Watch a GT game and see how he interacts with the players. Watch a Clemson game and watch how Dabo interacts with his players. Are you suggesting Johnson recruits as well as Dabo?
Notice how Nick Saban smiles and hams it up anytime he is in the spotlight. Watch how cranky Johnson is many times when he is in the spotlight. Are you suggesting Johnson recruits as well as Saban? Saban is full of crap, but that's what selling is all about.
Are you suggesting Johnson is a completely different personality with recruits than he is during games, or when he is being interviewed? You suggest that he is--show me some facts, or even an indication that he has a different personality that appeals to kids that are Power 5 level talents. His personality probably worked for kids interested in Navy--but this ain't Navy.
Are you suggesting he has done a great, or even good, job of recruiting? If you are, then why does he have the worst FBS win percentage at GT since Lewis, which would be much worse if not for the talent Gailey left behind that gave him a 17-7 record his first two years. Explain the poor performance if you believe it is something other than his (many) recruiting failures.
We have 12 commits this year. According to one site, Roof is responsible for 5 of them. The 9 other coaches have 7 commits among them. At some schools, coordinators do minimal recruiting. At GT, our 1 coordinator seems to be the only real recruiter. And people on this board want to get rid of Roof! Unbelievable.
Johnson's buddies who came from Navy don't recruit, but they don't have to. Their jobs are secure as long as Johnson is the HC. The absence of staff turnover among those people proves that.
Whether or not Johnson resonates with 18 year olds or not (which was only one comment among many in that post, and which you took out of context of the entire post), he does not put the effort into recruiting that is required for a Power 5 school that wants to be competitive year in-year out.
The number of people on this board who love this coach, who has produced poor results, is shocking. We have become Wake Forest.
I have watched Clemson games. I like Dabo. I respect Dabo. Even after he publicly blistered the helmet paint off his punter in the ACC championship game, and even after he remonstrates on the sideline when one of his guys does something truly terrible. You know, a gimme putt. (I am told by one who is close to him, by the way, that Dabo is particularly proud that he routinely busted out the mouth of the south, Steve Spurrier, on various golf outings.)
(Frankly, Scarlett, I doubt Johnson has a clue as to whether he is in the spotlight, or any coach for that matter. For the most part it ain't like that unrelenting red camera light is up in their face.) I have seen Saban but frankly just don't follow football that closely outside of GT and some of Clemson. The man's sideline persona when I have seen him would curdle fresh milk. Ever seen him dismantle Kiffin? Well, not fair because Kiffin deserves it just because.
Does Swinney recruit better? Swinney, backed up by a recruit-friendly curriculum, recruits better than all but a small, dainty handful of top coaches. Ditto Saban. If that is your baseline it is powerful company indeed. Where in the world you got the idea that Navy -- or any service academy -- doesn't have to recruit baffles me. If anything, they have to be better. ("Yeah, kid. come to Navy. Get a great education, play some ball, and spend the next five years of your life on a destroyer bobbing about in the Yellow Sea. Get seasick do you? Not to worry. It's only five years. John Gotti could do five years standing on one hand.")
I don't mean to dismiss all the recruiting concerns, except for one more: in what universe do you think GT -- the T for technical, the technical meaning math and physics and geometry and calculus and maybe a career doing stuff you have no interest in and find boring -- is actually going to open its doors and beat off 4-and 5-stars? Since when did that happen? And it won't. Get over it.
As with others just point us to the one recruit who leaped back in daddy's car or on the plane, screaming after meeting Johnson that, "The man is an ogre. He keeps body parts in his garage. I think they are 5-stars who said no."
And having said all that I am just as equally convinced that Johnson has to produce. As do they all. It is a brutal and often nomadic existence, this business of being a football coach and having to win only one game a week.
) how I felt at 18.
