UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI

Bearcats' LBJ standing out for more than name

Tom Groeschen
tgroeschen@enquirer.com
Bearcats defensive tackle Lyndon Johnson warms up during a practice at Nippert Stadium.

When your name is Lyndon Baines Johnson, people tend to notice. When you also are 6-foot-6 and 277 pounds, people really tend to notice.

Cincinnati, meet Lyndon Baines Johnson. This LBJ is actually Lyndon Baines Johnson Jr., a University of Cincinnati football newcomer (defensive tackle) by way of Holmes Community College in Goodman, Mississippi.

Johnson is no relation the 36th President of the United States, but you do not come to be named Lyndon Baines Johnson by coincidence. Johnson’s father, Lyndon Baines Johnson Sr., was born when the President LBJ was in office.

“I just know I’m named after my Dad, and he was named after the President,” Johnson Jr. said after a recent UC practice. “Every time they ask me my name and I tell them they kind of say, ‘You’re named after the President. Oh, that’s cool.’ ”

Johnson Jr. was born a generation after the 1963-69 White House tenure of Lyndon Johnson and thus knows of President LBJ only through books, the Internet and word of mouth.

“I just know he was President,” Johnson Jr. said.

Johnson’s father, Lyndon Baines Johnson Sr., can speak more in detail about the family name. Johnson Sr. was born in September of 1964, about two months after President Lyndon Johnson signed the historic Civil Rights Act (July 2, 1964).

Johnson Sr., speaking via telephone this past week from the family home in West Point, Mississippi, said his parents named him Lyndon Baines Johnson in the spirit of the times.

“It was more my mother, I believe,” the 50-year-old Johnson Sr. said. “I guess she liked the President, and that’s why she gave me that name. I remember hearing her talk about it a few times.”

Johnson Sr. said that heads still turn when people hear his name.

“Everywhere I go, if people don’t know me they’ll crack a nice little joke,” Johnson said, then laughed. ‘Oh, you’re the President.’ No, I’m not the President.”

That obviously did not stop Johnson Sr. and wife Della from passing the name to their son, Lyndon Baines Johnson Jr.

“He’s never said anything negative about the name,” Johnson Sr. said. “He’ll get little jokes and stuff from people, but that’s it.”

From the sports angle, Johnson Sr. (6-foot-3, now 285 pounds) was a baseball and football player in his day. Johnson Jr. inherited the genes and also is a pretty fair basketball player, having played hoops in high school and also the first of his two seasons in junior college.

“He always has been the athletic type,” Johnson Sr. said. “Coming up with all of his friends in his class, he was always the biggest guy.”

The sheer size and athletic ability are what attracted UC and several other Division I colleges to Johnson Jr., and the Bearcats had a built-in recruiting connection. UC linebackers coach Jeff Koonz is the son of the Holmes Community College head coach, also named Jeff Koonz.

“I was the point man the whole way through,” the younger Koonz said. “I was getting multiple reports from my Dad.”

Even among the big guys on the UC defensive line, Johnson stands out. His wingspan clocks in at 86 inches -- quite a distance in any league.

“You can’t coach the wingspan that he has and the physical abilities and the size that he has,” Koonz said.

A few Division I schools caught wind of Johnson during the past two years, but Holmes Community College is off the beaten path even it in its own state. Mississippi State, Troy and a few others joined UC in pursuit of Johnson, who had come to Holmes from West Point High School, Miss.

“He was a raw prospect coming out of high school,” Koonz said. “By the time of his first game of his (junior college) sophomore year, he had 3 1/2 sacks in his first game. And that was as a hybrid defensive tackle and defensive end. Hopefully the sky is the limit for him.”

Johnson is beginning his junior year at UC, and he will have two years of football eligibility for the Bearcats.

UC head coach Tommy Tuberville is experimenting with Johnson at defensive tackle rather than defensive end. Johnson is a bit tall for the customary collegiate defensive tackle, but he has worked his way into the UC playing rotation.

“We’re counting on him to play,” Tuberville said. “We usually don’t play tall guys like that at defensive tackle, but his wingspan is going to be great for knocking passes down, getting in the passing lane, being able to play over small guards.”

Tuberville, a Southerner who at age 60 well remembers the tenure of President Lyndon Johnson, said the physically imposing UC Lyndon is not hard to find on the field.

“He really stands out,” Tuberville said, then smiled. “We just call him LBJ. That makes it easy for me to remember it.”

Johnson Jr. does stand out, in more ways than one. Along with the size, he occasionally wears red beads on the tips of his braided hair. Johnson otherwise is not demonstrative, and he politely declines to smile when a photographer asks him to do so. A man of few words, Johnson is here just to play ball.

“I want to be here to help the team out, help us win a championship,” Johnson said. “My goal is to try to get to the highest level.”

Where everybody knows your name.