Here's an outtake from a longer piece in The Birddog from 2009 titled "Georgia Tech: Friend or Foe", meaning how should we be viewed in competition for the same type of players now as Navy. You can see the author, who really is very knowledgeable about the spread option, touches on almost all of the areas we talk about today, seemingly repeated forever. It does for me anyway, from understanding how he can stay ticked off at the skeptics who even today want to see system failure from one game to how he addresses some telephone callers. As I and others said earlier, there is nothing new. He is what he was when Tech hired him; you take part of him, you take all. He is not a cafeteria coach. I happen to like it while acknowledging some won't. But everything from here down is a direct quote from the piece. The link is in the text.
Paul Johnson may have left the Naval Academy, but I think it’s safe to say that most of us still root for him. It’s hard not to. His offense gave Navy a singularity in the cosmos of major college football; something above and beyond the usual “they play hard for 60 minutes!” type of chatter that seems to come naturally to casual observers of the service academies. College football reporters and talking heads that covered this ingenious combination of run & shoot and spread option couldn’t seem to decide if the offense was
innovative or
archaic. Navy fans didn’t care either way. To us, the offense was just something uniquely ours. Of course, with the wins, bowl games, and service academy domination, Johnson could have run pretty much anything and Navy fans would still be happy. Beyond the offense and results he produced, he was also a great interview– sarcastic, straightforward, and funny to listen to. Most of us just plain liked the guy. So as upset as we were when he moved on to what he felt were greener pastures at Georgia Tech, most of us hope he finds the kind of success in Atlanta that he didn’t think was possible in Annapolis. (Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong). Even those of you who might not be pulling for Coach Johnson still get the enjoyment of seeing skeptics of this offense have to eat their words. (Of course, we knew that would happen all along <
http://thebirddog.wordpress.com/2007/07/30/five-myths-of-paul-johnsons-offense/> ).
(As a side note, how annoying is it to watch the same “experts” who told you how the option would fail in a BCS conference now try to explain to you how and why it works? Meh, moving on…)
