Nov. 28, 2006

In Attendance: Bill Wagner (Annapolis Capital), Gary Lambrecht (Baltimore Sun), Corey Masisak (Washington Times), Bob Socci (Navy Radio), Comcast SportsNet, CBS-TV

The TV portion was not recorded

Wagner: Real quickly, let's get this out of the way; the Mobile Register reported today that you are a candidate for the Alabama job.

Johnson: Wow.

Wagner: What do you think of that?

Johnson: I don't think much about it. I haven't thought about it at all. I'm thinking about trying to get ready to play Army.

Wagner: Is it going to be annoying though that every time a job opening comes up your name is mentioned? You're like the new Bobby Petrino.

Johnson: I don't know about that. He makes a lot more money than I do. I think that's a compliment to the program, to the players and the assistant coaches. I learned a long time ago that you don't believe everything that you read.

Wagner: You don't trust us print guys?

Johnson: Oh, some of you are OK I guess. I don't know how you answer that. You would much rather have it that way than be the guy they are talking about getting rid of. It's either or in this profession.

Wagner: Scott told me that Hampton is going to dress. Can you talk about that and why that would be the case?

Johnson: Yeah, Brian asked me if he could dress and we will let him do that. As far as why he's dressing, it's because he wants too. He's a senior and he's put his time into the program. It's his last Army-Navy game and if he wants to dress then more power to him.

Wagner: How about Eddie Martin?

Johnson: He hasn't mentioned anything to me, neither he nor DuJuan Price have mentioned anything about dressing. Brian is the only one I've talked too. He asked me about it and I told him he could dress.

Wagner: Has he been traveling at all with the team?

Johnson: No. Not on the road.

Wagner: So this will be the first road game he's gone on since his injury?

Johnson: Yeah.

Wagner: You try to bring a larger contingent of guys to the Army-Navy game anyway, don't you?

Johnson: Yeah. That's why he's there. We take all the seniors no matter what.

Masisak: You've talked about it before, but can you talk about the first time you beat Army and how that win propelled the team to greater success?

Johnson: What it did was give us some momentum for the off-season and for the next season for the guys to build on. It was a big win. Any time you beat Army here it's a big win. It was a good ending to a long season. That first year I didn't think was ever going to get over. I try not to remember much about it. We had some great kids, but the games weren't much fun.

Wagner: Obviously during your tenure Army has struggled to stop the option. You guys have put up a lot of yardage and points against them. Do you have an explanation for that? Obviously they have played the option now for four years you would think they would have a pretty good handle on what you do.

Johnson: I think we've just made plays. The kids have done a good job executing. We've executed really well in the past against them, but we will see this year. We haven't gained a yard against them yet. They might come in and stone us.

Wagner: Their guys have talked about how in the past couple of years you have thrown out some sort of wrinkle for this game that they weren't ready for.

Johnson: No. We wouldn't do that. We do that in every game, at least we try to do that. It's the nature of what we do on offense. If they are going to try and play a certain play, then we are going to add a little wrinkle to it. Most of what we do has more than one option. If they are playing the one option then we try to run the other. It's just the nature of what we do.

Wagner: Do you think Coach Ross will bring up what happened earlier in the year when the two kids were held out of the first game because of eligibility issues?

Johnson: I don't know anything about that. I said at the time I didn't know anything about it. I didn't have anything to do with it.

Wagner: They think Navy was responsible.

Johnson: They can think whatever they want. Maybe Navy was, but it wasn't me. I didn't have any idea about it. The first I knew about it was when I saw it in the paper.

Wagner: In a game like this, when anything can be used for motivation, do you think it will be a factor?

Johnson: You know what? In a game like this after the first lick is delivered and the snot bubbles start flying there ain't nobody going to care about any of that.