Georgia Tech coach Paul Johnson gives interviews from time to time. These interviews are conducted in a dialect many Americans do not speak so we translate them for you, the EDSBS reader, in order to further your understanding of college football's dynamic personalities and colorful local personalities.
Do you see the winner of this game moving into the Top-25?
"Oh, I don't know about that. That's for somebody else to worry about. I'm just worried about trying to get our football team ready to play this week against a good team."
Translation: "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to soil the doilies on this table, it's just that there's all this dirt on my hands from doing the actual work of coaching a football team. A sharecropper doesn't worry about reading the almanac, because he knows whatever time the sun comes up he's gonna be whipping a mule trying to scrape ten dollars out of the hard, indifferent earth, son. I'm whipping that mule, son. What are you doing right now?"
(re: GT's ACC win streak:) Do you think NC State would mention that streak?
"I don't know. Everybody handles those things differently, it's probably not something I would have talked about. I wouldn't have known it probably, but to each their own, I guess."
Translation: "I assume other coaches are too busy handing out Midol and primping in front of mirrors to do that kind of bullshit. If you'll excuse me, I've got to go beat up an anvil with my bare hands just to keep it in its place."
How disconcerting is it, as a coach, to see what happened with Michigan State head coach Mark Dantonio suffering a heart attack?
"I haven't thought about it in that aspect."
Translation: "Allow me to share a special poem with you. It's by Emily Dickinson. It goes: 'Because I could not stop for death, I turned around and pistolwhipped it and told that sonofabitch I was busy, and he ain't come around since, and when he does I'll be ready with a sock full of nails and my eye-gougin' thumbnail sharpened.'"
I mean, I think that it gets a little more publicity because while Mark's not the first 54-year-old man who's had a heart attack, but you don't read about the other people in the paper because they're not in the spotlight.
Translation: "People die every day. Don't act like it's special, Phyllis."
Is there stress involved? Yeah, but there's probably stress involved for the guy who's trying to make a living every day and doesn't know if his job's gonna be gone either....
Translation: Paul Johnson shows a rare moment of empathy for [NAME REDACTED] here.
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