When Naval Academy head football coach Paul Johnson took over the head coaching job after the 2001 season, he inherited a Navy football program that that had gone 1-20 over the two seasons before he was hired.
In Coach Johnson’s first season, Navy went 2-10, playing six teams that played in postseason bowl games. But then, in 2003, Navy went 8-5 and became just the sixth team in NCAA history to make a bowl game two years or less after a winless season. This past season, the Midshipmen were 10-2, which was Navy’s first 10 win season in 99 years. In so doing, the Midshipmen wrapped up their second consecutive Commander in Chief’s Trophy (their last one had been in 1981) and beat New Mexico in the Emerald Bowl in San Francisco to give Navy its first bowl win since 1996.
In short, Coach Johnson can flat out coach.
Longtime Houston oil and gas attorney Dick Watt gained an appreciation for cogent football coaches while playing under the legendary Darrell Royal and Coach Royal’s late Defensive Coordinator, Mike Campbell, on the fine University of Texas football teams from 1966-68. Dick’s son, Andrew, is currently attending the Naval Academy and so Dick has taken an interest in Coach Johnson, whose blunt nature reminds him of football coaches from bygone eras.
Along those lines, Dick passes along this recent interview with Coach Johnson, who is just not pleased with the way spring football practice is going at the Naval Academy. Here are a few pearls of wisdom from the interview:

Q. How does the team look?
A. Lovely.
Q. Who’s your best fullback?
A. I don’t know. I don’t know if we have one.
Q. Have you not been pleased with what you’ve seen from the fullbacks so far?
A. Not really.
Q. In what way?
A. I just haven’t been pleased.
Q. They don’t run hard enough?
A. It’s a myriad of things, each one has his own problems. It hasn’t sorted itself out at all in my mind.
Q. Do you think the three guys that are out here (Kimbrough, Ballard and Hall) are capable?
A. Yeah, I think they have the ability. But if they don’t get better, we will play with a freshman.
Q. What happened to Marvin Dingle?
A. He quit.
Q. Is he expected to return? Is he just taking the spring off?
A. Nope. Not when you quit. You don’t do that here with me. When you quit, you quit.
Q. Any injuries of note?
A. Not really, same guys that were hurt before.
Q. How does the quarterback situation look at this point?
A. It’s about like I thought. Some days are better than others.
Q. Just watching the kickers briefly, it appeared that the kid that came over from the sprint football team (Joey Bullen) has a decent leg.
A. Today he did better than the others.
Q. But it’s not that way every day?
A. None of them are consistent right now.

Now, that’s my idea of a football coach!