Talk:Bill Johnson (center)

Unattributed parts
This whole paragraph, below, is completely without attribution. It is filled with supposition (o-line coach has more influence than QB an WR coach?) and reads like an conspiratory defense of a contention without support.

"Perhaps his greatest contribution to the game of football, however, came off the field of play, when he held an invaluable role in revolutionizing offensive schemes of NFL football teams by co-creating the west coast offense. Johnson once recalled, "I was staying after a practice with Y.A., practicing snaps and going over offensive assignments. We were trying to run one route with the split ends where Y.A. couldn't make his normal five-star drop.... So, I told him, 'Y.A., why don't you try taking a three-step drop?'  So, of course, Y.A. had to put up a fit that I was telling him how to do his job. 'Why would I do that? I'll be so close to the defensive line!' So I told him, 'Y.A., if you get rid of the ball after taking a three-step drop, you won't have to worry about that defensive line!' He couldn't argue, so he went ahead and tried it. Of course, it worked, and we were the first team, the 49ers were, to use that sort of offense with short, quick routes by the receivers." Many people give full credit to former San Francisco 49ers head coach Bill Walsh full credit for the invention of the west coast offense.  However, many forget, that while Walsh was a quarterbacks and wide receivers coach with the Cincinnati Bengals from 1968–1975, Johnson was the offensive line coach, and had more influence in deciding the offensive game plan than Walsh did.  Johnson was taking over the offensive line of an expansion team, with little talent to fend off defenders from a decent-at-best quarterback, Virgil Carter.  Given the general lack of talent on the team, Johnson helped, with Walsh in support, to convince head coach Paul Brown to implement an offensive passing attack that focused on short passes and spreading the ball across the field to several different receivers, regardless of position. Walsh, when made head coach of Stanford University in 1977, implemented the west coast offense, and further popularized the scheme when made head coach of the 49ers upon his arrival in 1979. Johnson's influence on the modern game of football is undeniable. Despite the common misconception of Bill Walsh being the "father" of the west coast offense, Johnson's humility kept him from ever taking any form of credit for the birth of the offensive scheme, which sprung about from that otherwise typical day of practice with the 49ers. Bill "Tiger" Johnson is one of the most distinguished NFL veterans to have ever not been elected into the NFL Hall of Fame." — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.3.206.53 (talk) 22:48, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

Colleges
Meega, I never heard of this fella until I was doing a page on his son, who runs Heinz, and I can't recall how I was led to do THAT page. The alumni page from McCombs on the son says Tiger got his degree from SFA. Alumni pages are rah-rah, not hard-hitting journalism, so I wouldn't stake my life on the McComb page being correct. And, as you point out, it's quite conceivable that he went to more than one school. Should I phone Heinz and ask his son to confirm this, or a way to contact Tiger? ClairSamoht 04:33, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
 * The McCombs link you provided is good enough for me, and I added an inline citation to it. ×Meegs 17:50, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

There's no reason all three can't be true, but only the first two are in the article for right now. ×Meegs 17:58, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Summary:
 * There's a myriad of sources that he was a football standout at Tyler Junior College
 * The McColmes School of Business's website has a profile of his son that says he earned a degree from Stephen F. Austin State University
 * Database football indicates that he played at Texas A&M

WikiProject class rating
This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as start, and the rating on other projects was brought up to start class. BetacommandBot (talk) 18:08, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

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