There’s no roadmap from a blackboard in the Arkansas football office where this all started for Jimmy Johnson six decades ago — no roadmap through six decades of games and teams and various jobs to the phone call he made a few days ago to Fox Sports executives.
But there he was having decided his second, or maybe third or fourth, football act was over. He was retiring from public life.
“I’m done,” he told Fox officials.
They asked him to take more time to decide, then suggested considering a smaller TV role. Maybe a half-dozen cross-country trips for their Sunday studio show next season. Less, if he wanted.
“No, I’m 100 percent sure, I’m done,” Johnson said. “I’m retiring for good this time.”
Maybe it’s not a big deal. Johnson was saying as much now from his Islamorada, Fla., home. Someone will take his seat on TV next season and the games will look the same as always.
But that phone call ended one of the great football careers that South Florida especially enjoyed. Think of it: Three Hall of Fames, two Super Bowls in Dallas, a national championship at the University of Miami, a few Dolphins playoff appearances (even a couple wins) and then a few decades of translating football to American television sets for an award-winning show. He had as much fun as a public sports life can have, too.
“I never expected to be doing this until this point in my life,” he said.
He turns 82 this summer. He didn’t figure football would be part of his life after winning the national title at Arkansas as an All-America defensive tackle. He intended to go into industrial psychology after college when he drew up Arkansas’ defensive scheme for some visiting Louisiana Tech coaches.
When Louisiana Tech needed a coach a few months later, they called that senior at the blackboard.
“I planned to do it for a season, make some quick money, because I was married and had a baby,” he said.
The big college run at Miami with the Hurricanes, the Super Bowls in Dallas, the return to Miami with the Dolphins — those are the defining chapters of his career. But it’s funny how it worked on the human scale, right from Johnson sitting in a Shreveport high school stadium that first season, recruiting a quarterback named Terry Bradshaw.
All these years later, they’re the best of friends from years on the Fox studio show.
“Terry said, ‘You’ll get to do the things you love — spending time in the Keys and watching football at home with a cold one if you want,’ ” Johnson said.
I’ve been in the bag for Johnson for a while and did a book with him. But if Johnson’s reputation is a swaggering football personality, his life after coaching defined him, too. Former Dallas quarterback Troy Aikman put it best: Johnson knew the life he wanted and went out and lived it in the Keys.
How many people have turned their back on NFL coaching, the lure of the spotlight, the hefty millions offered? Those didn’t matter to him as much as being the person he wanted to be.
Oh, celebrity and money have a place. He’ll always have a healthy ego. He still can bring a spotlight, as he did last weekend walking through a nautical flea market in Islamorada and telling bystanders to take a picture with him for $20 to support a youth baseball team’s upcoming trip. That team could circle the country with the money it got.
He’s also still the small-town kid raised in a duplex, while his father worked seven days a week. So, it wasn’t easy to walk away from good money at Fox, and he can’t turn down all the corporate talks offered him.
But he’s retired from public view, just as he once did from being the football dictator on the sideline. Fox allowed him to talk about the game he loved without being the coach he hated. It offered a second family to him, too.
Those friendships don’t go away, even as he does from public view for the most part. You’ll no doubt still see him on occasion.
But retirement to him doesn’t just mean walking the 4 1/2 miles or playing online bridge games that are his morning routine for years. It also means watching football from his oceanside home on Saturdays and Sundays. It means never leaving his wife, Rhonda, or the Keys.
“I’ll go fishing if the water is flat,” he said. “But I don’t really want to catch anything and have to do the work of cleaning the fish. Just being out on the water is enough.”
Maybe he’s right. Maybe it’s not big news. But it’s worth noting six decades after it all started for a college senior at a blackboard, this big football life retired from public view. He’ll still be around. Football just won’t be around him like before.
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