Of all the legendary players and coaches who have passed through the annals of college and pro football, only a few select individuals have managed to stand out as true innovators, certified champions and compelling characters all rolled into one. Jimmy Johnson is at the top of that short but distinguished list.

Johnson, who has been announced as part of the 2025 Little Rock Touchdown Club roster of featured speakers, is the epitome of success. The fiery and unyieldingly competitive Johnson, raised in Port Arthur, Texas, played on Arkansas’ legendary 1964 National Championship squad that went undefeated under Head Coach Frank Broyles.

(Photo courtesy of Razorback Athletics)

Johnson would have similar success on the sidelines, building his reputation with successful assistant gigs at Arkansas, Oklahoma and others before landing the head coaching job with the Oklahoma State Cowboys. In Stillwater, he would build the ’Pokes into a contender over five seasons.

After being snubbed for the head coaching gig at his alma mater, Johnson took over the program that would define both his coaching legacy and the face of college football, the University of Miami. Johnson would turn “The U” into a football factory in short order, lead the Hurricanes to national title contention in the 1980s, and win it all in 1987. Arkansas was among the victims of the national title campaign as Johnson’s squad won 51-7 in Little Rock in what was the Hogs’ most lopsided home loss ever at the time.

Now one of the hottest collegiate coaches in the country, Johnson accepted arguably the most prestigious head coaching position in football, as skipper of the Dallas Cowboys in 1989, the first hire of America’s Team’s new owner — the brash and audacious Arkansan Jerry Jones, who was Johnson’s college roomie and teammate in Fayetteville.

Johnson took his lumps his first season, but within three years, the Cowboys were Super Bowl champs and, more than that, back-to-back titleists in 1992 and 1993. The team Johnson built would win another Lombardi Trophy without him two years later.

Johnson as head coach of the Dolphins with Dan Marino. (Rich Kane Photography)

After a middling stint with the Miami Dolphins, Johnson left coaching in 1999 to pursue broadcasting and became a stalwart of Fox’s NFL studio show. He announced his retirement from sports television in 2025. Among his many accolades, he was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 2012; the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2020; and enshrined in the Dallas Cowboys Ring of Honor in 2023.

Johnson with fellow Fox broadcaster Terry Bradshaw and Jones. (UPI)

Johnson came into the spotlight at a time when football was starting to be as much about image and hype as X’s and O’s. His teams were flashy, brash and not afraid to dish it out, a reflection of the outspoken, hard-charging Johnson himself. His ambition and success often burned bridges, some of them publicly and most of them ultimately mended. With a lifetime coaching record of 161-98-3 in the college and pro ranks, his career was ably summed up by fellow Pro Football Hall of Famer Terry Bradshaw, who said, “Not bad for a kid from Port Arthur.”

Troy Aikman helped induct Johnson into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. (UPI)

Johnson, who will make his Little Rock Touchdown Club appearance on Tuesday, Aug. 26 at the Statehouse Convention Center, once described the essence of coaching and leadership this way:

“Treat a person as he is, and he will remain as he is,” he said. “Treat a person as if he were where he could be and should be, and he will become what he could be and should be.”

Johnson as a player at Arkansas. (Photo courtesy of Razorback Athletics)

Q: How were you first inspired to be a Razorback in the first place? How did you get to Fayetteville?

A: Well, actually, the first group that came to recruit me was the Air Force Academy. I was a good student, and I’d met with my congressman, and I was walking around the house, saluting everybody. Then the other schools came down, Texas and Alabama and a few other schools. Then, all of a sudden, Jim Mackenzie, who was an assistant for Arkansas, came down and offered me a scholarship.

Mother and Daddy were both from Lamar, Arkansas, and my grandfather still lived there, so Daddy says, “Well, listen, you can go wherever you want to go, but if you want us to watch you play, you’re going to Arkansas.” So yeah, I committed to them right then and there without ever visiting Fayetteville.

Johnson as a player at Arkansas. (Photo courtesy of Razorback Athletics)

Q: Let’s imagine that you were recruiting Jimmy Johnson in high school as a player. What would your scouting report have said about him?

A: It would say marginal size but a great playmaker, very intelligent, very fast. I was probably the fastest guy on our football team as a defensive lineman and linebacker. That fit Jim Mackenzie’s style of play — fast and smart.

Q: Once you got to the Hill and started your collegiate playing career, what were your impressions of the program?

A: First of all, the Razorbacks, in that period of time, had probably the finest, smartest coaching staff there was in the country. Obviously, Frank Broyles was very intelligent, you know, really played percentage football. He had great assistants with Jim Mackenzie, who I thought was an absolutely fabulous defensive coach, Doug Dickey, Bill Pace. Johnny Majors was a young coach just coming up, so their coaching staff was tremendous.

My junior year was the last year that we played both ways, and I started at offensive guard and on defense, I was what they called nose tackle back then, the nose guard. We went to platoon football my senior year, so there were a lot of changes.

Q: Going into senior year, did you know you had something special with that team?

A: We played great defense. We weren’t real big, but we were extremely active, and we all knew exactly what we were going to do. The key moment for that was when we beat Texas. We were undefeated, we went down there, and it was a tremendous win for us.

From there, that last half of the season, we did not give up a touchdown until we played Nebraska, a much bigger, stronger team, in the Cotton Bowl. Of course, we won the Cotton Bowl, and that night, Texas beat Alabama and Joe Namath. Back then, they named the national champions in the [Associated Press] and the [United Press International] polls before the bowl game. After Alabama got beat by Texas, we were named the national champion by Grantland Rice and some of the other services.

Johnson as a coach at Arkansas. (Photo courtesy of Razorback Athletics)

Q: At what point did the idea of coaching come into play?

A: I got my degree in psychology. I was going to be an industrial psychologist, and right after [senior] season, the Louisiana Tech coaching staff came up to Arkansas, and they wanted Jim Mackenzie to teach them our style of defense. It was what they call the monster defense, the slant defense.

We were all kind of in the room when he was talking to the Louisiana Tech coaching staff, and he said, “Well, rather than me explain it, let me have one of my players get up here. He knows the entire defense. I’ll let him explain it.” So I got up on the board, and I explained the entire defense to this visiting coaching staff.

As it turned out, the defensive coordinator for Louisiana Tech had a heart attack right before the season. They called me and said, “Hey, would you take a temporary job as a coach? You know the defense. We just installed it. Our defensive coordinator’s not going to be able to participate, but he’ll get well, and he’ll come back after this year.”

I was married and had one child, living right there on campus in Fayetteville, and they offered me $1,000 a month, a car and an apartment in 1965. I jumped at that. I left my wife and child back in Fayetteville, and I went down, stayed at Louisiana Tech and got into coaching. In fact, I was there when we were recruiting a player by the name of Terry Bradshaw at Woodlawn High School. I sat in the stands and watched Terry play.

I still wanted to stay in coaching, so Johnny Majors talked me into taking a high school job in Picayune, Mississippi, and then I went from Picayune to Wichita State, Iowa State, and on and on.

Johnson (No. 60, upper right) and Jerry Jones (No. 61, lower left) celebrated the Hogs’ 1964 national championship after the Cotton Bowl win over Nebraska.
(Photos courtesy of Razorback Athletics)

Q: David Bazzel, who came up with the Little Rock Touchdown Club, established the Broyles Award because he was inspired by Coach Broyles’ long list of legendary assistant coaches. When you got to Arkansas, what was it like to be in that environment?

A: It was very obvious to me, even as a player and a student, that we had a superior coaching staff, every one of them — Jim Mackenzie, Doug Dickey, Bill Pace, Johnny Majors, Wilson Matthews. Barry Switzer was a graduate assistant at that time. He was just starting his coaching career my last year there.

Q: Coaching is one of those professions where disappointment comes with it, right? You lose a big game. You miss out on the top recruit. You don’t get a dream job. Tell me about being passed over for the head coaching job at Arkansas.

A: Well, I had a falling out with Coach Broyles because of the coaching position. I was at the University of Oklahoma with Chuck Fairbanks, and we had some great teams at Oklahoma. Chuck ends up taking the New England [Patriots] job, and Frank called and wanted me to come back to Arkansas as defensive coordinator, which I accepted. We had a great run there for a while.

Frank knew that he was going to retire, and he indicated to me that there was a good chance that I would be the head coach. Well, we didn’t play well the last couple of games, and so Frank called me in and said, “I know I talked to you about being the head coach, but I think I owe it to Arkansas to open this job up to other candidates,” and as it turned out, he hired Lou Holtz. Looking back, Lou Holtz was much more qualified and better prepared for the [Arkansas] job than I was, and so Frank made the right decision.

Lou wanted me to be the defensive coordinator, and I said, “Lou, listen, I was hoping that I would get the job, and I don’t know that I would really be good for you, me having in the back of my mind that I should be the head coach.” I recommended Monte Kiffin, and I called Monte and talked to him about it.

I ended up going to the University of Pittsburgh as assistant head coach under Jackie Sherrill. Then I left Pittsburgh and went to Oklahoma State. They were on probation, couldn’t be on TV, but I took the job anyway because I wanted to be a head coach.

I ended up being Coach of the Year and had success there. In my last year, we won the Bluebonnet Bowl, and I had just recruited and committed the top player in the country in Thurman Thomas, so we were really going to be very good at Oklahoma State.

Well, Frank calls, and he said, “Hey, I’d like to interview you for the job here at Arkansas,” and of course, that was music to my ears. He brought me over, and he spent about 30, 45 minutes with me at Herman’s Ribhouse [in Fayetteville] and really didn’t say much of anything. I went back to the hotel, and I heard that night that he had committed to give the job to Ken Hatfield a few days prior to me coming in. I never heard more from Frank.

Q: Oh, wow. Never heard more?

A: I was livid. The next morning, Al Witty, who was our faculty rep and was one of the professors in the law school, picked me up and was taking me to the airport, and I told Al, “Why in the world did he bring me over here? I didn’t need to interview for this job. It was a token interview.” I was furious because I had a good football team. I just recruited the top player in the country. I didn’t need to be embarrassed like that.

Johnson led the Hurricanes to the top of the college football world.
(Photo courtesy of University of Miami)

So Frank and I had a falling out over that, but it may be one of the best things that ever happened to me. A few months later, the University of Miami job came open because their head coach left to go to a new football league, and they were having a tough time trying to find a coach in June or July.

Their athletic director was asking me about some other coach, and I said, “Hey, I’d like to have that job.” He said, “Are you serious? If you’re serious, we’d like you to have it.” I took it having never been on campus. I tend to accept jobs like that.

Q: Of course, you got the chance to beat the brakes off the Hogs with one of those Miami teams. Was there something a little extra satisfying, given how the whole coaching thing played out?

A: The Razorbacks probably don’t want to hear this story, but I’ve got to tell it. Our president at the University of Miami and I, we had a falling out over that.

We were undefeated, and we had Arkansas on our schedule, and they were undefeated, ranked. I don’t think Ken had ever lost a game in Little Rock up to that point. So we got to Little Rock, and before the game, I’m going to talk to the team, and Michael Irvin came up to me and said, “Coach, you don’t need to say a word. We know what this game means to you.”

Well, I forget what the halftime score was — like, 35 to nothing or whatever — and we played our backups the whole second half. The story I heard was Tad Foote, the [Miami] president, showed up in the press box and says, “Why in the world is he doing this?” talking about me running up score. He was embarrassed because he was a relative to the Fulbrights, and he took a lot of pride in that. So, like I said, we were crossways from that time on, and he never let me get over that.

The way we played when I was at Miami, we never took our foot off the petal anytime we played a game. I was accused of running up the score on quite a few teams, including Notre Dame, but the thing is even when I did play the backups, all that did was just make them that much better.

Q: You said you intended to be an industrial psychologist. Given where you have worked, that is kind of what you became, isn’t it? Sounds like you got your money’s worth out of your degree.

A: Well, I gravitated towards psychology because I really enjoyed evaluating people and motivating individuals — not just football players but assistant coaches, friends, etc. I’ve always tried to surround myself with intelligent people who had a passion for something and were willing to work around the clock to get the job done. That paid dividends for me.

Johnson celebrates with Jones after winning the Super Bowl. (Photo courtesy of Razorback Athletics)

The only thing is, I think because of my drive to be successful, it probably hurt my family life, maybe more than a little bit. I got a divorce after my two sons left home, and my youngest son struggled with alcohol, though he’s doing fantastic now. I sacrificed a little bit of my family to work around the clock to be successful.

Q: One of the most famous chapters of pro football history is your time with the Dallas Cowboys and how that all went down so publicly with ownership. I saw a broadcast when you were going into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, and to see the genuine warmth between you and Jerry Jones now made me think that that professional relationship had a built-in shelf life, no?

Johnson and Jones catch up before a Dallas game during Johnson’s days at Fox. (Kirby Lee/Image of Sport)

A: Oh, yeah, without question. [Jerry and I], we both really enjoy one another. We both have a ball when we’re with each other, and we both like each other. We did have a falling out, and the reason we had the falling out is the first couple years, when we were going 1-15, we communicated every day because I don’t think anybody else would speak to us. Each other was the only friend that we both had.

Jerry was trying to pay off that $140 million loan [that bought the team and Texas Stadium in 1989]. He was spending night and day trying to make money, trying to pay off that loan, and I was spending night and day trying to win a football game.

Well, he came into my office after our first Super Bowl, and he said, “Hey, I’m free and clear. I don’t owe a penny to anybody. Everything is profit from now on,” and that’s when it started. Once that loan was paid off, he had time to be involved with football a little bit more.

You had two individuals, both very strong minded, somewhat egotistical, who had success so easily early on, going from 1-15 to winning back-to-back Super Bowls. The mindset around there started to be like, “Hey, anybody can do this,” which is not the case.

Q: Lastly, talk about coming back to Arkansas, which has not happened often, particularly off the football field. What are you most looking forward to with your appearance at the Little Rock Touchdown Club and being back in the Natural State?

A: Well, I’m looking forward to seeing some old acquaintances. I won’t recognize them, but you know, as long as they either have a name tag or give me their name, it’ll bring back some great memories.

(Top feature photo provided by ZUMA Press)