, he dreaded the nonstop losing. Salvation came in the form of a call from Switzer, who informed Johnson that Wichita State was searching for a young, inexpensive defensive assistant. Johnson left Picayune before the school year had ended and reported to Larry Lacewell, Switzer’s friend and the Shockers’ defensive coordinator. “Jimmy immediately struck me as extremely smart,” says Lacewell, who later worked with Johnson in Dallas. “He’s moody, he can be a horse’s ass, and he enjoys the role of coming off as a complicated person. But I’ll tell you something—that boy knew his football and how to reach players.”
Johnson spent the two years after Wichita working as a defensive assistant under Johnny Majors at Iowa State, and in 1970 was hired as defensive line coach by the University of Oklahoma. Though 517 miles from Port Arthur, Norman felt like home, what with Switzer and Lacewell also serving as assistants to head coach Chuck Fairbanks. The three were inseparable, raising hell in the local bars and spending long nights downing beers and talking football. “Jimmy was probably the most fun guy on that staff,” says Lacewell. “We all did some crazy, crazy stuff.” There was a nude midnight streak across campus; setting Switzer’s door on fire. “Tons of shit,” says Lacewell. “Just great stuff. When you’re an assistant there’s a level of freedom you do
n’t have when you’re running the program.”
Johnson left Oklahoma in 1973 to join Broyles as Arkansas’ defensive coordinator. His big break was supposed to come three years later, when Broyles announced his retirement to devote full attention to his duties as the school’s athletic director. At age thirty-three Johnson assumed he would be the successor. Instead, Broyles hired Lou Holtz, an outsider coming off a disasterous 3–10 season leading the New York Jets.
Johnson spent the next two years as an assistant at the University of Pittsburgh and then finally, in 1978, his moment arrived. Oklahoma State University was looking for a new head coach, and a member of the search committee happened to be Kevin Leonard, a close friend of Jerry Jones’s. “I told him Jimmy Johnson would do wonders,” says Jones. “Jimmy was still pretty young, but I always knew he could do magic at the head of a program.” Before accepting the position at OSU, Johnson made a call to Switzer, then the head coach of the University of Oklahoma. “It’s always better to be a head coach than an assistant,” Switzer told him. “But I’m warning you now—I’m going to beat your ass every single year.”
With Oklahoma State on probation for an array of NCAA violations, the program Johnson inherited was in shambles. In his first season in Stillwater, Johnson had only fifty-five scholarship players. (Most Big 8 rivals had ninety-five.) Outgunned and undermanned, Johnson invited any and all male Oklahoma State students to join the squad. His team finished with a shocking seven wins and led the nation with nearly two hundred names on its roster. There was Kay the marketing major, Boockvar the aspiring doctor, Platt the soon-to-be stockbroker. Lacking gear for so many “players,” one equipment manager found a discount store selling soccer shoes for $3 a pair.
Although he never turned Oklahoma State into a national power, Johnson gained recognition as one of the nation’s top young coaches. “The job Jimmy did there,” says Switzer, “was amazing.” Like Switzer, Johnson differentiated himself from the other white men who monopolized America’s sidelines. He could reach back into his Port Arthur roots and comprehend the pain of being a black male trying to make it, coming from nothing. “It goes beyond not being prejudiced,” says Melvin Bratton, who later played for Johnson at the University of Miami. “Jimmy was white, but you don’t think of him racially.” In 1983 Oklahoma State turned the corner, going 8–4 and defeating Baylor, 24–14, in the Bluebonnet Bowl.
Unfortunately for Stillwater’s football hard-core, Johnson wouldn’t be around very long. As Oklahoma State was climbing its way up the Big 8 ladder, Sam Jankovich, the University of Miami’s athletic director, was looking for someone to replace Howard Schnellenberger, the head coach who had departed for the upstart United States Football League after leading the Hurricanes to the ’83 national championship. Midway through a convention of college coaches in the spring of 1984, Jankovich pulled Johnson aside and asked for recommendations. “You know,” Johnson replied, “I wouldn’t mind living on the beach.”
Several weeks later Jankovich offered Johnson the job—with one catch. To come to Miami, he would have to inherit Schnellenberger’s staff for at least a year; the athletic director felt it the honorable thing to do, given Schnellenberger’s last-minute departure. Johnson sought out wisdom from dozens of peers, none of whom advised him to leave Oklahoma State. Finally, he asked Lacewell. “Jimmy, I’d go,” he said. “You coached at Oklahoma one time; you know their firepower. You can’t win a national championship at Oklahoma State. But you can win one at Miami.” Lacewell’s words rang true.
Upon arriving at Miami, however, Johnson found himself in a toxic environment. Three of Schnellenberger’s assistants (defensive coordinator Tom Olivadotti, offensive coordinator Gary Stevens, and an administrative assistant named Bill Trout) had applied for the head coaching position. Johnson’s first meeting with the staff was less than promising. He was greeted with a grim-faced silence. As Johnson began to speak, the bitter Olivadotti dropped his keys on the table, picked them up, dropped his keys on the table, picked them up. “I’ve seen your teams play,” Olivadotti said, “and I really don’t think our philosophies could coexist. Your teams don’t play the way we want to play.”
“I’m sure that we can work with each other,” Johnson replied before leaving for his introductory press conference. Inside, he fumed.
To Johnson’s delight, Olivadotti resigned. To his dismay, the other assistants remained. Though the defending national champions played well in Johnson’s debut season, winning eight of their first ten games, much of Johnson’s time was spent worrying whether his coaches were poisoning his milk.
In Miami’s second-to-last game, Johnson’s team blew a 31–0 halftime lead to Maryland, allowing Terrapins quarterback Frank Reich to pick the defense apart in a staggering 42–40 loss. The following week, the Hurricanes struggled against Boston College before staging a late drive to grab a 45–41 lead. On the last play of the game, 5-foot, 9-inch quarterback Doug Flutie scrambled away from the defense and threw a Hail Mary that was caught in the end zone by Gerard Phelan, giving BC the victory and college football one of its defining moments. Even before Flutie threw the ball, Trout had left his position in the press box. He was resigning from Johnson’s staff, and felt no need to remain for the final play.
The season ended with a 39–37 Fiesta Bowl loss to UCLA, and as soon as the clock read 0:00 Johnson pledged he would never tolerate an experience akin to the 1984 season again. The morning after the game he held a press conference, announcing a restructured staff of Oklahoma State refugees committed to Johnson’s way. To the new Miami way.
The Hurricanes of 1985 were brash, bold, and dominant. They went 9–1 through the first ten games and would complete the regular season with a November 30 home matchup against Notre Dame. Entering the game, the Fighting Irish were 5–5, a record that had the South Bend faithful desperate for redemption. If there was any hope of defeating the Hurricanes, it was that maybe, just maybe, the players would win one last game for the Gipper—er, Gerry Faust, their inept outgoing coach.
Instead, the Hurricanes humiliated their once-proud visitors, 58–7. The nationally televised game was a coming-out party for the “new” Hurricanes. Miami’s players taunted and strutted, trash-talked, and end-zone danced. When safety Bennie Blades intercepted a second-quarter pass and returned it 61 yards for a touchdown, he slowed at the 2-yard line to high-five a teammate. When the ’Canes closed the third quarter with a 37–7 lead, Johnson demanded that his quarterbacks continue to throw the ball. With 71 seconds remaining, Miami ran a reverse. From his seat in the CBS booth, broadcaster Ara Parseghian—the former Notre Dame head coach—asked whether Miami had heard of this thing called decency. “It’s time for Jimmy Johnson to show some compassion,” said the man who, in his day, had led the Irish to a 69–13 win over Pittsburgh, a 48–0 win over Purdue, and a 44–0 win over, ahem, Miami. “This is not right.”
From that day forward, the Miami Hurricanes were no longer another collegiate football team. They were thugs. Hoodlums. In an era when many universities still instructed their coaches to recruit black players but not that many black players, Johnson prowled the state of Florida seeking out great athletes, race be damned. “Jimmy got us,” said Brett Perriman, an African-American and former Hurricane receiver. “He understood what it takes to win.”
As long as his players attended classes, showed up on time to practices and games, and dominated the opposition, he could not care less how they carried themselves. At, say, Notre Dame or UCLA or Florida State, black players were asked to conform to a white society. At Miami, white society would conform to the players. “I really would have run through a wall for Coach Johnson,” says Bernard Clark, an African-American and former Miami linebacker. “He took a chance on us, so we owed it to him.”
In late September of 1986, top-ranked Oklahoma came to town to play the No. 2 Hurricanes at the Orange Bowl. Switzer’s Sooners were led by linebacker Brian Bosworth, the brash Sports Illustrated cover boy with the multicolored flattop
haircut. The night before kickoff, neither Miami tailback Melvin Bratton nor his roommate, fullback Alonzo Highsmith, could sleep. “It’s five-thirty in the morning and I’m just lying there looking around,” Bratton said. “Me and High are like kids at Christmas. We are so ready to get their ass. Oklahoma’s been getting all the hype. It’s Bosworth this and Bosworth that. I said, ‘High, fuck the Boz and fuck that fade haircut of his. Let’s call that sonofabitch and wake his ass up.’”
Bratton had heard the Sooners were staying at the Fontainebleau Hilton. He called the front desk and was patched through to Bosworth’s room.
“Hello?”
“Is this Boz?” Bratton asked.
“Yeah…”
“Well, this is Melvin fuckin’ Bratton and Alonzo Highsmith, and this is your fucking wake-up call, motherfucker! And at high noon we’ll see your sorry ass in the Orange Bowl and we’re gonna kick your fucking ass!”
As soon as Bosworth hung up, Bratton and Highsmith told Hurricane defensive lineman Jerome Brown of the “exchange.” Brown summoned the entire defense to his dorm room, from which they called the hotel and asked to be connected to Sooners quarterback Jamelle Holieway. “Ja-may-yal, come out and paaa-lay-yay,” Brown taunted. “Come on out, Ja-may-yal.” When he later learned of the calls, Johnson nearly fell over laughing. And why not? His Hurricanes had won, 28–16.
Johnson was now known as a top-flight coach. But with mounting attention came trouble. While Johnson blamed his program’s negative reputation to a media unwilling to credit inner-city black kids (for the record, Johnson graduated 75 percent of his players), the Hurricanes did tolerate a fair share of lawlessness. In the course of one season one player was arrested and charged with possession of cocaine and a handgun; another was arrested and charged with possession of steroids; Brown accidentally left a handgun in a shopping cart; defensive end Daniel Stubbs was charged with a misdemeanor offense after he was caught siphoning gas from a nearby car; Highsmith accepted money from an agent; and rapper Luther “Luke” Campbell of 2 Live Crew allegedly paid players for good performances.
Boys Will Be Boys Page 4
