Rivals.com Q&A: Georgia Tech coach Paul Johnson

One of the country’s most tenured college football coaches, Paul Johnson is in his ninth year as the head coach at Georgia Tech. During his time in Atlanta, he’s won the ACC’s Coastal Division on four occasions and led the program to seven bowl games. He recently had a conversation with Rivals.com that touched on his career path, his recruiting strategy and his recent, much-talked-about remarks concerning Georgia Tech’s commitment to winning.

Below is an excerpt from the conversation. The full interview can be found above as part of Rivals.com’ Commitment Issues podcast.

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Rivals.com: When people think about Georgia Tech, they think of the unique offense – that triple-option or whatever you choose to call it. You guys run it and the service academies run it. You hear a lot about knuckleballers in baseball and how it’s kind of a fraternity and they all know each other. Is it like that with triple-option coaches?

Paul Johnson: I don’t know about a fraternity, but I think, other than us, the academies run what we run. Well, everybody in college football now has some form of option. A lot of the gun-spread stuff is similar to what we do. They just do it out of the gun with zone blocking as opposed to what we do. You know, the guys at Navy and Army now both coached for me. Kenny [Niumatalolo at Navy] actually played for us at Hawaii. Those three schools and then Troy Calhoun at Air Force played at that school. I mean, I don’t know about a fraternity, but everybody knows everybody.

Rivals.com: The way that Georgia Tech is set up academically, how much does that impact the kind of guys you can recruit there?

PJ: It certainly has an effect. It’s a world-class education here. So, first of all, you have to find guys that are interested in that type of thing. You have to find guys that can stay here. Then, you have to find guys that can stay here. More so than getting them in … I mean, if you bring guys in that can’t handle the workload and can’t do the schoolwork, they’re going to make you miserable. With APR the way it is now, in the last 10 to 15 years they added APR, which changes everything. You pretty much have to have guys that can do the work. Then, we have kind of a limited curriculum, but there are things that people can study if they want to come and play here in Atlanta and get a world-class education.

Rivals.com: You’re one of only a handful of FBS coaches out there that never played college football. How did you break in?

PJ: Well, when I finished college, I went back and coached at my high school, where I played. From there, I ended up at Lees–McRae Junior College. I really figured I would go back and be a high school coach. I was thinking maybe I would go back to my high school and be the head coach. From there, it just kind of worked out. I ended up at Georgia Southern with Coach [Erk] Russell. My first two years there, I coached on defense. Then, he asked me to be the offensive coordinator in 1985. Fortunately, we had a kid named Tracy Ham, who was a really good player and we won back-to-back national championships. Then, I went to the University of Hawaii and we had a lot of success. From there, I went to Navy. As a head coach, I basically was hired back at every school I coached at before, with the exception of Georgia Tech. I’d never been here.

Rivals.com: Hawaii has always interested me as far as recruiting goes. I talked to Norm Chow when he was the coach out there. He said that he actively had to guard against kids taking official visits just to see the island. Did you have to guard against that? How hard was it out there?

PJ: Well, it’s difficult. It’s easy to get them to visit but it’s more difficult to get them. You have to find a profile that fits. Every school has a profile. Sometimes, people put a lot of emphasis on the guy who is doing the recruiting. I think it has more to do with the school profile. If you look, for the most part, most schools recruit the same type of guys over and over and over. At Hawaii, you had to have a profile that was maybe a kid from single parents or a kid whose parents worked for the airlines and could fly for free or maybe just somebody that was looking for adventure. You supplemented that with trying to keep the best kids from Hawaii there, which was also hard to do. When we were really good, we had some of the better kids from Hawaii.

Rivals.com: You said every school has a profile. What’s Georgia Tech’s profile right now?

PJ: I think that the profile is for young guys that want the total package. They want to play football at the highest level, but they’re very interested in the education part. Where we sit, we’re surrounded by bigger stadiums and those kinds of things. If a guy is looking to go to a place in front of 90,000 fans and those kinds of things, we’re probably not going to be in the picture. If he’s looking into which academic programs are the best and what has the best chance to set him up for 20 or 30 years after school, then we feel like we can certainly compete with whoever.

Rivals.com: You’ve been at Georgia Tech almost a decade now which is almost unheard of these days. What do you make of the short leashes coaches are on these days? Do you think that’s changed in the last five or six years?

PJ: It’s definitely changed. I think that everybody has an expectation level. Sometimes it’s hard to match that expectation level. When you’re there for a period of time and you’re not winning national championships or whatever the expectation level is, then it becomes convenient or whatever that you want to try something new. It’s just the way life works. Like with Mark [Richt]. Mark won, like, 10 games a year at Georgia, but they had not won an SEC championship in a little bit, so the fan base thought that they could do better and that’s what happens.

Rivals.com: But why do you think it’s gotten worse in the last five years?

PJ: I think there are probably factors that contribute. There’s a lot more media attention and social media. To be truthful I think that when the salaries got to where they are … I mean, I think when you make a certain salary, people feel like they can say whatever they want about you or whatever. It’s become a big business and there’s a lot of money involved in it.

Rivals.com: Now if I don’t ask you about this, I’ll get an email from my boss. You recently made a comment that got made into a big deal about Georgia Tech and its commitment to football …

PJ: And it was totally blown out of proportion, like is typical with the media. What was said and what got reported weren’t the same thing. Basically, what I said was that if you have expectations, you have to have a commitment that equals the expectations. I never said that we were supposed to have the same facilities that Clemson had or that we couldn’t beat teams or anything else. When asked about Clemson, I said, “Do you think we have the same things they do?” The guy said, ‘No.’ And I said, “There ya go.” What I was talking about is that we need to have the same commitment to winning as those programs have. It kind of took a life of its own. And, of course, when one guy runs it, somebody else takes a part in it and runs with it. Then it turns into “Coach said we could never beat Clemson.” It’s like, “We beat Clemson two years ago. Since I’ve been here, we’re 5-5 against them.”

Rivals.com: Before I let you go, we have to talk some non-football stuff. What’s Paul Johnson’s favorite movie?

PJ: Gosh, I don’t know. I very seldom go to the movies. Probably some kind of old western. I enjoy watching those.

Rivals.com: Like Clint Eastwood stuff?

PJ: Even before then. I mean like John Wayne.