Dan Wolken

USA TODAY Sports

ATLANTA — Paul Johnson had already been at Navy for four years when he placed a call to Roger Inman, his old do-everything man from Georgia Southern. They had known each other since their early 20s when Johnson was starting his long climb up the coaching ladder and Inman was doing whatever the program needed from driving buses to selling tickets, from looking after the equipment to even patching up injured players.

So when Johnson called in 2006 — by then, more successful and wealthier than ever — ranting and raving about how Georgia Southern's first-year coach Brian VanGorder was trying to undo the triple option offense that had lifted the program to prominence, Inman knew it had wounded Johnson's football soul.

"VanGorder had made some comments that he didn't think too highly of the offense, and Paul called me up and said, 'I need to talk to (athletics director) Sam (Baker) and get Georgia Southern on the schedule,'" Inman said. "I said, 'Why do you want to play us?' And he said, 'Because I want to beat the hell out of Brian VanGorder.' "

On Saturday night, Johnson will lead No. 12 Georgia Tech into an ACC championship game against undefeated and No. 2 Florida State facing arguably the greatest opportunity of his career.

Though it's a bit of a longshot, a win could sneak Georgia Tech and its old-school triple option into the College Football Playoff. Even with a loss, the Yellow Jackets are probably headed to the Orange Bowl. No matter what happens, another season of exceeding expectations is in the books, and a contract extension is on the way.

But even at age 57 with 164 victories as a head coach and millions of dollars in the bank, the essence of Paul Johnson has never faded. The stage may be bigger and the stakes may have gotten higher, but in the end, what drives him to figure out how to beat Georgia and Florida State is no different from when he was a 24-year old offensive coordinator who never played a down of college football trying to convince anyone — including the players he coached — that his way works.

"There are things Paul harbors, I believe, from years ago that still grate on him," Navy athletics director Chet Gladchuk said. "The thought that his offense wouldn't work at Navy or that it wouldn't work at Georgia Tech was all he needed. When there's a disbelief in his ability to deliver, Paul has got a fuse about him that takes him to another level."

Three decades later, that fuse still triggers like a reflex. Just last Saturday, after arguably his greatest triumph in seven years at Georgia Tech, Johnson was asked about how his team had dominated time of possession in the second half of a 30-24 overtime victory at Georgia.

"Sometimes a high school offense will help you like that," he quipped, and it wasn't an accident or a slip of the tongue. On Tuesday, he admitted that even after all these years, there was still some pleasure in administering a good old scoreboard education for those who dismiss or discredit the offense he's won with Saturday after Saturday, all the way to the highest level of college football.

"Why would I poke back after being poked for 30 years?" Johnson said. "I don't have any idea."

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Every successful coach, on some level, is driven by doubt. But usually, when the wins become impressive enough and the accomplishments start stacking up, external skepticism morphs into admiration and probably an inappropriate level of reverence.

But that turn never happened for Johnson. Maybe it's because he has little use for showmanship or recruiting rankings or anything he considers window dressing to the job of winning football games. Maybe it's because he can come off as curmudgeonly, even though those who know him best say there is genuine warmth underneath the exterior. Maybe it's because his competitors over the years have never been terribly fond of Johnson's smartest-man-in-the-room routine.

"You question him, he's going to get his backbone up," said former Hawaii coach Bob Wagner, who bought a ticket to Georgia Southern's I-AA national championship victory against Arkansas State while on a recruiting trip in December, 1986 and hired Johnson as his offensive coordinator shortly thereafter. "He always had a lot of confidence in himself. He was competitive, bright and wanted to prove you wrong."

The remarkable part is he still has to do it, which is not a cliché when you consider that before this season there was talk around Georgia Tech that he needed to produce or else — a notion supported by the fact that athletics director Mike Bobinski did not offer to extend Johnson's contract, which has just two years remaining, until this week.

Last winter, a report surfaced from Bruce Feldman of FoxSports.com that Johnson was unhappy after the Yellow Jackets finished 7-6 and wanted the school to buy him out. Vad Lee, a ballyhooed recruit who started at quarterback last season, transferred to James Madison. At the team's preseason media day this summer, Johnson got into a testy exchange with a local columnist over what the expectations at Georgia Tech should be.

Meanwhile, all the old slings and arrows about how Johnson couldn't recruit to the triple option or that it wasn't exciting enough for fans or that he didn't beat Georgia enough (1-5 before last weekend) were given new life after four decent, but not great seasons.

To this day, Johnson bristles at the suggestion that 7-5 is a bad season at Georgia Tech, pointing anyone to the past 50 years of history at a school with tough academic standards and average financial resources. If you take away 1990, when the Yellow Jackets caught a perfect storm and shared the national championship with Colorado, he's right.

"When I listened to commentators on TV or fans at Georgia Tech, I'm amazed at how they continue to question what a great coach they have. To me it's laughable," said Tracy Ham, Johnson's first big-time option quarterback as offensive coordinator at Georgia Southern, who is now an assistant athletic director at the school.

"But he loves the fight. I think it's a slap in the face to him when people talk about what his offense can and can't do. Jimbo Fisher won't get asked this week about whether his offense works, but (Johnson) still has to answer for it as if his offense is under attack. The numbers defend themselves."

Since Johnson has been at Georgia Tech, the Yellow Jackets have finished lower than fourth nationally in rushing offense only once — last season. Johnson's six teams at Navy were regularly in the top three. Some will throw it a little more, some a little less. Defensively, his teams have been up and down, and the fact that Georgia Tech is 10th in turnover margin with 27 takeaways this season has a lot to do with why they got out of the 7-5 rut and finished 10-2, Johnson's best season since winning the ACC championship in 2009.

But at the end of the day, the system never stops.

"It amuses me every year that everybody says 'Oh, the old triple option is antiquated,' but he's kept it very, very relevant," said former Air Force coach Fisher DeBerry, who first knew Johnson as a college student at Western Carolina who would come to Appalachian State and watch DeBerry's practices.

"He stayed true to what he believes in, and he's feared by everybody he plays. I think they have a chance to cost Florida State a lot of money because they've got five days to prepare and it's a tough job to recognize the option and how fast it happens to you. That's why he's run it as many years as he has and the reason I stayed true to it too, because I thought it was the vehicle that gave our kids the greatest chance to win."

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And like most savants, Johnson has his quirks. He doesn't use a play sheet, calling the game on the fly with every nuance of his offense stored in his head. In his first stint at Georgia Southern, Inman said, Johnson clashed so much with head coach Erk Russell that they rigged the headphone system so that Russell wouldn't know the playcalls until the quarterback was ready to snap the ball.

"He liked it done his way. He's in charge," Inman said. "You know that from Day 1, and you always know where you stand with him."

And that game he wanted against Georgia Southern and Brian VanGorder? Yeah, it ended up on Navy's schedule, but Johnson never coached in it. By then, he was long gone to Georgia Tech. Before he left, though, Gladchuk tried to make one final plea, telling Johnson that if he kept winning at the Naval Academy, with the aura around that program, he'd be a lock for the College Football Hall of Fame.

Looking back, maybe that strategy chased him away.

"His thought process might have been, hey, I'll show everybody at Navy I can be a Hall of Fame coach from Georgia Tech," Gladchuk said with a laugh. "I never thought for a moment it had to do with resources or money. It was irrelevant to him. The juice for Paul is the greatest challenge he can assume."

As long as people keep doubting Georgia Tech and wondering when the ACC is going to solve that offense, Johnson may never run out of them.