published on May 30, 2024 in celeb

Gone fishin with Jimmy Johnson

ISLAMORADA, Fla. — Fishing here is about water, wind, sun and sky.

It’s about the thin line between patience and frustration, and the thin line between our world and theirs.

It’s about strategy and luck. It’s about sonar and radar.

It’s about Heineken Lights. And then, if mother nature should call, it’s about peeing off the back deck.

More than anything, though, it’s about stories, telling them and creating them.

And laughs, it’s about laughs.

It’s nearly sunrise on a February morning (before anyone was compelled to practice social distancing). Three Rings is leaving soon, headed into the Atlantic Gulf Stream. Jimmy Johnson, who will be inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame later this year, isn’t waiting for anyone. Nor are the fish.

He’s bringing along Ziggy Scholz, a retired electrician who lives nearby, as well as anyone who reads The Athletic.

All aboard.

Three Rings is docked in the back of Jimmy’s compound, where he lives with his wife, Rhonda, and their teacup Yorkies Scruffy and Macy. If you want to see Jimmy these days, you have to come to his quaint village about halfway between Miami and Key West.

He goes fishing whenever he can, often by himself. And it couldn’t make him any happier.

Barnacles are showing above the water line on the pylons around the island, and the faint smell of rotten eggs is in the air. Low tide. He pulls away slowly, carefully, so he doesn’t damage his propellers.

Jimmy: “We’re trollin’ for blackfin tuna. We’ll go out about 15 miles. Occasionally we go out to Cay Sal, which is about 70 miles. Or we’ll go to Bimini, which is about 100 miles.”

A couple of minutes go by, and we are past the point where low tide is a concern. He increases speed.

Jimmy: “Over here is where we dive for lobsters. We catch a lot of them, and they’re delicious. I threw some of them in my saltwater pond, which was like 20,000 gallons. I had everythin’ in it — lionfish, sharks, eels, snapper. But (Hurricane) Irma wrecked all the lines and pumps. It’s gone now. Irma tore our place all to pieces. There was about $450,000 worth of damage. We had to replace seven doors. The dock was destroyed.”

Jimmy points to the Chartplotter. We just went over “the hump,” where the depth rises from 500 feet to 340 feet.

As the sun comes up over the horizon, I wonder about the beginnings of a Hall of Fame career.

“I was around a lot of great coaches. I tried to learn from all of ’em,” Jimmy says. “I played for Buckshot Underwood, who was Bear Bryant’s line coach at Kentucky. He was my high school coach. Great coach. Tough son of a bitch. Buckshot Underwood’s the one who kind of gave me the work ethic. And my dad. My dad was a hard workin’ guy, worked seven days a week. C.W. Johnson. Everybody says, ‘What’s the C.W. for?’ It was just C.W., that’s it. He also gave me my love of ice cream. He was superintendent of an ice cream factory, Townsend Dairy. We lived like 200 feet from the back of the factory, so we ate ice cream every night. I worked there in the summers, makin’ ice cream. Then when I was in the ninth grade, I got a full-time job washin’ all the trucks.”

Jimmy was unlike any coach he played for or worked for in the way he encouraged his players to show their personalities. It might not seem out of the ordinary now, but when he was doing it at the University of Miami in the 1980s, it was considered radical. He says studying psychology at Arkansas helped him understand that motivation differs from individual to individual.

Jimmy: “We had the playoffs already clinched one year in Dallas and won our last game but played horrible. So I went into the locker room, and I always shut the locker room door. Nobody ever came in after I shut that door. I started talkin’ to the team. Charles (Haley) was late because he was talkin’ to his buddies on the other team. So he starts bangin’ on the door. He comes in, I give him a hard look. He goes to the back of the locker room while all the players are huddled around me. I stopped talkin’ and said, ‘Charles, get your ass up here with the rest of the team.’ He stood there. ‘I said get your ass over here! Get over here!’ So he came up about two inches from my face. ‘Is this close enough?’ I think it was the next mornin’ that he came and talked to me. He said, ‘Coach, I love what you’re doin’, I love playin’ for ya. Just don’t get on me in front of the other players.’ I said, ‘I’ll try, I understand it.’ So most of my sessions with Charles were one-on-one, rather than criticizing him in front of the other players.”

Just because Jimmy allowed his players to be themselves didn’t mean he allowed them to undermine the team. He points out the Cowboys in the 1990s didn’t unravel off the field until after he left in March 1994.

“They didn’t have the White House (a party place where players allegedly indulged in drugs and women) when I was there,” Jimmy says. “I kept a pretty firm grip on ’em. I had a security guy, a former FBI guy, Ben Nix. One time he said Michael (Irvin) is hangin’ out in a place where he knew they were doin’ drugs. He said Michael wasn’t doin’ drugs, but he was hangin’ out there. So I sat down with Michael. He said, ‘Coach I’m not doin’ anythin’.’ I said, ‘You’re in the wrong place, and you are gonna get caught up with all those people,’ which eventually he did, in later years.”

Jimmy throttles down. This looks like a good spot. Other boats are nearby, looking for the same thing we’re looking for. We drop three lines, have a seat and keep talking.

Jimmy’s feuds, with Jerry Jones, Barry Switzer, Buddy Ryan, Don Shula and others, have been well documented. But he almost always found a way to get along with the players he needed to get along with.

Jimmy: “I drafted Troy (Aikman) No. 1. Obviously, he was our guy. Then I took Steve Walsh No. 1 in the supplemental draft. As soon as I took Steve, I was tryin’ to trade him. I took him for value and I ended up gettin’ a one, two and a three from New Orleans. But it caused some tension with Troy by takin’ Steve. He didn’t bitch about, but you could tell he didn’t like it. You could tell when they don’t talk to you. So I tried to break the ice. I got to talkin’ to him about saltwater aquariums and he said, ‘I was thinkin’ about puttin’ one in my house.’ Well, I had six of ’em. One Sunday mornin’ I went over and picked him up at his house. We went to a saltwater aquarium place, and I worked with him all day settin’ up his saltwater aquarium.”

It’s a little past 8 a.m. now. Time for a Heineken Light.

Jimmy was introduced to fishing as a kid in Port Arthur, Texas. His family bottom-fished from a 15-foot wooden boat on Lake Sabine. Once in a while, they pulled a 250-foot seine from a boat in the Gulf of Mexico.

Football eventually dominated his life, and fishing became something he used to do. After he left the Cowboys, he bought his first house in the Keys and a boat to go with it. His intent was to enjoy the peace of the water. Then he started fishing again. And Jimmy doesn’t do anything in a small way.

Jimmy: “(Terry) Bradshaw and I went fishin’ in Louisiana and caught a 175-pound yellowfin tuna. I caught five blue marlin fishin’ alone. The biggest one was 400 pounds. I worked the boat, worked the rod, worked the boat, worked the rod. I mean, two and a half, three hours, that’s a battle. Normally you release it, but it was such a long fight that it died, so I kept it. I called the guys at the dock and said, ‘Hey, meet me at the dock, I wanna show you somethin’.’ I sucked down about four Heineken Lights and took it to the dock.”

Jimmy reeled in some great football players in his time, too. In nine drafts, he selected 15 players who made a combined 63 Pro Bowl appearances, including Hall of Famers Aikman, Emmitt Smith and Jason Taylor.

When he was with the Cowboys, they made 51 trades in five years, more than every other team in the league combined during that period. Jimmy could work a draft like few people before or since in part because the draft trade chart he came up with at the time was one of a kind.

Jimmy: “That very first draft, I wanted to take Daryl Johnston in the second round, but from all the research I had done, he wasn’t gonna be picked high in the second round, and I had the first pick. He was closer to late second or third round. So I started callin’ around, and I made a trade with Al Davis. But I was shootin’ from the hip. I said, ‘There’s gotta be a smarter way to do this.’ So I had (Cowboys vice president) Mike McCoy, who’s a pretty good mathematician, get all the draft picks from the league over the last 10 years. We put it together and arbitrarily put a number on each pick. It helped when you were on the clock. I had an edge.”

He became known as a master drafter to the point that Rams president John Shaw asked Jimmy to run his team’s draft as a consultant in 1995.

Jimmy: “I said, ‘John, I can’t come up and run your draft. First of all, it would take me three months to get ready for a draft. And I’m not gonna move up there for three months. You’re not gonna pay me enough money. Plus, it’s not gonna work because if I’m runnin’ the draft, it’s gonna piss off (head coach) Rich Brooks, the coaches and the scouts. I’m gonna pick the players, and they’re not gonna coach ’em the right way. They’re gonna say Jimmy picked these guys.’ So I didn’t do it.”

There’s something on the line. Ziggy grasps the rod, leaves it in the rod holder and starts reeling. Ziggy says it isn’t pulling much. It’s probably not very big. After about 30 seconds of reeling, he brings in a blackfin tuna. It’s probably about six pounds, kind of small to keep. After some back and forth about whether it should be thrown back, Jimmy decides to keep it. If we get a cooler full like this one or a little bigger, we can eat like kings.

Sometimes you have to be content with whatever the water gives you. Drafts can be like that, too.

Jimmy: “I didn’t wanna take a receiver in the first round in 1991. There’s a lot of receivers. You can get receivers. But the highest-rated player on my board was Alvin Harper. I said, ‘I’m tradin’ out of this pick. I can get Alvin later.’ So I’m callin’ around, tryin’ to make a trade. I get ahold of Joe, you know, Gibbs, in Washington. I said, ‘I’ll swap ones with you if you’ll give me, whatever it was, your two or three.’ He said OK. I’m waitin’ for them to turn the card in, and the clock’s tickin’ down. They haven’t taken the pick up to the desk. Shit! Time’s runnin’ out. So I called Joe, ‘Joe! We have to make the trade, you have to take it up to the desk.’ He said, ‘Jimmy I’m sorry, the old man (owner Jack Kent Cooke) wouldn’t let me make the trade with you because it’s Dallas.’ So OK, I took Alvin Harper. I could have made the trade with somebody else, but I thought I had it done with Joe. Alvin ended up being a pretty good player for us anyway.”

That trade was one that got away. And Jimmy doesn’t like to dwell on the trades that got away, the players he passed that he shouldn’t have, or the 50-pound mahi-mahi that once took the gaff out of his hand and disappeared into the sea.

If you fish long enough, it happens.

Jimmy says the next fish is mine. Time for another beer.

Jimmy has everything it takes to fish — even a fishing haircut, a shorter version of his famous look. One room on the ground floor of the guest house in his complex is devoted to his gear, which includes more than 100 rods and reels and boxes upon boxes of rigs.

He has two boats. The one we are on is a 39-foot center console SeaVee with twin diesel inboard engines and a light blue gel coat.

The other is also a 39-foot SeaVee, but it has four outboard engines and gets up to 70 mph, which is more than 30 mph faster than the top speed of the boat we are on.

The four-engine SeaVee is the 21st boat Jimmy has owned. Each has been named Three Rings. He buys them and sells them. He’s had catamarans, Contenders, Cobias, a Pro Cat and three ocean yachts, including one that was worth nearly $2 million.

Jimmy can afford this lifestyle in part because he kills it playing the stock market. Of course, the NFL also has enabled some of his wealth.

When Jimmy was introduced as one of the new Hall of Famers at the Merlin Olsen Super Bowl luncheon on Jan. 31 in Miami, he took the microphone and said, “Thanks to Hall of Famer Jerry Jones for bringin’ me to Dallas.” Jerry, who still has not put Jimmy in the Cowboys’ ring of honor, embraced his former coach. Jimmy told him, “It’s crazy for us not to be on the same page.”

Their history together is full of lively stories, including one from when they were underclassmen backups and road roomies on the Arkansas football team preparing to play in the Sugar Bowl in New Orleans.

Jimmy: “It’s the night before the game, New Year’s Eve. They came and checked rooms and said all the coaches are out at a party. We looked at each other and said, ‘Let’s go down the street and have a couple of beers.’ We snuck out. It ends up we were in this bar. People were buyin’ us drinks, and we felt a hand on our shoulder. It was Doug Dickey, who was the offensive coordinator. He said, ‘Boys, pay for your drinks, you’re goin’ home.’ He said, ‘I’m not gonna tell coach (Frank) Broyles this, but I don’t wanna hear another word about it.’ Well, we went back to our room and Billy Moore, our starting quarterback, he knew we went out. He hollered at us, so we went into his room. Jerry starts tellin’ him the story, goin’ on. Jerry’s a great storyteller. I looked up, and there was Doug Dickey right behind him in the doorway. Obviously, Doug was thoroughly pissed. We were scared to death and didn’t sleep a wink that night, thinkin’ he was gonna send us home. But of course we played in the game the next day, and he never told Coach Broyles.”

Years later, Jimmy was involved in Jerry’s purchase of the Cowboys. Jerry told Jimmy he was interested in the team, and Jimmy introduced him to Cowboys president Tex Schramm, who took him to owner Bum Bright.

Jimmy: “I’m at the Davey O’Brien Award, and Jerry calls. He said, ‘Hey, this thing with Dallas, I may actually buy the team. But he said there’s a $5 million note on the complex out there at Valley Ranch. Can you take a look at it and see if you like it?’ So I go to Valley Ranch like I was just there to say hello. ‘Hey (head coach) Tom (Landry), hey (GM) Tex (Schramm).’ They don’ realize I’m lookin’ at the complex. So I called Jerry and say, ‘It looks like a country club, but I can deal with it.’”

It’s been a while since we caught that blackfin tuna. We’re starting to wonder if it’s going to be a good day for fishing. Ziggy brings up the possibility of putting in a line for wahoo, but Jimmy decides against it.

The calm gives us time for another Jerry story.

Jimmy: “So we go to Tokyo in 1992 to play a preseason game against the Oilers. I hated the international games. Of course, Jerry loved ’em, loved the publicity. So in the game, I pull all the good players out, Troy, all of ’em. The Oilers beat us. So afterwards, Jerry and Bud Adams go up on the podium. They give Bud Adams this great big ol’ doll for winning the game, and they give Jerry this little doll. We go straight to the airport to fly back and Jerry won’t even talk to me. He’s pissed that I pulled all those players out. So I see his wife, Gene. Gene’s the greatest gal in the world. ‘What’s wrong with Jerry?’ She said, ‘Well, he really wanted that big doll. He had to stand up there on the podium with that little doll.’ So after we won the Super Bowl that season, I went in his office and said, ‘Now Jerry, would you rather have that big doll or this Lombardi Trophy?’”

We are going to give this spot a little longer. And we’re going to crack open another beer.

It’s a glorious morning, with cottony clouds popping from the baby blue sky. The ocean is placid. There isn’t much wind, other than a pleasant breeze. Jimmy has been waiting for a day like this, and so have many others, judging from the number of boats on the water.

It isn’t always this way. Once, Jimmy entertained some of his Fox Sports bosses, including president David Hill and vice-chairman Ed Goren.

“So we got out on the water and storms roll in,” Jimmy says. “Then there’s a lightin’ strike. Another, another. We count 38 of ’em. I had wire lines out, fishin’ for wahoo. I say, ‘Hey, don’t hold onto the rods.’ Somebody could have been electrocuted, so I cut all the lines.”

On the water, there can be distress of all kinds.

Jimmy: “One time, I had Bradshaw on the boat. Ziggy and I went to the back of the boat tryin’ to clean fish. I had it on autopilot. So Terry was, you know, settin’ upfront. All of a sudden, Terry hollers, ‘Hey, there’s a boat up here!’ Some guy was fishin’ and we came so close I cut every one of his lines. I said, ‘I’m sorry, sir, sorry.’ That didn’t cut it for him. It was, ‘F you, F you.’ I said, ‘Geez, Terry, what are you doin’? Why didn’t you change directions?’ He said, ‘I don’t know how to work that autopilot.’”

And with that, Jimmy ceases the conversation. Another boat is getting a little too close, so he changes directions. He does it in plenty of time, thankfully.

And then he tells a story about a trip to Cay Sal with Ziggy and some friends.

Jimmy: “We had done enough fishin’, so we start headin’ back. We’re in international waters, off the coast of Cuba. So the coast guard sees us and starts following us. When we got back in U.S. waters, a Blackhawk helicopter comes down next to us. ‘Slow down, slow down,’ they’re telling us. They use an inflatable to board my boat. They get on and say, ‘Oh, coach, we didn’t know it was you. You got all your papers and everythin’?’ They thought we were smugglin’ Cubans (cigars).”

It’s good for a laugh now. And we could use some laughs at this point.

Jimmy: “I was at a coaching clinic in Miami, Okla., with Barry Switzer and Larry Lacewell. We were assistants at Oklahoma at the time in our 30s. We went out on the town, tryin’ to get in trouble. Stayed out till 3 in the mornin’, had breakfast and went back. We were all staying together in this little hut. They had these old gas heaters, with the flame and the asbestos in the back of it. Larry and I had to share a bed. Switzer was in his bed, and he was naked. Switzer was creepin’ over toward the little heater tryin’ to get closer to it and sayin’ it’s cold, cold, cold. Larry said, ‘Watch this, I’m gonna push him into the heater and burn his ass.’ So he started creepin’ up over the bed to get closer to him. When he was almost there, Switzer pulled out Larry’s shoe and stuck it right under Larry’s nose. He had shit in Larry’s shoe. Larry took one whiff and started throwin’ up all over the place. Then I started gaggin’, and I threw up. So for the record, Switzer has a size 9 1/2 D turd. True story.”

Jimmy can tell stories like this all day. When he was at Louisiana Tech, the quarterback was Phil Robertson, who later became famous on “Duck Dynasty.” At the University of Miami, he gave boxing promoter Don King a sideline pass. And one of his classmates at Thomas Jefferson High School was Janis Joplin. In fact, she sat behind him in history class.

Jimmy: “We knew she was smokin’ marijuana. Of course, the football players, we beat up guys who were smokin’ cigarettes, much less marijuana. She wore black leotards. Back then it was beatnik and all that stuff. So I called her Beat Weeds because she was a beatnik. She used to get mad at me all the time. But we were fine. It was all in fun. Her sister wrote a book and said I bullied her, but I didn’t bully her. Her sister said, ‘The word was you had sex with Janis.’ I said, ‘That’s not true. I could have, but I didn’t.’”

In the distance, we can see other boaters having some success going for sailfish. Jimmy isn’t interested. He’s caught many of them over the years, and they are catch-and-release fish. He’d rather find dinner. Besides, sailfish swim back and forth and tangle the lines.

We have been trolling for more than two hours now, with only one borderline keeper in our ice chest.

He looks around and agrees with Ziggy that none of the other boats in the area are doing much better with blackfin tuna. Jimmy decides to try shallower water.

We keep the lines out and go slowly, looking for the edge of the Gulf Stream, where the fish usually are plentiful. The edge is identifiable by a slight color change in the water.

As we ride, I ask Jimmy about being voted into the Hall of Fame. He said he wondered if it would ever happen because he coached in the NFL for only nine years.

When Hall of Fame president David Baker surprised him on air at halftime of the Seahawks-Packers playoff game, Jimmy was overcome with emotion and barely able to speak. Jimmy has asthma, and as soon as he was off the air, he had to pull out his inhaler. Later that night, Jimmy, Bradshaw, Curt Menefee and other crew members celebrated at a famous West Hollywood spot.

Jimmy: “We went to Dan Tana’s, a little Italian restaurant. The place was packed. Everybody was comin’ up and congratulatin’ me, making toasts. Then Billy (Gibbons) with ZZ Top was there. He came over, introduced himself, and we talked a few minutes. Eventually, we got in the car to go back to the hotel, and Billy comes out. He said, ‘Can I get a ride home?’ ‘Where you live, Billy?’ So we take him to this mansion. ‘Y’all wanna come in and have a drink?’ ‘No, we’re good, Billy.’”

We are past the point where the edge should have been, and we never saw it. It’s 85 degrees now, too warm to expect fish to be biting. Jimmy makes the call to head back. The beauty of living in the Keys is there’s always tomorrow to fish.

Jimmy, 76, is all about enjoying the time he has remaining. He has more time thanks to the television show Survivor.

Jimmy: “I love Survivor, so I did the video and tried out. It’s amazin’ all the tests they put you through. Psychological test for four hours, a nuclear stress test. Then the Survivor doctor called and said, ‘You need to see your cardiologist. One artery is 100 percent blocked. The other is 70 percent blocked.’ I went in the hospital the next day. They put a stent in the 70 percent blocked one. They put me on medicine. I lost 23 pounds. My cholesterol went from 220 to 110. I got healthier. Then they said, ‘You still want to be on the show?’ I said yeah. Then I got on it (in 2010). No sleep. Bugs. I lost 18 pounds in 17 days. They were decidin’ who was gettin’ voted off. I said, ‘I’m not gonna get upset if you vote me off.’” (He was sent home on Day 8).

During his coaching life, he never gave much thought to anything other than football. That changed in 1999 when he was staring at his mother, Allene, in her casket. At the time, his son Chad was struggling with alcohol addiction.

Jimmy had made many sacrifices for his success. He didn’t want to make any more.

After the season, he retired from the Dolphins and left the NFL for good. Eventually, Chad entered a halfway house and became sober. With his father’s help, Chad opened three treatment centers in St. Petersburg that have saved hundreds of lives.

After decades of victories, it was Jimmy’s most significant.

When you’ve lived a life like Jimmy has, and seen the things he has, you find something in the glistening blue-violet water that you can’t find anywhere else.

Life is good.

Except for the fishing today.

Jimmy docks Three Rings and Ziggy tosses the blackfin tuna back into the water. By itself, it wouldn’t even make a hearty meal for one.

“It’s one of our bad days,” Jimmy says. “But by not catchin’ many fish, we were able to tell a lot of stories.”

And really, fishing is about the stories anyway.

(Photos: Dan Pompei / The Athletic)

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