Starting Over in Midwest : After Year Off, Johnson Wins Job at Michigan State

Bret Johnson gets yet another reminder that you can run, but you can’t hide:

The television lights snap on and the reporter conducting the live interview for the evening news pops the first question. “Do you want to follow in the footsteps of Todd Marinovich?” she asks.

” . . . Well, really, I don’t think I’d want to go that route,” Johnson manages.

“I think she knew she’d made a mistake,” Johnson said later. “I think she was just asking me if I wanted to play pro ball.”

This time, he can’t help but laugh. Johnson, who played quarterback at El Toro High, thought the endless comparisons to former rival Marinovich, who attended Capistrano Valley High a few miles down the road in Mission Viejo, had ended with Marinovich’s drug arrest and subsequent move to the Raiders.

And these days, Johnson is making every effort to put the past behind him. He has spent the last few weeks battling for the starting quarterback job at Michigan State. Coach George Perles made Johnson the starter Monday, and now Johnson is trying to keep his mind focused on the Spartans’ opener Saturday at home against Central Michigan.

Escaping the past is difficult, though, and Johnson has not completely recovered from the bitter feelings generated when he left UCLA a year ago and transferred to Michigan State.

Johnson led El Toro, a team coached by his father, to consecutive perfect seasons in his junior and senior years and then enrolled at UCLA. Marinovich picked USC. But their tit-for-tat careers took varied paths during their freshman seasons, and Johnson ended up on the low road.

UCLA finished 3-7-1 in 1989, the Bruins’ worst record since 1971, and the next summer, Johnson decided to quit the team when Homer Smith, the Bruins’ third offensive coordinator in three years, made Jim Bonds the starter.

The media had a field day. They called him “Brat” Johnson. They said he was taking his ball and going home. They reminded any coach who might offer a scholarship that if you bench him, you might lose him. They said that the son of a football coach should have a better sense of values.

“It didn’t bother me that much, but it made me mad when things were said about my family,” Johnson said. “My family had nothing to do with it. It’s my life, and I made the decision. Come after me all you want, but when you rip my dad because he was coach and his kid should have better morals, that’s not right.

“It was totally my decision, and if you want to think negatively toward me, then go ahead, but leave them out of it. I had to sit out a year, which is a big penalty to pay, and I took it like a man. Now I’m back working hard again. Most people have changes in their life, changes of job or whatever.”

Johnson visited Arkansas, Alabama and North Carolina and was ready to pick one of those schools. Then he decided to visit Michigan State after his father had had a conversation with Spartan offensive line coach Pat Morris, a former USC graduate assistant who had recruited Johnson for the Trojans.

“I was lucky, really,” he said, “I hadn’t planned a trip here, but in about 25 minutes or so, I made up my mind. Mainly, it was just the atmosphere. The first game I went to was the Notre Dame game and everyone was dressed in green and white. And down on the field, you really knew there’s a football game going on.

“Sometimes, where I was accustomed to playing, there wasn’t always so much noise.”

Johnson hopes that’s not a final shot at the Bruins. There was, he acknowledges, an even more compelling reason to choose Michigan State, co-champions of the Big Ten last season.

“Deep down, I want to go to the Rose Bowl and play on January first,” he said. “I’ve always wanted to do that. Here, I’ve got the opportunity.

“That’s my goal for the next two years. I’m sure the media would love for me to go up against UCLA, but it doesn’t matter to me who we play, just as long as we get there.”

Sure.

“There’s a fly in the ointment: Tommy Maddox. He’s still green, but he does things that I marvel at. He’s a very talented young man. He has the quickest arm on the team and he’s the tallest and he throws tall.”

-UCLA offensive coordinator Homer Smith, on Aug. 23, 1990, the day Bret Johnson quit the team.

Smith said that Bonds became the starter because his arm was “more alive” than Johnson’s. But even on a day embroiled in Bonds-Johnson controversy, he couldn’t keep his mind off the redshirt freshman he saw as UCLA’s future.

It’s likely that Johnson was destined to sit and watch Maddox had he decided to remain at UCLA.

“I made my decision based on what I was told and what I saw,” Johnson said. “Perception is everything. When I left, I didn’t say what was going to happen, but I knew. It was obvious to me and to most people who really understood what was going on. I just wasn’t in their picture.

“A lot of people said I should have stayed and stuck it out, but I went with my gut feeling and my gut feeling turned out to be right. If I had stayed another year, I never would have played college football again.”

Perles says he never worried for a minute that he might be taking on a potential problem when he offered Johnson a scholarship.

“I think it was just a personality conflict,” Perles said. “Those things happen. And Bret’s biggest strengths are his football smarts and the fact he’s a classy, dedicated guy. He’s representing his family, and he doesn’t want to let down the people he loves. He wants to prove he made the right decision.”

Johnson acknowledges that he and Smith didn’t have a great relationship, but his problems at UCLA might have had more to do with his stature--he’s listed at 6 feet, but 5-10 is probably closer to the mark--than the size of his ego.

Smith wanted a drop-back passer, a guy who stands, and passes, tall in the pocket. Johnson is more effective when he’s rolling out, a perfect match for the Spartan offense.

“He’s really tough in the flat because he’s got a couple different deliveries,” Perles said. “If he’s open he’ll go over the top, but if someone is in his face, he can get it there sidearm. He moves really well and he’s instinctive. He knows football, he’s been around it so long.”

The Bruin staff might have questioned Johnson’s velocity, but that doesn’t seem to be a problem now.

“He’s a great quarterback,” said senior flanker Courtney Hawkins, who broke Andre Rison’s school single-season reception and reception yardage records as a sophomore. “He’s got one of the stronger arms that I’ve ever been around.

“We worked out together, one on one, this summer and I haven’t been able to outrun his arm yet. . . . And believe me, I’m trying.”

“See, he’s got the things you inherit when you come out of the L.A. area, which I don’t know what that is exactly, but it’s something like the way you walk or something.”

--George Perles, watching Bret Johnson practice

OK, so is that merely an optimistic bounce in his step or a bona fide swagger?

Johnson maintains that his reputation as being cocky is fiction, dreamed up by the media.

“It’s a very weird thing that I can’t really describe,” he said. “But nobody here has written that I’m cocky. It was something the West Coast press wanted to stir up.

“I think we just won so much (in high school) that people just figured I should be cocky. When you’re on top, everyone wants a piece of you, and it just carried over to UCLA. Ever since I’ve been here, though, the word hasn’t been used. And I’ve been the same person here. It’s all a matter of how you’re perceived.”

Perles, who was an assistant coach with the Pittsburgh Steelers when they won four Super Bowls with Terry Bradshaw, would just as soon have a quarterback with a bit of an attitude.

“He kind of cruises around,” Perles says, smiling. “Hell, he knows he’s got abilities.”

Johnson, however, insists that there is a distinct difference between bravado and self-assurance.

“I’m not big-eyed on the field,” he said. “I’m not scared. I’ve been playing the position a long time. I grew up playing quarterback with my father and everything. I like the position and everything that comes with it, the pressure and all that kind of stuff. It excites me. I thrive on it. I wouldn’t play football if I wasn’t a quarterback.

“I guess I’ve got a gunslinger mentality. I don’t take too long to make up my mind. I see someone coming and I do something, probably more out of fear than anything else.”

His new teammates haven’t found Johnson to be any more or less smug than any quarterback. Most, in fact, see a long, harmonious union ahead.

“I think he could be one of the best quarterbacks to ever come through Michigan State,” said junior tailback Tico Duckett, the top returning rusher in the country. “He’s got the talent, and the experience at UCLA gives him an edge. I’m impressed. He knows what he’s doing and he’s comfortable doing it. That’s what you want in a leader.”

Johnson beat out last year’s backup, Jim Miller; redshirt freshman Mill Coleman, and junior John Gieselman for the starting job. Even if he had not won the starting job, Johnson said, he wasn’t going anywhere this time. He left UCLA, he said, because a decision was made before he and Bonds had a chance to battle for the starting spot in fall practice.

At Michigan State, all four quarterbacks took an equal number of snaps in practice until this week.

“I’m really comfortable here,” he said. “They shoot straight and treat you fair here. The year off went fast. I’m ready to go, and it should be a lot of fun. We have the potential to be a very good offense. We’ve got some very big folks on the offensive line and good running backs.

“The experts say our weakness is that we’re unproven at the quarterback spot, and if the quarterback performs well the offense should really click, so, we’ll see.”

Johnson has already proved that he can be a starting quarterback at a top 20 school. Now, if he could just lead the Spartans back to the Southland for a little New Year’s Day party in 1992 or ’93. . . .

And if the Bruins happen to be at the same party, well, that would make things just about perfect, wouldn’t it?