By Michael A. Lough

The Sports Report

centralgasports@gmail.com

Paul Johnson has been a regular at the Macon Touchdown Club, so members are well aware of the very weak filter between his brain and his mouth.

This season, Johnson has been catching plenty of heat for Georgia Tech’s up-and-down 3-4 start and, as usual, his steadfast refusal to change anything about his option offense.

No doubt the nearly 200 on hand for this year’s visit awaiting that first Johnsonesque shot at somebody, be it the media, officials, Georgia fans, SEC fans, the NCAA, the media, officials.

His first laugh came during his introduction, when Mallory Jones mentioned that Johnson’s offense had been called many things over the years.

“It’s been called ‘bad’ lately,” Johnson muttered.

Later, he cracked about a conversation Saturday with Duke head coach David Cutcliffe.

“I’m actually the longest tenured coach in the ACC,” he said. “At least for another few games.”
He didn’t get any grimace-inspiring questions from any frustrated Tech fans, and he didn’t go off on any tangents about his future, pointing out that while the Jackets haven’t played well at times, the only time they were actually outmanned in every phase was against national title contender Clemson.

It’s been an odd season, like Saturday, when the Yellow Jackets were driving for a go-ahead touchdown, and in less than two minutes, kept turning it over and kept watching Duke score.

“I keep telling our guys all the time, ‘sometimes the best way to win a game is to not lose it,’” he said. “We pretty much lost it in about a minute and 40 seconds.”

Tech fumbled a punt near midfield, and the T.J. Rahmig scored on a 48-yard pass four plays later. Tech QB TaQuon Marshall fumbled on the first play and lost it, and five plays later, Davis Koppenhaver took in the 1-yard TD pass with 15 seconds left.

Juanyeh Thomas fumbled the kickoff and Duke got it on the 6. And QB Daniel Jones did it again with no time left on the third-quarter clock, hitting Johnathan Lloyd with a 6-yard touchdown pass.

“It’s been a frustrating year.”

The majority of the Touchdown Club members are Georgia fans, but there is a strong appreciation for Johnson. For one, he has been a yearly visitor since his Georgia Southern days. For another, he has virtually none of the verbal tap-dancing skills around topics that most of his colleagues do.

And for another is his generosity. He regularly returns the speaker’s check to the club, which he did again, and in the spring, dedicated half of his share of winnings for seventh place in a golf tournament back to the Methodist Home for Children and Youth. That came just in time, arriving about the time the home’s ice cream machine broke.

Johnson, known to be terse, short, caustic, and impatient in certain public gatherings, seems to relax during his Macon visit.

“There’s nothing better than high school football,” he said, nodding toward the Bibb County high school coaches and players. “Sometimes you don’t realize it until you’re through, not playing any more. But some of my fondest memories were on Friday nights, playing and coaching.”

Then he took his first good-natured shot.

“You guy know there’s three stages of senility,” he said. “I look out here and I see a lot of you guys, you’re probably in some of ‘em.”

And Monday night, he talked for more than 50 minutes, more than half of that going on and off topic while taking questions.

The Yellow Jackets are off this week, and travel to Virginia Tech next Thursday.

“It’s probably as fun an atmosphere and as crazy a place to play as anywhere I’ve ever seen,” said Johnson, a head coach since 1997. “If somebody asked me the toughest place to play in the country, if it’s not Blacksburg in a night game, it’s in the top three. It’s really, really a fun place.”

Johnson touched on several serious topics, expressing a little concern about the financial arms race in college football. He said that only one program since 1980 has won a national championship with a stadium seating less than 80,000, and that it was in 1990 when Georgia Tech shared it with Colorado.

He didn’t clarify if he was talking about seating capacity at the time of the championship, because even in 1990, few major-college stadiums had yet cracked the 80,000-seat mark. Clemson is listed at 80,000 currently, Florida State at 79, 560. The Orange Bowl in Miami, demolished in 2008, sat only 72,319. Sanford Stadium held 59,000 when Georgia took the 1980 title, expanding to 82,122 in 1981.

Tech’s Bobby Dodd Stadium has gone through assorted renovations in the past two years, capacity peaking at 58,121 in the late 1960s and dropping to 46,000 and lower for about 15 years before returning to 55,000 in 2003.

He said changes, like the separation in Division I of Power 5 and Group of 5 schools, haven’t had the positive impact hoped for and expected.

“What it’s probably done is created about 10 to 12 teams that have kind of broken away from everybody else with unlimited spending, unlimited budgets, facilities and all those kinds of things.

“It’s going to be interesting to see how the rest of the pack … College football has really, really changed.”

Johnson is happy with the work of new athletics director Todd Stansbury, work that has included a major influx in spending on assorted football facilities.

“We kinda got it up to speed with everybody else,” Johnson said. “We’re not ahead of anybody, but we were way behind everybody.

“I think he gets it. We’re playing a little catch-up, but I think he’s committed to trying to do that and catch up with everybody else.”

On other topics:

* He’d like an eight-team playoff with five conferences champs, the highest-ranked Power 5 non-champ, and two wild-cards, and then seed them.

“I do hope at some point in college football, they’ll do away with the subjectivity of all the playoff stuff. … It’s more fair, it’s more equitable.

* Outside of Alabama, he has no idea who the top 10 teams are.

* Dealing with social media is a large focus. He talked of Marshall catching all sorts of grief, and said he tells players to just ignore comments and don’t reply.

“You’re never gonna see them, so why are you worried about them now? Somebody’s mad because somebody didn’t cover the spread on Saturday. When you get a few beers in,” and he pulled out his phone and play-texted.

* Westside’s Steve Dolphus started on Saturday, but continues to be plagued by injuries, including a concussion Saturday in the first quarter.

“He’s had a hard time staying healthy. He’s a talented kid, he’s about 6-5, he can run. He broke his hand early in camp, fought through that. Had a foot injury. Steve’s got a chance to play.”

* Quarterback has been a topic this year at Tech, including a faction that would like Northside alum Tobias Oliver to play more.

“Tobias has played really well. The thing I’ve noticed with Tobias, because he’s played in pretty much every game this year, and had a couple games where he rushed for over 100 yards in maybe a quarter, a quarter and a half: he’s really a competitor. He’s a much better game player than a practice player.

“I was really surprised when he got in the game, because his game kind of elevated from what you would see in practice. In my 40 years of coaching, I’ve seen some guys who are like that. Sometimes it’s hard to get ‘em on the field because what you do in practice dictates how much you play. But every time he’s gone into the game, he’s kind of done things you don’t see in practice.”

* He got started talking about officials, and went warm and fuzzy.

“I’m a little lighter in my wallet for talking about officiating, so I’m really scared.”

He said rules changes and replay have had a negative impact on officiating, but noted a few times how tough the job is and wondered why anybody would do it. He cited when he is at practice and stands behind the offense, a different vantage point than on the sideline and certainly in the stands or in front of a TV.

“I’ll stand about four yards behind the center on defense to get guys lined up,” he said. “Hell, it’s like being in Vietnam. They come from everywhere. I’m talking about big guys. If I’m back there and I’m supposed to be looking for holding and looking for this and that …

“I’m looking for self preservation. They’re coming from everywhere.”

Johnson did get his requisite Georgia shot in, when he talked about Oliver and Georgia quarterback Jake Fromm’s history, growing up and competing in the same town and now doing so not too far away in college.

And he was asked about the inevitable quarterback controversy in Athens following Fromm’s struggles in Saturday’s loss to LSU, saying it wouldn’t be fair to discuss it, saying that head coach Kirby Smart and offensive coordinator Jim Chaney are smart guys who would figure it out.

“I’ll be honest with you,” he said. “I watched maybe, I was flipping (channels) on Saturday when I got home and I watched the Georgia-LSU game. Truthfully, I was enjoying it so much, I didn’t flip back.”