A Trip to the Doctor's Office
Cal State Dominguez Hills' first athletic director reflects on 55 years in sports.
November 8, 2004

Courtesy Woody Woodburn South Bay Daily Breeze

By all rights, Julius Erving should be brought up on charges for identity theft. He assumed the nickname "Dr. J" largely on the basis that he could hang in the air for a couple seconds on the way to a slam dunk.

Well, decades earlier the original "Dr. J" used to float airborne like he had helium in his shoes. In fact, he routinely stayed up the clouds for up to 20 hours!

Dr. John L. Johnson, you see, flew in helium blimps during World War II. Specifically, he was a U.S. Navy airship command pilot on anti-submarine patrol over the ocean off Brazil. He was also a hero closer to home, and closer to the ground as a star running back and middle linebacker for UCLA in the early 1940's -- and later was an assistant coach for the Bruins' 1954 national championship team.

This was back when football players wore flimsy leather helmets that Johnson jokes you could fold in half and stuff in your back pocket. It was an era when football pants were made of moleskin and sweat-soaked wool jerseys would weigh an extra 15 pounds by game's end on a hot afternoon. The shoulder pads were thinner than cardboard and if you still had all your front teeth, the head coach knew you weren't very good.

"We didn't have facemasks," Johnson said the other day. "Everyone had some front teeth knocked out or his nose broken -- or both."

The UCLA coaches knew the rawhide-tough kid from Bakersfield could play.

Johnson's nose miraculously remained straight, but he notes, "I've got a mouthful of gold."

Johnson played two ways, of course, offense and defense -- and special teams, too. Everyone who'd lost a few front teeth did. Heck, he went right back into the game once after losing part of his smile.

The captain of UCLA's freshman team in 1939, Johnson lost more than a couple teeth in 1940 -- he lost the entire season after making a tackle in a spring intrasquad scrimmage. The great running back Kenny Washington bounced right back up after the play but Johnson stayed down with a separated shoulder and had to redshirt the year.

Johnson remembers going up against another great UCLA runner: Jackie Robinson.

"I played against him every day," Johnson said, adding with a laugh, "and I haven't tackled him yet. He was the greatest athlete I ever saw, by far."

Johnson smiled, reminded of another memory, and continued: "At UCLA, the baseball field was next to the track. I threw the discus, and during meets Jackie used to come to the track between innings and take one jump in the long jump, in his baseball uniform you understand, and win it and go back to his baseball game."

By his own admission, Johnson, who was listed at 5-foot-10 and 180 pounds, wasn't a great athlete.

"I wasn't big," he said, "but I was fearless and I went all out every play."

These are the same traits he would later search for, like a prospector looking for gold nuggets, during a full quarter-century as an NFL scout.

"You can pretty well tell about a player ability-wise, but you can't tell how much he wants it," Johnson explained. "You can't measure heart. A lot of players don't have size or speed, but make it because they want it so bad and go all out every play."

Was he that kind of player?

"I like to think I was," comes the answer, followed by a laugh and then this: "I definitely had the lack of speed and lack of size."

Don't be fooled by his modesty. Johnson was an impact player. As a senior in 1946 -- he served four years in the Navy following his junior year -- he was an All-Coast selection and at the inaugural Hula Bowl for all-star seniors he scored two touchdowns to earn the game's Most Valuable Player award. It was enough to get the Baltimore Colts to give him a $3,000 contract in 1947, plus a $1,500 signing bonus.

"I thought I was wealthy," said Johnson, noting he was eventually cut and only got to keep the bonus. "Suddenly I was a third as wealthy as I thought."

He jokes about it now, but at the time it was a crushing blow, worse than the blow from Washington that separated his shoulder and cost him a full college season. This separated Johnson from his dream of being a pro football player.

"I thought that was the worst thing that ever happened to me in my lifetime," Johnson shared. He paused, and after thinking about his lifetime since, added this:

"But it turned out to be the best thing because as a result, I went back to school and got two more degrees, and became a graduate assistant with (UCLA head football coach) Red Sanders, and then joined his staff full time in 1950.

"Yes, my whole life changed after the Colts cut me -- and changed for the better."

Once a player, John Johnson became a coach happily ever after.

"Coaching I guess is in my blood," he will tell you.

His 15-year stint at UCLA included coaching the defensive secondary on the 1954 national championship team that starred, among 11 future NFL players, running back Sam "First Down" Brown.

"I've seen all the great teams UCLA has ever had, and that team was the best of them all," Johnson insists. "Coaching that team is the greatest honor I've ever had."

Truth is, the real honor has been to play for him. Indeed, to this day his former athletes stay in contact with him, causing Johnson to say thoughtfully:

"That means a lot to me because I'm more interested in what kind of people they are now than what kind of players they were."

He is not talking only about football players. At UCLA, Johnson was also the assistant golf coach in 1962 and 1963, and then the head coach in 1964. Fittingly, football led to his golfing gig.

"I learned to play golf at UCLA because Red Sanders was a golf fanatic," Johnson explained. "He had a sand trap at the football field and would hit shots before practice."

Johnson, who earned his doctorate in education and administration in 1964, eventually left UCLA to become the athletic director at Cal Poly Pomona in 1966. Two years later, he took on a challenge as daunting as trying to tackle Kenny Washington in practice: he became Cal State Dominguez Hills' first athletic director.

"When I started here there were 600 students, no campus and no athletic budget," he said. "But I loved it because it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to start an athletic program from zero."

This time he tackled Jackie Robinson, so to speak. He not only created the school's first intercollegiate team -- men's golf -- he raised funds for it and coached it. And kept adding more sports thereafter.

Under his guidance, the golf team was once ranked as high as No. 6 in the nation and has featured three All-Americans: Scott McDonald, Patrick Burke (who played for three years on the PGA Tour) and Scott Hughey (who played on the PGA Senior Tour).

In addition to still coaching the golf team, Johnson continues to teach a full array of graduate and undergraduate classes in the physical education department.

"When you consider everything," said assistant athletic director Patrick Guillen, "Dr. J truly is a Southland living legend."

The living legend's office walls are covered with photographs and framed newspaper clippings of his former athletes and teams. Fifty-five years of memories won't fit on four small walls, so Dr. J shares stories from his mental scrapbook.

"Let me tell you about John McKay," he said. "He was coaching at the Hula Bowl and I was an assistant. Of course he was USC's head coach and I was with the Bruins then, and after the game the first thing he said to me was, 'Give me the playbook.' He was the funniest guy."

Johnson turns a mental page to Vince Lombardi, whom he met while serving as a scout for the Green Bay Packers:

"He was the most intense man I had ever met in my life. He still is."

He turns the mental page to Otto Graham and the 50th anniversary of the Hula Bowl, to a flag football game of legends, a senior-bowl-turned-senior-citizen-bowl in 1997:

"My team had Paul Hornung and Larry Csonka, but we didn't have a quarterback. So I played quarterback and threw two touchdown passes and we won, 14-0. It was the finest achievement of my athletic career -- I beat the all-time MVP Hall of Famer Otto Graham!"

Turn a page in his mind: "Dr. J" helped create the Japan Bowl in 1976.

Keep turning: He served as an NFL scout from 1965-1990 for the Green Bay Packers, Minnesota Vikings, Detroit Lions, Miami Dolphins, Buffalo Bills, Denver Broncos and San Diego Chargers.

More pages, these in Johnson's passport stamped in Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Sweden, Germany, Holland, England, Scotland and Ireland, all places where he has coached American teams and given football clinics.

Too, there are the pages in the 10 books Johnson has written, including Golf: The Game For Everyone, How To Watch Football and even a James Bond-like thriller Airship Nazi Hunter.

Asked where his energy comes from, Johnson, who dodges questions about his exact age as nimbly as he used to avoid would-be tacklers, runs his right hand through a full head of gray hair and answers:

"Teaching and coaching keeps you around young people, and that keeps you young."

Of course, Father Time is impossible to fake out forever. This August past, Coach Johnson underwent hip-replacement surgery. But a couple weeks later, the original "Dr. J" was soaring again, relatively speaking, by climbing stairs.