Jimmy Johnson

Jimmy Johnson (born July 16, 1943, Port Arthur, Texas, U.S.) is a former American football coach who had success at both the college and NFL level. Johnson was the first coach to win both an NCAA national championship (University of Miami, 1987) and a Super Bowl (Dallas Cowboys, 1993 and 1994). Known for his colorful personality, he later became a popular football analyst, appearing on the Fox NFL Sunday show.

Early life and college

Johnson is one of three children born to Allene and C.W. Johnson, the latter of whom worked as an oil-refinery mechanic and then as a dairy supervisor. The family lived in the racially segregated city of Port Arthur, Texas, an oil boomtown near the Louisiana border. One of Johnson’s high school classmates was the future rock star Janis Joplin, who was a year ahead of him. Johnson later admitted he teased the girl known as “Beat Weeds,” telling Sports Illustrated in 1992 that he would “give her a hard time, irritate her.” Johnson, a football lineman, had his own nickname, “Scar Head,” a reference to the injuries he sustained while playing the sport as a child.

In addition to being a standout football player, Johnson was also a good student. He was heavily recruited during his senior year of high school and chose the University of Arkansas, where one of his teammates was Jerry Jones, the future owner of the Dallas Cowboys. In 1964 he helped Arkansas win the national championship. The following year Johnson graduated with a major in psychology. He initially planned to work as an industrial psychologist but instead went into coaching.

Johnson worked as an assistant coach at several colleges before landing the head coaching job at Oklahoma State University in 1979. He coached there for five years, posting a record of 29–25. In 1984 he took over as head coach at the University of Miami, where he won a national championship (1987) and had an .852 winning percentage over five seasons.

Pro career

Jones bought the Cowboys in 1989, and he immediately hired Johnson to replace Tom Landry, the only person to have ever coached the franchise. Johnson inherited a once-proud dynasty that had fallen on hard times; the team had finished 3–13 the last year under Landry. In Johnson’s first season Dallas fell to 1–15 under struggling rookie quarterback Troy Aikman. But Jones and Johnson pulled off a stunningly successful trade, shipping off star running back Herschel Walker to the Minnesota Vikings for five players and six draft picks that ultimately yielded superstars Darren Woodson and Emmitt Smith.

The Cowboys improved to 7–9 in Johnson’s second season (1990), and he was named AP Coach of the Year. In 1991 Dallas qualified for the playoffs with a record of 11–5. However, the team lost in the first round. In 1992 Dallas posted a 13–3 record, and the Cowboys went on to win Super Bowl XXVII, defeating the Buffalo Bills, 52–17. The next season Dallas won another Super Bowl, again beating the Bills, 30–13.

Johnson brought a swagger to the team, coining the expression, “How ’bout them Cowboys!” Despite his success, however, he became embroiled in a personality clash with Jones, who wanted more control over running the franchise. Johnson left the team in 1994, following the second Super Bowl win, and he was replaced by Barry Switzer.

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Broadcasting and Miami Dolphins

After leaving the Cowboys, Johnson joined the nascent Fox NFL Sunday show, working on the telecast for its first two seasons. He then returned to the field in 1996, taking over the head coaching job for the Miami Dolphins, where he replaced another coaching icon, Don Shula. In four seasons, Johnson led Miami to three playoff appearances, but he could not repeat the Super Bowl magic he had with Dallas. He returned to Fox in 2002 and became a noted football analyst, known for his larger-than-life personality.

In 2022 Johnson released the memoir Swagger: Super Bowls, Brass Balls, and Footballs (written with Dave Hyde). In the work he discussed his coaching career, including his strained relationship with Jones. By the end of his tenure with Dallas, he claimed that they had stopped talking to each other. However, the two men patched up their decades-long feud in 2023, when Jones had his former coach inducted into the team’s Ring of Honor during halftime of a late-season Cowboys game. “I never had a time when I didn’t have an appreciation for his confidence and skill level. Ever,” Jones said in a news conference ahead of the ceremony. “In our first four years, this thing, every day was Pearl Harbor on and off the field.” Several of Johnson’s players from the early 1990s dynasty, including Aikman, Smith, and Michael Irvin, were at his Ring of Honor induction. “Not only did you inspire your players and certainly our fans, you need to hear me say how much you personally inspired me,” Jones told Johnson.

Personal life

In 1963, while still in college, Johnson married Linda Kay Cooper. They had two sons before divorcing in 1990. Nine years later he married Rhonda Rookmaaker.