Calling His Own Signals : Charles Johnson Building a Future for Himself Without Football at Colorado

His national championship ring, the one with eight tiny diamonds assembled in the shape of a No. 1, is the size of a truck lug nut. Charles Johnson wears it proudly.

He ought to, since it was Johnson who made possible Colorado’s controversial claim as the nation’s best team of 1990.

Think about it: A season ago, it was Johnson, Colorado’s second-string quarterback, who replaced injured Darian Hagan and helped preserve a 20-14 victory over Washington, ranked 12th at the time.

It was Johnson, all 5 feet 6 and 165 pounds of him, who squirmed across the goal line in the Buffaloes’ infamous “fifth down” victory over Missouri. The bizarre outcome meant the difference between a chance at the national title and a 3-2-1 record.

It was Johnson who later led the Buffaloes to an Orange Bowl victory over Notre Dame and, with it, a half share of the mythical national championship.

Johnson did all of this and more. He appeared on the “The Tonight Show With Johnny Carson” and traded small talk with Jay Leno about girlfriends. He took care of a younger brother. And then, with a season’s eligibility remaining and Hagan begging him to consider a plan that would change the face of the Colorado starting backfield, Johnson quit.

He had accomplished all that he wanted and more. So he walked away from the game, taking with him that oversized ring and a lifetime’s worth of precious memories. By doing so, he left behind almost as many puzzled faces, all wondering the same thing: Why?

If you have to ask, you don’t know Johnson. He has gone from student-athlete to student-everything. Any more new responsibilities and Johnson will need his own page in the Colorado yearbook.

The Johnson post-football checklist: student activist, budding politician, ESPN sideline commentator, legal guardian, aspiring sports agent, soon-to-be law student, junior league football coach and--get this--fan.

“I want people to say Charles Johnson was a guy who was here , that he wasn’t a bump on a log,” he said.

Not to worry. If anything, Johnson is hyperactive. His afternoons are now spent in a less-than-affluent neighborhood of Aurora, a suburb of Denver. There he coaches the Lions, a tough little team of 12- and 13-year-old players who seem to hang on every word spoken by Johnson, the former star quarterback, and Arthur Walker, a former Colorado and All-Big Eight Conference defensive tackle whose booming voice could put the fear of God in anyone, especially the well-meaning Lions.

“I’m mad,” Walker said to his tiny defensive players during a recent practice. “Somebody’s going to pay me today.”

At that moment, another player jogged onto the field. He was 15 minutes late.

“Where you been?” Walker asked.

“With my mama,” the player said.

“Give me a lap,” Walker said.

Meanwhile, Johnson almost never raised his voice during the two-hour workout. Instead, he quietly instructed his players on the do’s and don’ts of blocking. Having long since discarded their real names, Johnson called his players by nicknames, such as “Wanna-Be,” “Meek,” “Macho” and “Wa-Wa.”

The players couldn’t have cared less, of course. They were there to learn the game, and Johnson was more than happy to teach them.

“It’s just unbelievable what he’s done,” said Gil Chapman, who organized the team, then enlisted Johnson’s help. “I’ll tell you, when I was 22 years old, I wasn’t giving anything back to the community. He does. How many people you know who do that? He’s really concerned about the youths.”

That’s no surprise. In 1989, Johnson, one of seven children, became the legal guardian of his younger brother, Chris. With his mother’s hesitant blessings, Chris moved from Detroit to Boulder and enrolled at the city’s Fairview High.

The reason for the move was simple: Charles was worried that his brother might not make it out of Detroit’s Cooley High with his life, to say nothing of a diploma.

“It’s a battle zone,” Charles said of northwest Detroit. “People were getting killed once a week, twice a week. People in the public schools were getting shot dead, stabbed. . . . It was crazy.”

Random police sweeps were common. Lockers were searched. Students were patted down. Metal detectors were used to find an alarming number of knives and guns.

“That’s the kind of environment (Chris) was in,” Charles said. “He was predestined to fail in that environment.”

It took a while, but Charles finally persuaded his mother to let Chris come to Boulder. Now, they wonder why they didn’t think of it earlier.

“When I left Detroit and came here, it was just me and him,” Chris said. “I thought I had lost my parents, my friends. But he stepped up everywhere. He became my best friend, my parent, my tutor, my counselor. I respect him a lot for everything he’s done for me.”

Charles wouldn’t have had it any other way. Brotherly love is like that.

“I wanted Chris to have the opportunity . . . to go to college,” Charles said. “That’s been my goal. For a black man, it’s critical. Look at it across the board, it is critical that we go on to the next level. High school is not enough. It’s not enough.”

Charles is happy to report that Chris, a standout basketball player, hopes to attend Colorado or Michigan State next fall. Since the move to Boulder, Chris’ grade-point average has risen from a dismal 0.83 at Cooley to a 2.2 at Fairview.

Meanwhile, Charles Johnson has his own plans. He wants to develop his own sports agency and be able to recruit clients in time for next year’s NFL draft. The man doesn’t stop.

On occasion, however, he does slow down. For instance, not long ago, a friend sent Johnson a videotape of the Orange Bowl victory over Notre Dame. For the first time in months, Johnson sat and watched himself become part of Colorado football lore. When it was finished, he could manage only two words: “Thank God.”

Johnson had entered the Notre Dame game with an injured hamstring. He wasn’t sure he could run, much less relieve Hagan in a pinch. But when Hagan suffered a ruptured tendon in his left knee shortly before halftime, Johnson was asked to perform another tiny Colorado miracle.

Notre Dame led, 6-3, at the start of the third quarter. Colorado got the ball, and soon Johnson got his orders from the sideline: Try a sprint-out pass.

Johnson took the snap, dashed left and then let loose a tumbling, bumbling pass that looked as if it had been heaved, not thrown. Soon thereafter, Colorado punted.

It got worse. After each Colorado offensive play, Johnson heard one of the Notre Dame defensive players yelling at him.

“Hey, Johnson!” the voice said. “Hey, Country Day, remember me from Orchard Lakes?”

It was Irish linebacker Scott Kowalkowski, whom Johnson had played against in high school in Michigan. Kowalkowski was an Orchard Lakes man, Johnson a Country Day graduate.

Kowalkowski wouldn’t keep quiet. Finally, Johnson yelled back: “Yeah, I remember you!”

What a strange evening. Kowalkowski kept up his nonstop chatter. Notre Dame linebacker Michael Stonebreaker actually asked Colorado offensive lineman Joe Garten if he wanted to stop by later for a beer: “Hey, Joe, I’ve got a 12-pack.”

And then there was Notre Dame nose tackle Chris Zorich, who played as if it were his last game--ever.

“I’ve never seen a guy play so hard,” Johnson said. “The guy was always on the ball.”

At one point, Johnson said, he watched fullback George Hemingway complete a block on the wired-for-sound Zorich. A moment later, Zorich was on the ground punching Hemingway in the stomach.

“I’m thinking, ‘Man, what’s going on here?’ ” Johnson said.

By game’s end, Notre Dame was wondering the same thing. Johnson threw five more passes and completed them all. And when Buffalo running back Eric Bieniemy scored on a one-yard run late in the third quarter, Colorado had the lead and, ultimately, the victory.

And guess who offered the warmest, most heartfelt postgame congratulations? None other than Zorich.

A few days later, Johnson was at his mother’s house in Detroit when the phone rang. It was the Colorado sports information department with a message: Carson wanted him.

Johnson didn’t believe it. But when producers of the show later contacted him about airline reservations, Johnson knew it was no prank. As part of the deal, he asked that his mom, who had never been on an airplane, be allowed to come with him to Los Angeles.

Once there, Johnson was introduced to Leno, the show’s host that night. Leno had a list of possible questions, including one about Johnson’s love life.

“Jay, man, no girlfriend questions,” Johnson said. “I’m from Detroit and I go to school in Colorado.”

“OK,” Leno said.

Then, minutes before the show began, Carson himself stopped by the makeup room to say hello to Johnson. So did sidekick Ed McMahon and band leader Doc Severinsen.

Johnson followed actress Marlo Thomas on the guest list. Seated next to Leno, Johnson answered several quick questions about the Orange Bowl victory and even suggested that Georgia Tech deserved half of the national championship. Feeling good about his answers, Johnson crossed his legs, settled back into his seat and then listened in horror as Leno hesitated and then asked, “So, do you have a girlfriend?”

“Excuse me?” Johnson said.

“Who’s the special lady in your life?” Leno persisted.

The politician in Johnson took control. He gestured to his mom in the audience, earning applause from everyone in the studio.

Walking off the stage later, Johnson turned to Leno.

“Hey, Jay, I thought no girlfriend questions,” Johnson said.

“Yeah, I kind of got you there,” Leno said.

When he returned to Colorado for school, Johnson was asked a more pressing question: Would he play football again? After all, Johnson had hinted that the Orange Bowl game was his last as a Buffalo.

Worried that Johnson was rushing his decision, Colorado Coach Bill McCartney counseled patience.

“I said, ‘Not so fast. Let’s not rush into anything,’ ” McCartney said.

McCartney had a soft spot for Johnson, a former walk-on player who chose Colorado on the recommendation of Country Day Coach Joseph D’Angelo.

“(Johnson’s) high school coach told me, ‘He’ll grow on you,’ and he did,” McCartney said.

Shortly before the beginning of spring workouts, Johnson made his choice. He was through with football.

“He didn’t waver, so I’m sure he did the right thing,” McCartney said. “He’s a versatile kid. He’s got a lot of options and he knows it.”

One of those options was to run for president of the Colorado student government. A former president of the school’s Black Student Alliance, Johnson was no stranger to campus politics. In 1989, he organized an anti-apartheid march that began with more television crews in attendance than demonstrators. But by the time Johnson had walked from the Black Student Alliance office to the university’s administration building, the number of marchers had grown from five to about 250.

“One of the highlights of my college career,” Johnson said.

Johnson’s try at the university’s student-body presidency was less successful, technically. He was disqualified from the campaign because of a little-known clause in the school constitution that said continuing education students who had not yet paid their university fees--which he hadn’t--would be declared ineligible for office. Johnson, who promptly paid his fees, later organized a petition to amend the rule. It didn’t work.

Johnson’s name remained on the ballot but only because it was too late to change the voting lists. So what happened? Johnson’s ticket won the controversial election by almost 500 votes. Three days later, the university’s election commissioner ruled the results invalid.

“Like everyone said, ‘Welcome to the world of politics,’ ” Johnson said. “It was ridiculous, but the results, well, that said enough in itself to me.”

That done, Johnson charted his future without football. The law school entrance exams were a possibility. So were several internship offers. The last thing on his mind was putting on a helmet and pads--that is, until Hagan, fully recovered from his knee injury, made one final attempt to lure his friend back to the team.

Hagan’s idea was this: Johnson would become the full-time starter at quarterback, Hagan would move to tailback and everybody would live happily ever after.

The suggestion had its merits. With Bieniemy gone to the NFL, Hagan was probably the best runner the team had. And Hagan had made no secret of his desire to become a tailback. Before practices began, you could almost always find Hagan with the running backs.

Johnson said he would think about it. After an appropriate delay, Johnson said his decision stood.

“I didn’t think Coach Mac would ever take (Hagan’s idea) seriously,” he said.

Maybe . . . maybe not. After all, who would have thought McCartney would grant Hagan’s request to return punts this fall? But he did. Who knows what he would have said to Hagan’s other offer?

No matter, Johnson said. The truth was, he simply didn’t want to spend another year on a football field.

“I have one more year of college left,” said Johnson, who retains his scholarship for his fifth year. “This university is huge, and there are a lot of things going on. With six hours a day spent on football, you miss out.”

Johnson has visited two Colorado practices and felt a bit out of place each time. On occasion, he finds himself looking at his watch in the late afternoon, wondering about the daily football workout. Then he remembers how hot it got in those sessions, how heavy his equipment was, how often he vowed to do something else.

“I love it,” he said of his non-football life.

Still, there are those moments when even his closest friends and his brother, Chris, aren’t sure if Johnson can do without football. Watch him in his car--he is forever tuning the radio to sports talk shows.

Watch him during an interview with a reporter--Johnson can’t resist the temptation of turning on a nearby television and watching a game between Arkansas and Miami.

And watch him when a friend asks: “One question, man. Do you miss it?”

Johnson stares straight ahead.

“Yeah,” he replies.

Saturday, when Colorado played Wyoming at Boulder, ESPN enlisted Johnson as a sideline reporter for two quarters. During a timeout, he walked over to Chris, who was sitting in the front row of Colorado’s Folsom Field, covered the microphone and said, “I wish I was out there.”

Truth be known, the Lions of the Aurora Youth League are glad he quit when he did. They need him and, in a wonderful sort of way, he needs them.

Never was that more evident than during a recent practice. Midway through a drill, Macho sent Meek flying with a textbook tackle. Everyone was fine, of course--except Johnson.

As 17 boys stood in the middle of a field, the afternoon sun beating down on their scratched black helmets, Johnson began jumping up and down with joy. No one said a peep. No one had to.