Jimmy Johnson (American football coach)

James William Johnson (born July 16, 1943) is an American former football coach and sports analyst. Johnson served as a head football coach at the college level for 10 seasons and in the National Football League (NFL) for nine seasons. He is the first head football coach to win both a college football national championship and a Super Bowl, achieving the former with the Miami Hurricanes and the latter with the Dallas Cowboys.

Johnson held his first head football coaching position at Oklahoma State Cowboys from 1979 to 1983. He became Miami's head football coach in 1984 and guided the team to victory in the 1988 Orange Bowl. Following the college championship, Johnson succeeded original Cowboys head coach Tom Landry in 1989, a position that saw him help rebuild the team back to winning form. His tenure from 1989 to 1993 culminated with the Cowboys winning consecutive Super Bowl titles in Super Bowl XXVII and Super Bowl XXVIII. Johnson left Dallas after the second championship amid conflict with owner Jerry Jones.

Following two years away from football, Johnson returned in 1996 to become the head coach of the Miami Dolphins, where he served until retiring after the 1999 season. After his coaching retirement, Johnson appeared as an analyst for Fox Sports and was one of the featured commentators of Fox NFL Sunday until his retirement following the 2024 season. He was inducted to the College Football Hall of Fame in 2012 and the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2020.

Early life

Johnson attended high school at Thomas Jefferson High School, now Memorial High School, in Port Arthur, Texas. In high school he was a classmate of Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Janis Joplin.

Johnson played college football as a defensive lineman at the University of Arkansas between 1962 and 1964 while majoring in psychology, as he initially planned to work as an industrial psychologist. One of his teammates was Jerry Jones, a future businessman and owner of the Dallas Cowboys. Johnson helped lead the Razorbacks to the national championship in 1964 when he was named to the All-Southwest Conference team. It was during his playing days that Johnson got roped into coaching. When the Razorback coaching staff would play host to small college and high school coaches in "miniclinics", Johnson was often sent to do lectures because of his thorough comprehension of the defensive scheme, and it was during one visit in 1965 by Louisiana Tech that had them interested in him.

In later years, Johnson was named to the Razorbacks All-Decade team of the 1960s and was later inducted into Arkansas’s state athletic hall of fame in 1988, followed by the university's hall of fame in 1999.

Coaching career

Early coaching jobs

Johnson began as an assistant coach at Louisiana Tech University in 1965. During this time, Phil Robertson of Duck Dynasty fame was the starting quarterback, and Johnson helped recruit high school quarterback Terry Bradshaw from nearby Shreveport. He then became an assistant coach at Picayune Memorial High School in Picayune, Mississippi, in 1966. In 1967, Johnson was an assistant at Wichita State University, then in 1968 and 1969, he served under Johnny Majors at Iowa State University in Ames. In 1970, Johnson moved on to another Big Eight Conference school, to become a defensive line coach at the University of Oklahoma, working under head coach Chuck Fairbanks and alongside future rivals Barry Switzer and Jim Dickey.

In 1973, Johnson returned to Arkansas, where he served as the defensive coordinator during the 1976 season. There, he coached such players as Brison Manor and Dirt Winston. Johnson had hopes of being named head coach when Broyles retired, but was passed over for Lou Holtz. Holtz wanted to retain Johnson on his staff and offered him a position, but Jimmy decided to move on and amicably parted company with his alma mater.

Johnson became assistant head coach and defensive coordinator at the University of Pittsburgh under Jackie Sherrill in 1977 and 1978. There, he coached Randy Holloway, David Logan, Al Chesley, J. C. Wilson, Rickey Jackson, Jimbo Covert, and Hugh Green, and was introduced to Pitt alumnus and assistant coach Dave Wannstedt, who later teamed up with Johnson again at the University of Miami, Oklahoma State, the Cowboys, and the Dolphins.

Oklahoma State

In 1979, Johnson got his first head coaching job, at Oklahoma State University. Johnson coached the Cowboys for five seasons from 1979 to 1983. His tenure there is noteworthy for his successful rebuilding of an inconsistent program. In his final season, he led the Cowboys to an 8–4 record and a 24–14 victory over 20th-ranked Baylor Bears in the Astro-Bluebonnet Bowl.

In 1984, when he was offered the head coaching job at the University of Miami, Johnson was unsure if he wanted to leave Stillwater. His good friend Larry Lacewell told Johnson that if he wanted to win a national championship and eventually coach in the NFL, he had to take the Miami job. Johnson soon after accepted the head coaching job at Miami.

Before taking the Miami job, Johnson interviewed for the head coaching job at Arkansas when Lou Holtz left following the 1983 season, then later found out that Ken Hatfield had already been hired. Upset that Frank Broyles (who by this time was the Arkansas athletic director) made no mention of this during the interview, Johnson distanced himself from his alma mater. As payback for the snub, a home-and-home series was scheduled between Miami and Arkansas. In 1987, Miami gave Arkansas its worst home loss ever at the time, 51–7.

University of Miami

In 1984, Johnson was hired by the University of Miami to replace former coach Howard Schnellenberger, who had won Miami's first national championship in 1983 and departed for the recently formed USFL. Johnson's hiring was met with an initial response of "Jimmy who?" by the fans and media. Johnson started with a shaky 8–5 record his first season, which included a game in which Johnson's Hurricanes blew a 31–0 halftime lead in a loss to Maryland with Frank Reich as its QB, and also included a 47–45 loss to Boston College immortalized by Doug Flutie's "Hail Mary" touchdown pass on the game's final play. But Johnson developed the Hurricanes into a football program that came to be known as "the Decade of Dominance". In his five years at Miami, Johnson compiled a 52–9 record, appeared in five New Year's Day bowl games, winning one national championship (1987) and losing one to the Penn State Nittany Lions (1986).

Johnson created a free-wheeling atmosphere where he allowed, and at times encouraged, his players to showboat, trash-talk, and run up the score. He also brought the modern 4–3 defense predicated on athletic upfield linemen to the forefront. The criticism they received from other teams caused the media to deem them the "Bad Boys of College Football", a moniker Johnson openly accepted.

Johnson's Hurricanes posted the school's first undefeated regular season in 1986, only to lose the Fiesta Bowl and the national championship to #2-ranked Penn State. The loss, along with losses in Miami's prior two bowl games, began to raise questions about whether Johnson was capable of winning major games. In the ensuing 1987 season, however, the Hurricanes went undefeated in the regular season yet again, and won the school's second national title by defeating Barry Switzer's Oklahoma Sooners for the third season in a row.

Johnson also created controversy by allowing the University of Miami to retire Vinny Testaverde's football jersey number #14, but refusing to retire Bernie Kosar's number #20, though Kosar played one season for Johnson and led the Hurricanes to the national title (the season before Johnson became head coach). Johnson's reason for not retiring Kosar's number was, "Bernie didn't finish the program here (at Miami)." Kosar graduated with honors, a year ahead of his freshman class in 1985, with a dual major in finance and economics and subsequently entered the NFL's supplemental draft. Testaverde won the school's first Heisman Trophy award in December 1986 and was the first player selected in the 1987 NFL draft. However, as the Cowboys head coach, Johnson later reached out and signed Kosar as a backup QB after Kosar was released by the Cleveland Browns during the 1993 NFL season. Kosar played during the Cowboys' Super Bowl run that season while starter Troy Aikman was injured, clinching the NFC Championship game and earning a Super Bowl ring.

Johnson was inducted into the University of Miami Sports Hall of Fame in 1996 and the College Football Hall of Fame in 2012.

Dallas Cowboys

In 1989, Jerry Jones, the new owner of the National Football League's Dallas Cowboys, a long-time friend and former University of Arkansas teammate of Johnson's, asked him to become the second head coach in franchise history, replacing Tom Landry, who had coached the team since its beginning in 1960. Johnson was reunited with former Miami standout Michael Irvin, and in Johnson's first season as coach, the 1989 Cowboys went 1–15. Johnson, however, did not take long to develop the Cowboys into a championship-quality team. Johnson had an ability to find talent in the draft, make savvy trades (namely, the trade of Herschel Walker, which yielded six high draft picks and a number of players from the Minnesota Vikings), and by signing quality players such as Jay Novacek as free agents in the age before the NFL had imposed a salary cap.