Some mistakes, you get away with. Not because you're good, but because you're lucky. Switch lanes on the interstate without looking first: That's a mistake. If there's not a car next to you, congratulations. You just got away with it.
Some mistakes, you don't get away with. And not because you're bad. But because you're unlucky.
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| Paul Johnson would have been a perfect fit at N.C. State, but the 'Pack passed in '06. (AP) |
As long as Paul Johnson is still stuck at Navy.
But some mistakes, you don't get away with. Not because you're bad. But because you're unlucky. And North Carolina State was unlucky that Paul Johnson, just one year after being passed over by the Wolfpack in December 2006, left Navy for a new coaching job. And not just any job, but a job in a BCS league.
And not just any BCS league, but in the ACC. At Georgia Tech.
Paul Johnson just moved in down the street.
North Carolina State couldn't be more unlucky.
Games start later this month, and Paul Johnson is going to win at Georgia Tech. Eventually he's going to win big, because that's what he does. Lots of people will have their doubts about Johnson in the ACC, just as they had their doubts about him at Navy in 2002 when he inherited the worst program in Division I.
See, Johnson comes from the Division I-AA ranks, and he runs a form of the triple-option. Lots of fullback dives up the middle. Quarterback keepers around the outside. Pitches to a trailing halfback. Check out the terminology. Dives. Keepers. Halfback. That's old school, and most people are skeptical of old school. They want their coaches to have a BCS or an NFL pedigree, and they want newfangled offenses with no fullbacks and four receivers and lots of vertical, vertical, vertical.
The only thing vertical about Paul Johnson is his winning percentage. In that way, he's a lot like Jim Grobe at Wake Forest. People think Johnson won't be able to recruit NFL athletes to operate his small-college system? That hasn't stopped Grobe from dominating in the ACC -- and it won't stop Johnson, either.
North Carolina State didn't see it that way, though to pin the Paul Johnson oversight on "North Carolina State" is unfair to the school at large. Passing over Paul Johnson after he had interviewed for the position in late 2006 wasn't a North Carolina State decision. This one is completely on athletic director Lee Fowler. Sources high up the Wolfpack food chain tell me the headhunter hired by the school, and the board of trustees who oversee the school, wanted Johnson. Wolfpack fans wanted Johnson, too.
Fowler wanted O'Brien.
Fowler also wanted Sidney Lowe. We know how that's working out.
OK, that's not fair. O'Brien won't be the colossal failure that Lowe has become. And since we're already meshing Wolfpack basketball and football, let's mesh some more and acknowledge that O'Brien has much in common with former Wolfpack basketball coach Herb Sendek. Sendek won more than he lost, won the right way, graduated players and declined to reveal too much of himself to the media. O'Brien is a lot like that.
Which is ominous for O'Brien, when you think about it. Sendek won 105 games and went to five NCAA tournaments in his final five seasons at North Carolina State, and fans made his life so miserable that he left for Arizona State, one of the hardest jobs in the Pac-10.
But I understand Wolfpack fans. I really do. They want to win, but they want to be able to embrace their coach -- like they could embrace former basketball coach Jim Valvano and, until his 3-9 season in 2006, former football coach Chuck Amato. I'm just not sure they can embrace Tom O'Brien. He's a good man, but he's not ... embraceable.
Paul Johnson, though, would have been perfect. He's a winner, and he's a good ol' boy from North Carolina. To make the perfect hire in college sports, you have to know who you are. Kentucky basketball, for example, knew itself when it hired a drawling workaholic named Billy Gillispie to run its basketball program. Southern California knew itself when it hired a laid-back dude named Pete Carroll to run its football program.
North Carolina State didn't know who it was when it hired a former U.S. Marine from the Midwest named Tom O'Brien. He'll win more than he loses, and he'll do it the right way, but Tom O'Brien isn't North Carolina State.
Paul Johnson is. Or was. But now he's at Georgia Tech, and while the fit there isn't perfect -- a physical education major from Western Carolina at an academically elite institution -- Johnson will win enough to make it work. Because that's what he does. At Georgia Southern he inherited a program coming off a 4-7 season, and within four years had won two national championships. At Navy he inherited a program that had been 1-20 over the previous two seasons and within three years was 10-2.
Imagine what he'll do now that he can recruit Division I athletes to a BCS school. For 21 months, North Carolina State has only been able to imagine. For North Carolina State, it was probably better that way.
