‘Let’s go home’: Longtime administrator, Spokane native John Johnson returns to Big Sky Conference

Nearly six months at his new job, John Johnson has been doing a whole lot of listening in the Portland State community.

He’s been listening to coaches. Listening to staff. Listening to a student advisory committee.

It’s not that Johnson – Portland State’s athletic director since May – lacks experience. That’s something he has plenty of with a long stretch at Washington State and other significant stops at Nebraska, Weber State and Eastern Washington.

But the Spokane native has learned plenty in his 37 years in athletics administration, and one of those things is to lean on the expertise of others as well as his own experience as he looks to create “continuity and consistency” in the program.

On Saturday, Johnson will be back at Roos Field in Cheney to watch the football team from the program he now leads play against the football team for the program at which he earned his degrees and had his first job in athletics administration.

“(After leaving Nebraska), my wife (Lisa) and I said, ‘Let’s go home,’ and going home was Portland State,” Johnson said on Wednesday. “I started in the Big Sky, and I want to end in the Big Sky.”

Prior to that stop in Nebraska, Johnson had spent his entire life living and working in the West. He earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Eastern Washington in the early 1980s and then spent 12 years working the EWU athletic department – as the assistant athletics director, the associate AD and finally the Director of Athletics. He held that post from 1993 to 1997.

At that point, he left and took the same position at Weber State. During his time there from 1997 to 2004, he was responsible for (among other duties) upgrading the university’s facilities, including a suite and press box renovation at Stewart Stadium.

“What he did at Weber was remarkable,” said Bill Moos, the former WSU and Nebraska athletic director.

Moos and Johnson were friends by then. Soon, they would be colleagues.

“He once asked what was missing on his resume, and I said you need an FBS job as a senior associate just to fill that little blank,” Moos said. “Then, you’re ready for anything.”

In 2004, Jim Sterk hired Johnson to be the senior associate athletics director at Washington State, and Moos inherited Johnson when Moos became WSU’s AD in 2010.

“He’s so knowledgeable of all aspects of the business, the internal and external,” Moos said.

Moos put Johnson in charge of overseeing a number of projects, including the Martin Stadium renovation, over the next seven years.

Moos left WSU to become Nebraska’s AD in 2017. After the dust settled and Moos had the lay of the land, he persuaded Johnson to come to Lincoln to be his chief of staff.

First, though, he hired Lisa Johnson, John’s wife, to coach Nebraska’s golf team. The head golf coach at Idaho from 2007 to 2019, Lisa Johnson led the Huskers’ women’s golf team to its best conference tournament finish (second place) since 1984.

It was a great time in Nebraska, John Johnson said. At the same time, both had strong ties to the Northwest: Lisa graduated from Gonzaga, where she was an all-conference golfer, and John graduated from East Valley High School and played football at Montana State and at Eastern.

The opportunity to move back with their 12-year-old twins was well-timed. Portland State announced his hiring on March 15, and he started work May 1.

Back in the Big Sky

Johnson is back in a conference he knows well at a time when college sports are going through considerable change. The NCAA’s changes to its name, image and likeness policies (NIL) is one. Another is the expansion of transfer waivers and the specter of conference realignment. All that is set against a pandemic that impacted athletic departments across the country in any number of ways, not the least of which was financial.

As far as the impact of those factors, Portland State is not that much different than its Big Sky peers. But there are unique aspects of the university’s location. It is among the largest markets in the conference, which Johnson said is both a challenge and an opportunity.

“We’re coming back (as a city), and Portland State – and particularly Portland State athletics – needs to be part of that solution and help the city come back,” Johnson said.

Johnson’s charge from the university includes advancing the competitiveness of its athletic programs, growing philanthropic support and identifying a path for the financial sustainability of the department.

“We’re developing a strategic plan for long-term sustainability and long-term success,” Johnson said.

Yet for as much as some things are different in the Big Sky than they were 18 years ago, much, he said, remains the same. Membership and academic standards remain consistent, he said, and the athletic directors – with whom he met earlier this week at the conference’s headquarters near Salt Lake City – work well together.

“Overall, we’ve had like institutions with like values, and that’s why we’ve been strong,” Johnson said. “We’ve tried to keep the conference above individuals.”

Resources at a Big Sky school might be different than they are at a Power Five program, Johnson said, but there are many of the same issues.

Johnson, then, will continue to approach his job at Portland State with the same process he did at previous stops: review, evaluate, prioritize and try to give student-athletes, coaches and staff the resources they need to be successful.

Over the past 17 years, Johnson filled that blank on his resume, as Moos suggested. Now he’s in a conference that Moos called the “premier FCS conference in the country,” and Moos said he’s glad to see the Spokane native is leading a program again.

“It really fits John in this stage of his life, and he has so much to offer,” Moos said. “Portland State is very fortunate to have him leading their athletic program.”