It is fair to say that memoirs are often written too soon, when lives have all but just begun, a phenomenon that seems especially prevalent in sports and entertainment.
The novelist Joyce Maynard recounted how it took her 25 years to write her biography in 1998. In a Poets and Writer’s magazine article titled, “Patience and Memoir,” she talked about needing to understand what had happened, the effects on her life and the long road traveled “to make sense of my experiences.”
Jimmy Johnson, the football coach with such a stamp on Miami and South Florida, has had a book in him for years. It is out now, in bookstores starting Tuesday following an online preorder. It is called “Swagger: Super Bowls, Brass Balls And Footballs —- A Memoir,” written with Dave Hyde.
Johnson, 79, was goaded to finally write it by his longtime attorney and Miami friend, Nick Christin.
“You gotta write a book,” Johnson recalls his friend telling him. “You’re gettin’ up there in years!”
A stern-faced Johnson appears on the book’s cover wearing his three championship rings — two Super Bowl wins with the Cowboys and a national championship with the Miami Hurricanes.
He is in both the College and Pro Football Hall of Fame and the first man to win a championship in both sports. He also is the only man to be head coach of both the Canes and Miami Dolphins. He is a longtime Fox NFL Sunday studio analyst who stays young by staying active. He has appeared on the reality show “Survivor.” He is an avid deep-sea fisherman who goes out off his Islamorada coastal home south of Miami most mornings aboard his beloved boat, The Three Rings.
The intrigue of Johnson’s life story, though, for me, is that it does not start and end with football.
In a very real way, Johnson’s life started after football.
The football, we all know.
Stepping in after Howard Schnellenberger left to win UM’s second national championship.
Replacing legend Tom Landry in Dallas and winning two Cowboys Super Bowls while famously sparring with owner Jerry Jones.
Replacing legend Don Shula with the Dolphins and inheriting a late-career Dan Marino.
Johnson wants it set straight he did not push Shula into retirement.
“That all happened before I ever had any contact with the Dolphins,” he says. “Nick Buoniconti called me, said Don Shula is gonna retire. I’d had a conversation with Wayne Huizenga, didn’t know him. Then Eddie Jones [club president then] called and said there’s an opening.”
Most of Johnson’s life was football, an obsession with Saturdays, then Sundays.
But for a man whose memoir is called Swagger, with “brass balls,” in the subtitle, the heart of the book, of Johnson’s life, is the introspection, self-awareness, humility and even regret he had to discover to reclaim his life from the all-consuming grip his career.
It is what caused him to leave coaching.
That is when his best life, his happiest days, began.
One of his two sons, Chad, was under the cruel rule of alcohol addiction for many years.
“Alcoholism and addiction takes a bigger toll on the families than people realize. I take some responsibility because I wasn’t there when they were growing up — I was away trying to win football games,” Johnson says. “When he was struggling I would lay in bed and I would bawl. I’d tell [wife] Rhonda, ’I’ll get somebody a million dollars if they can just get [Chad] back on track. The biggest victory of my life was when Chad got sober.”
The son not only got sober, he founded an addiction treatment center called Tranquil Shores based in Madeira Beach. Jimmy speaks there at a reunion most every year.
“People will get up, mothers and daddies, and say, ‘Chad, thanks for saving my son’s life.’ Someone got up, said, ‘Chad, you picked up my daughter at 3 o’clock in the morning, drove around four hours, then took her to detox. Thanks for saving her life.’”
You hear the emotion in Johnson’s voice.
“When it was my time to speak, I said I have won a national championship as a player, as a coach, won a couple of Super Bowls, but nothing I’ve ever done can compare with what you all do at Tranquil Shores.
Johnson’s perspective about the place of football in his life struck him anew when his mother died. This was late-’90s, during his Dolphins years.
Huizenga sent Johnson to his mom’s funeral in Texas on his private jet.
“I could not look at her in the casket,” he says now. “It just hit me. Here I’ve been chasing championships in football all these years and I’ve missed out on so much. I’ve missed out on my family. Then and there is when I decided to retire.”
That was 23 years ago.
You ask Johnson when he has been the happiest.
“I always used to say the Miami [Hurricanes] years,” he said, and smiled. “Now I’d say I’m the happiest right now.”
▪ Jimmy Johnson and Dave Hyde are to appear Thursday night at 8 at the Miami Book Fair, at a ticketed event, to discuss “Swagger: Super Bowl, Brass Balls And Footballs — A Memoir. The event will be held at Miami Dade College, Auditorium Building 1 (second floor), 300 NE 2nd Ave., Miami. Visit here for additional information or to buy tickets.
