When he sensed nearly 22 years ago that Naval Academy administrators intended to lure him back to Annapolis to lead a faltering football program he had helped to revive in the mid-90s as its offensive coordinator, Paul Johnson started wrestling with the idea.
 
Johnson had just finished coaching his fifth-straight outstanding team at Georgia Southern, where he had gotten his first head-coaching job in 1997 and had taken the Eagles to incredible heights.
 
Georgia Southern, which had won four games in 1996, went 10-3 in Johnson's first year at the helm, while reaching the Division I-AA quarterfinals. The Eagles went to the next three national title games, losing in 1998, before winning the next two national championships. In 2001, Georgia Southern made it to the national semifinals.
 
Johnson guided the Eagles to a sparkling, 62-10 record over those five years, including a 36-4 mark against the Southern Conference. Those were great days in Statesboro, Ga., where Johnson had achieved folk hero status as a charismatic leader, excellent play caller and mastermind of what had become his patented spread option offense.
 
In Annapolis, Chet Gladchuk, Navy's new Director of Athletics, had fired head coach Charlie Weatherbie, after miserable back-to-back seasons that produced a 1-20 record. Only five years earlier, with Johnson running Navy's triple option attack behind quarterbacks Chris McCoy and Ben Fay, Navy had won a 42-38 Aloha Bowl shootout over favored California to finish 9-3, matching the Mids' best finish since 1978.
 
Recalling those heady days in late 2001 when Gladchuk came calling, Johnson says, "We had it rolling [in Statesboro], and I wasn't looking to move. When Chet first called me, he was asking me what [Navy] should be looking for, what they needed, and could I recommend guys for the job? Shortly after that, I could tell he was laying the groundwork to try to get me to come back. I give Chet the credit for doing a good job recruiting me. But I struggled with the decision."
 
Johnson, who was announced as Navy's 36^th head football coach on December 9, 2001, added that getting peppered by naysayers attempting to discourage him from making such a change only fueled his competitive fire.
 
"There were people telling me I'd be nuts to go back, that I couldn't win [at Navy] and I was going to mess up my whole career. I believed we could win there, because we already had done it the first time I coached there," Johnson adds. "To see [Navy football] go all the way down again was tough. I liked [the academy] when I was there. I like what it stands for. But really one of the catalysts for going back was hearing people tell me not to do it. That always gets me going."
 
As Johnson anticipates officially being inducted into the National Football Foundation College Football Hall of Fame on December 5, the great work he did over six transformative seasons (2002-07) in Annapolis resonates deeply with the ex-Midshipmen who endured his relentlessly demanding leadership and thrived on his offensive expertise as a teacher and play caller, game management skills, and ability to get the most out of his players through intense preparation.
 
As he had done at Georgia Southern, Johnson turned Navy into a winner again quickly. After an inevitably painful 2-10 rebuilding year in 2002, the Mids took off by rolling up a 43-19 record over the five winning seasons that followed. His 45 overall victories rank third all-time at Navy.
 
"Coach Johnson's expectations were so high that it was difficult to satisfy his palate with our performance. He always kept us on our toes. No complacency or overconfidence could happen, not with the tone he set," recalls Jeff Deliz, a 2008 graduate who lettered for three seasons as a defensive back.
 
"He cared about winning and executing," Deliz adds. "I never remember him telling us we had a great practice, even when we actually did. I do remember him often saying things like, 'That's not good enough' or 'We've got to get better.'"  
 
Navy, which had not earned a Commander-In-Chief's trophy since 1981, took home five straight honors under Johnson, who went a combined 11-1 against Navy's service academy rivals and never lost to Army in six tries. The Mids went to five straight bowl games. 
 
During Johnson's six years in Annapolis, Navy's option attack never finished lower than third nationally in rushing offense and ranked first in rushing during his final three years (2005-07) at the helm. That helped Navy typically average at least, or close to, 30 points per season. The Mids also cleaned up their game, becoming one of the nation's least penalized teams and one of its best at avoiding turnovers.
 
In 2003, Navy announced its program turnaround with a memorable, 28-25 win against visiting rival Air Force at FedEx Field in early October, a year after losing in Colorado Springs by 41 points to the Falcons – their 19^th victory over Navy in 21 meetings.
 
"From that point on, we walked around with a little swagger. Our confidence rose a ton after that win," recalls Mick Yokitis, Navy's 13^th-year wide receivers coach and a 2006 Navy graduate who played in one of his 37 career games as a sophomore that day in Landover, Md.
 
"After that game, we really believed we could play with anybody or beat anybody. Our thinking was 'Hey, we're coming after you,'" he adds. "That game sent us off toward all of the great things that happened after it."
 
The Mids finished 8-4 – including a 27-24 loss in South Bend against Notre Dame on a field-goal as time expired – in the regular season, before falling to Texas Tech in the Houston Bowl. Navy was only the sixth team in NCAA history to go from a winless season (0-10 in 2001) to a bowl game in two seasons or less.
 
In 2004, Johnson was named the Bobby Dodd National Coach of the Year after the Mids finished 10-2, losing only to Tulane and Notre Dame. That tied the school record for victories set in 1905. Navy topped off the season by winning only the school's fifth bowl game ever, a 34-19 victory over New Mexico in the Emerald Bowl. A year later, the Mids capped an 8-4 finish with a 51-30 rout over Colorado State in the 2005 Poinsettia Bowl.
 
In 2007, a year in which Navy battled inexperience and injuries on defense, the Navy offense did historic things. The Mids became bowl eligible by outlasting North Texas, 74-62, on November 10. The 136 combined points scored marked a major college game record at the time for a regulation game. On seven occasions that season, Navy surrendered over 40 points, yet managed to win four times, including twice in overtime.
 
A week before the shootout at North Texas, after having failed to beat Notre Dame over 43 consecutive years, Johnson's Mids outlasted the Fighting Irish, 48-44, in triple-OT.
 
Five weeks later, shortly after he coached the Mids to a 38-3 blowout over Army, Johnson took the head coaching job at Georgia Tech.
 
Over the next 11 seasons, Johnson went 82-60, leading the Yellow Jackets to nine bowl games, including two New Year's Six bowls (Orange 2009, 2014). Georgia Tech appeared in three ACC title games and won the league's Coastal Division four times.
 
Johnson was named ACC Coach of the Year three times (2008, 2009, 2014). His Tech teams led the ACC in rushing yardage every year. Georgia Tech ended the 2008 season ranked 22^nd nationally, finished No. 13 in 2009 and No. 8 in 2014. Johnson also was only the second coach ever at Georgia Tech to beat rival Georgia three times in Athens.
 
Johnson, who coached 11 First-Team All-Americans during his three head coaching stops, also was recognized as the CBS National Coach of the Year in 2008, and as Division I-AA Coach of the Year in 1998, 1999 and 2000.
 
After 22 seasons as a head coach – and 35 years coaching the college game – Johnson retired following the 2018 season, with an overall head coaching record of 189-99.
 
"[Johnson] didn't sugarcoat anything. He always told you how it was, kept it real, and he demanded total buy-in" says Zerbin Singleton, a former slot back and a superior blocker from 2005-07. "If you weren't a team player, you weren't going to play."
 
"And he was super quick making game-time adjustments. He could recognize something in the defense and make a change that would help us win," added Singleton, noting how Johnson never carried a play chart, just elected to call the next play based on what he or his assistants saw from the coaches' booth. "I can hardly remember a play not working because it was a bad play call."
 
Craig Candeto, a 2004 graduate who started at quarterback in Johnson's first two seasons as head coach, had seen the worst of Navy football. He recalls the 180-degree turn that Johnson installed, from day one in early 2002.
 
It started with the introduction of "Fourth Quarters," torturous early morning workouts over a two-week span that are now an offseason staple at Navy. It continued with an especially physical round of spring football, an arduous August camp, followed by in-season practices that featured full pads and contact on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. True dedication to football was paramount.
 
The Johnson way caused a good number of players to quit the football team, which was fine by the new coach and his team.
 
"We had a lot of people there to ride the bus or be on the practice squad. They weren't really invested," Candeto says. "Coach Johnson's message was this [program] has to cost you something to be a part of."
 
Candeto, who also started and starred as an outfielder in baseball at the academy, was allowed to juggle both sports under Johnson. But Johnson required Candeto to be at every spring practice in 2002, if he wished to start under center in the fall. It was an exhausting and quite sore spring, with five or six classes thrown in for good measure.
 
"I remember getting crushed in the full-pads contact that spring. A quarterback usually wears a green or red jersey [to protect him from contact]. Not with Paul Johnson's triple option," Candeto says. "[Johnson] had such a great way of giving us the facts. This is why we won. This is why we lost. There were no excuses, no more crutches. He knows football. And he knows people and how to motivate them."
 
The Mids saw a huge ray of light at the end of 2002, when they blew out Army, 58-12, as Candeto rushed for 103 yards and six touchdowns, an Army-Navy game and school record.
 
Then, on that day in '03 when 2-2 Navy edged 5-0, 25^th-ranked Air Force, fullback Kyle Eckel's 176 yards rushing and a touchdown spearheaded the offense. And a defense led by linebacker Bobby McClarin – who broke up a TD pass in the end zone early, while wearing a boxing glove wrapped in plastic to protect his broken left hand – stopped the Falcons enough.
 
And Johnson's Mids were on their way.
 
"We set our sights on Air Force. They were winning the CIC every year. We had to beat them," says Johnson, who will be recognized as a Hall of Famer during Saturday's "Day of Legends" with Air Force in the house. It will be Johnson's first time in Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium since 2007.
 
"We were proud that we got that program turned around. It had been down for so long," he says. "It was fun to see those guys enjoy the kind of success they had worked so hard for. Having the opportunity to work with such great young men, I've got a lot of great memories from that place."

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