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spring of ’66 as a graduate assistant at Arkansas, and that fall moved his family to Picayune, Mississippi, best known as the world’s tung oil capital. As an assistant coach at Picayune High School, he helped a team that had gone 0–10 the year before…to go 0–10 again. “With all my expertise in coaching,” he wrote, “we came close to winning a game.” Though Johnson cherished tung and its mystical healing powers, he dreaded the nonstop losing. Salvation came in the form of a call from Switzer, who informed Johnson that Wichita State was searching for a young, inexpensive defensive assistant. Johnson left Picayune before the school year had ended and reported to Larry Lacewell, Switzer’s friend and the Shockers’ defensive coordinator. “Jimmy immediately struck me as extremely smart,” says Lacewell, who later worked with Johnson in Dallas. “He’s moody, he can be a horse’s ass, and he enjoys the role of coming off as a complicated person. But I’ll tell you something—that boy knew his football and how to reach players.”
    Johnson spent the two years after Wichita working as a defensive assistant under Johnny Majors at Iowa State, and in 1970 was hired as defensive line coach by the University of Oklahoma. Though 517 miles from Port Arthur, Norman felt like home, what with Switzer and Lacewell also serving as assistants to head coach Chuck Fairbanks. The three were inseparable, raising hell in the local bars and spending long nights downing beers and talking football. “Jimmy was probablythe most fun guy on that staff,” says Lacewell. “We all did some crazy, crazy stuff.” There was a nude midnight streak across campus; setting Switzer’s door on fire. “Tons of shit,” says Lacewell. “Just great stuff. When you’re an assistant there’s a level of freedom you don’t have when you’re running the program.”
    Johnson left Oklahoma in 1973 to join Broyles as Arkansas’ defensive coordinator. His big break was supposed to come three years later, when Broyles announced his retirement to devote full attention to his duties as the school’s athletic director. At age thirty-three Johnson assumed he would be the successor. Instead, Broyles hired Lou Holtz, an outsider coming off a disasterous 3–10 season leading the New York Jets.
    Johnson spent the next two years as an assistant at the University of Pittsburgh and then finally, in 1978, his moment arrived. Oklahoma State University was looking for a new head coach, and a member of the search committee happened to be Kevin Leonard, a close friend of Jerry Jones’s. “I told him Jimmy Johnson would do wonders,” says Jones. “Jimmy was still pretty young, but I always knew he could do magic at the head of a program.” Before accepting the position at OSU, Johnson made a call to Switzer, then the head coach of the University of Oklahoma. “It’s always better to be a head coach than an assistant,” Switzer told him. “But I’m warning you now—I’m going to beat your ass every single year.”
    With Oklahoma State on probation for an array of NCAA violations, the program Johnson inherited was in shambles. In his first season in Stillwater, Johnson had only fifty-five scholarship players. (Most Big 8 rivals had ninety-five.) Outgunned and undermanned, Johnson invited any and all male Oklahoma State students to join the squad. His team finished with a shocking seven wins and led the nation with nearly two hundred names on its roster. There was Kay the marketing major, Boockvar the aspiring doctor, Platt the soon-to-be stockbroker. Lacking gear for so many “players,” one equipment manager found a discount store selling soccer shoes for $3 a pair.
    Although he never turned Oklahoma State into a national power,Johnson gained recognition as one of the nation’s top young coaches. “The job Jimmy did there,” says Switzer, “was amazing.” Like Switzer, Johnson differentiated himself from the other white men who monopolized