An appreciation of the retiring legend that is Jimmy Johnson

“Jimmy said that you need to get back here! And bring a notebook!”

That was a direct message during the spring of 1989, as I sat in my cubicle at Valley Ranch doing some busywork as editor of The Dallas Cowboys Weekly, the team’s in-house newspaper, while Jimmy Johnson conducted his first minicamp as an NFL head coach.

The caller was John Wooten, then a top scout for the Cowboys. After I hustled to the practice fields on the other side of the complex, I discovered Johnson had an assignment: Tag alongside an assistant coach and jot down results as they timed and tested players.

Sure, it felt weird. Especially when a couple of the players – Everson Walls and Steve DeOssie – looked at me sideways and gave me a whole lot of grief. After all, every other time they saw me with a notebook, I was a reporter.

It illustrated how people in the building might be tasked for any and everything that year after Jerry Jones bought the Cowboys. Decades later, with the news this week that Johnson, 81, is retiring from his gig as Fox Sports studio analyst, the memories rush back.

Of course, so much more happened as Johnson’s legend grew. Like back-to-back Super Bowl titles and the infamous split with Jones in 1994. The return to coaching as Don Shula’s successor with the Miami Dolphins. The Pro Football Hall of Fame induction in 2021.

When his selection was revealed early in 2020, it marked one of the highlights of his tenure at Fox. Johnson was surprised with the news from then-Hall of Fame executive Dave Baker during halftime of a playoff game that drew 35 million viewers, while his Fox cohorts, including tight sidekick Terry Bradshaw, shared in the moment. Big TV moment.

Weeks before his Hall call, Johnson hosted me at his home in the Florida Keys and for several hours on one of his swanky fishing boats. He really opened up that day, maintaining that the No. 1 reason why he retired from coaching after the 1999 season, a little more than a year after his mother Allene passed, was because, “I never had any family life.”

He regretted that he never saw either of his two sons, Brent and Chad, play in a football game. And he told me how the strain hit him harder during his Dolphins years when he’d lay in bed crying as Chad dealt with substance-abuse issues.

“The good part of the story is that Chad cleaned up,” Johnson told me in 2021.

Even better, Johnson has strengthened his bond with his sons. And Chad founded a successful drug and alcohol rehab center in the greater Tampa area.

“To see the boys and their families do well is phenomenal,” Johnson reflected. “Had it not turned out the way it has, it would have been a disaster, and I would be in a severe state of depression because I would be thinking it was my fault.”

Nearly a year ago, Johnson told me he thought it might be his last year at Fox. It wasn’t the first time he suspected he would retire again. But as was the case when he gave up coaching – and then-Dolphins owner H. Wayne Huizenga wanted him to remain in coaching so bad that he pitched the idea of Johnson taking the entire offseason off, except to run the draft – the TV executives would try talking him out of it.

A few years ago, Fox kept Johnson aboard by setting up a studio in his home and scaling back on the cross-country trips to appear in the Los Angeles studio.

Yet this time, Johnson is really retiring. With his love of fishing, his yacht and other boats, just don’t think this retirement will confine him to some rocking chair.

In any event, he’ll remain a legend in my mind, too, with my own instant replays.

One moment came when I visited training camp during my first year at USA Today in 1993 and all hell broke loose. Troy Aikman was still sidelined after undergoing back surgery and the backup quarterback was out, too, with a day-to-day injury. They had just one quarterback for practice, Hugh Millen.

Well, despite the red jersey Millen wore that screamed “untouchable!” for contact, Charles Haley blasted the quarterback, igniting a mini brouhaha.

On the first play after peace was restored, Michael Irvin ran over the middle and blasted defensive back Kenny Gant with a forearm in a retaliatory blow that ignited more tempers.

Didn’t Haley know to not hit the quarterback? After practice, absolutely no one would answer that question for me.

I finally caught up with Johnson in his dorm room. He told me that before practice he instructed the team to be extra careful because they were down to one quarterback.

Johnson also told me that his confirmation was “on background,” that he couldn’t be quoted. He said something like, “You’re just here for a couple days. I’ve got to deal with him all year!”

Sure enough, a few weeks later after a loss against Buffalo dropped the Cowboys to 0-2 without holdout Emmitt Smith, Haley, according to witnesses, expressed his dismay by smashing his helmet into the locker room wall. Soon after, Smith came back with a new contract…en route to NFL MVP and Super Bowl MVP honors.

The morning after his practice-field hit on Millen, Haley was livid. On his way to practice, Nate Newton told me, as I can best recall: “Man, you’ve done it now. Charles is in the locker room and he’s hot. He’s walking around with the paper. He said the season hasn’t even started and y’all are on him.”

Me: Uh, but he hit the quarterback.

Newton: “You said he hit him after the whistle. They didn’t blow the whistle until after he hit him. I was there. You made it sound like he’s a dirty player.”

Oh, brother. Haley, by the way, wouldn’t talk to me before that next practice. He finally gave me a few choice words after practice…none of which could be printed in a family newspaper.

But hey, at least Johnson wasn’t quoted.

I met Johnson in 1982 when he coached at Oklahoma State and I worked my first full-time job as a reporter for The Dallas Times Herald, covering high schools and occasionally college sports. I went to Stillwater, Oklahoma and after his Cowboys trounced North Texas State, I interviewed Johnson for about 20 minutes in his office.

After he joined the Dallas Cowboys – following the trek to the University of Miami that included a national championship – I reminded him of that first meeting. He said he remembered me because it was big deal to have a reporter in town from Dallas.

Yeah, the man with a psychology degree can butter you up.

Let me go back to 1989. During what became known as the “Saturday Night Massacre” press conference, when Jones declared that he would be involved down to the “socks and jocks,” the new owner maintained that his former Arkansas roommate was worth “five first-round draft picks and five Heisman Trophies” as the successor to Tom Landry.

Too bad they had that split.

In any event, after we returned from his first training camp in Thousand Oaks, Calif. (Johnson didn’t like the camp site because it wasn’t hot enough), I got another call at my desk, probably from Marge Anderson, the coaching staff secretary. Come see Jimmy, ASAP.

I got to Johnson’s office to find the latest edition of the Weekly spread out on his desk to display a feature story on veteran third-string quarterback Babe Laufenberg. I was proud of the spread, with the main art drawn up by one of our illustrators, Bubba Flint, who depicted the NFL journeyman standing next to a US map that marked his various NFL stops.

Well, Johnson hated it.

He said, “What is this doing in here? I just drafted two quarterbacks with first-round picks (Aikman and Steve Walsh) and we’re running a story on Babe Laufenberg?”

It was deep into August. I reminded Johnson that we had 40 issues per year, 48 pages each. Walsh was on the cover of that issue, and there were stories on Aikman and Walsh in the front of the paper.

“If we’re ever going to do this story on Babe Laufenberg, now is the time,” I explained.

Johnson grumbled.

“Uh, okay,” he said. “I just wanted to hear your thinking on it.”

My gut told me Johnson was really peeved because the story contained a classic quote Laufenberg dropped during camp, outlining inspiration from the new coach.

Said Laufenberg: “If he wanted me to run 26 miles through the hills, I would. If he wanted me to carry water bottles, I would. If he wanted me to get a haircut like his … well, you have to draw the line somewhere.”

A few years ago, while Johnson was with the Fox crew and I was attending a New England Patriots Super Bowl practice as pool reporter, I prompted a flashback. I told him that for all that was involved in building the Cowboys, I was amazed that he concerned himself with the Weekly.

“Yeah, that sounds like me,” he said. “At that time, I was doing everything. I was even doing contracts until I almost got into a fight over Mark Stepnoski’s deal. I had to let go of some of that stuff.”

And here he is now, letting go of some more stuff.

Bottom line: Thanks for the memories.