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Posted: **Thu Nov 29, 2007 5:07 pm**

http://www.fanblogs.com/smu/007356.php

Dennis Dodd is reporting that SMU is close to hiring Navy HC Paul Johnson to be the Mustangs next head coach.

The announcement of his hiring could come as soon as early next week. Officials at both schools are thought to want to wait until after Saturday's Army-Navy game.
What? Huh?

Johnson's name has been tied to nearly every vacant head coaching job in the country over the past three years. He is one of the hot names in coaching circles. If you have a BCS job opening, Paul Johnson is somewhere on your list... period. Hot! Hot! Hot!

In other words, he is everything that SMU is not.

The Ponies have produced nothing but an awful string of losses since the NCAA shut down the Mustangs program. Since 1991, SMU has had just two seasons at or above .500 and have never won more than six games in any season. The Mustangs have had four different coaches in those 17 seasons, but the only constant has been the losses.

So... Paul Johnson... and SMU? You could have given me eleventy billion guesses and I never would have come up with SMU. But -- if this goes through -- it may turn out to be the single greatest hiring in the history of college football.

Posted: **Thu Nov 29, 2007 5:11 pm**

Best hire in the History of College Football?

Posted: **Thu Nov 29, 2007 5:12 pm**

Nice find Blog. Most people seem to think this is a real coup for SMU. If it's true of course? What's your thoughts?

Posted: **Thu Nov 29, 2007 5:15 pm**

I pray this is true, he's an unbelievable coach. i couldn't be more excited and may give Orsini a sloppy wet kiss

Posted: **Thu Nov 29, 2007 5:25 pm**

mustang91 wrote:Nice find Blog. Most people seem to think this is a real coup for SMU. If it's true of course? What's your thoughts?

I'll post more when I get home while watching the Cowboys game, but as I have said before, I fear the coach with a gimmicky system. Not that I don't think it will work, just that I think it only works so well. Sooner or later the team tops out and the fan base will start blaming the system for not getting the school "over the hump." Now, if the "hump" is seven or eight wins, I think that will be a nice problem to have.

I don't think Navy has such a natural recruiting advantage, unlike like Stallion, but I do see the benefit of a Prep School, just like I see a benefit to having one high school in a school district where all the junior high schools run the same system (Southlake).

I don't think anyone can say the guy can't coach. He won two national championships at the IAA level and Navy won one game in the two years before he went there.

Why has nobody mentioned the school that Paul Johnson got his first I-A win against?

Posted: **Thu Nov 29, 2007 5:33 pm**

Also from Dennis Dodd:

"Navy broke a 43-year losing streak against Notre Dame this season. That no doubt made an impression on Orsini, a former Irish running back."

Great. Hiring a coach because he beat a horrible ND team?

Come on, Steve-O. No "flexbone option" coaches. Hire Neuheisel. Hire Bowden. Hell, hire Krag. Not Johnson.

Posted: **Thu Nov 29, 2007 5:46 pm**

Johnson's record the last ten years.....only one looks like SMU's record over the last ten years. Which on looks the closest?

1997: 10-3
1998: 14-1
1999: 13-2
2000: 13-2
2001: 12-2
2002: 2-10 (first year at navy, and half of his victories were against SMU)
2003: 8-5
2004: 10-2
2005: 8-4
2006: 9-4
2007: 7-4 (with one game left to play)

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Interesting blog (not mine) read on Johnson

Interesting blog (not mine) read on Johnson