Bobby Johnson has had it with the foozball

When a college football coach resigns less than two months before the season opener, he’s either sick, been caught doing something bad or he’s very fed up. In the case of Vanderbilt’s Bobby Johnson, who hung up his whistle today, he’s a choir boy who’s got a clean bill of health.

That leaves only one reason why Johnson called it quits out of the clear blue…the dude has had it. Can you blame him?

He was a respectable 60-36 in eight seasons at Furman, but you can pretty much flip those numbers to get his totals for the last eight years at Vanderbilt: 29-66. At this point in his career, the guy was probably as frazzled as Coach Klein was at South Central Louisiana State before Bobby Boucher showed up.

Vanderbilt’s always been the exception in the SEC, and not just by being the league’s only private institution.  They’ve made the conscious choice to stay the league’s academic flagship instead of throwing a ton of resources into athletics.  Hell, the school doesn’t even have an athletic department, all the teams operate in the division of student life.

I’m not going to knock Vanderbilt’s approach because the powers that be at the school are more than satisfied with the current setup.  Hey, whatever blows your hair back, people.

But for a football coach who has to operate with stricter academic standards than his conference brethren, the job isn’t very easy.  And I haven’t even touched on the superior facilities and legions of wealthy boosters that serve to further widen the gap between the rest of the SEC and Vandy.

For the last eight seasons, Bobby Johnson pretty much got his skull caved in by the rest of the league.  Oh, there were a few bright spots provided by guys like Jay Cutler and Earl Bennett.  But Vanderbilt never did shed its bottom feeder status under his watch.  When you work your tail off and can’t make any headway, that gets old pretty fast.

So have a great retirement, Coach Johnson.  You put eight years into one of the toughest jobs in college football.