It’s Only a Game

Oklahoma’s red dirt has a way of shaping people. It teaches work, endurance, and the belief that nothing worth having comes easy. Darrel Johnson is an unmistakable product of Oklahoma: formed by old wooden gym floors, small towns, big dreams, and a faith that never fully left, even when tested to its breaking point.

Johnson’s basketball resume spans decades and reaches levels that few coaches ever touch. An Oklahoman through and through, he rose from high school coaching to national prominence, winning two NAIA national championships and earning two National Coach of the Year honors at Oklahoma City University.

In Oklahoma, when you win consistently enough, the world eventually calls. That call carried Johnson to Division I basketball at Baylor University and later into the NBA, where he spent more than two decades in scouting and front-office roles with multiple franchises.

In “It’s Only a Game,” Johnson does not write a conventional sports memoir. Instead, he traces the full arc of a human life. His climb. His fall. And his long, humbling return to faith after everything else was stripped away. It’s not a book about wins and losses. It is a reflection on ambition, identity, faith, and what remains when the wins are gone.

The early chapters of his life read like a familiar Oklahoma success story. Sports provided structure, discipline, and belonging. Baseball first, then basketball. Work ethic rewarded. Failure answered with effort. By the time Johnson reached elite levels of competition, winning had become normal. When winning becomes normal, it can quietly take over one’s identity.

Johnson writes honestly about that shift. Basketball did not simply become something he loved. It became who he was.

“I had everything,” Johnson said, in an interview with The Gazette. “Money. A great family. A career. ESPN had me as one of the top rising coaches in America. And then I had nothing. Literally nothing.”

In 1994, Johnson became the first major college basketball coach in NCAA history to be indicted by a federal grand jury over recruiting and eligibility violations. In a single moment, the climb stopped. He was fired from his position at Baylor. His contracts vanished; his reputation dissolved. The future he had built collapsed under its own weight.

“I hit rock bottom,” Johnson said. “And I had nowhere else to go. I couldn’t pull myself out. I had to rely on the grace of God.”

Johnson’s initial introduction to Christianity was in high school, when a teammate invited him to a Baptist revival in Oklahoma City. However, the defining moment in his relationship to God came after his indictment.

“It’s Only a Game” is not about a God who rescues on demand. Rather, it is about a God who remains.

After a long and public trial, the jury returned a not guilty verdict. But, the damage was already done. Johnson returned to Oklahoma not to restart, but to survive. He came back to the red dirt that made him, this time on his knees.
“I truly thought I was going to coach again,” he said. “I thought I had a clean slate. But that wasn’t God’s plan.”

What followed was surrender, not strategy. The difference matters.

His family, who had been crowded out by ambition, came back into focus. Johnson writes candidly about regret, particularly as it relates to the intertwining of his career and identity.

“I thought my responsibility was to provide financially,” he said. “But I made basketball my mistress. Everything else became incidental.”

One of the book’s most powerful turns comes when Johnson describes coaching his son. What began as a low-paying teaching job at a small Christian school became the most meaningful chapter of his coaching life. “The highlight of my coaching career,” he said without hesitation.

The gym was no longer a cathedral to ambition. It became a place of presence, of fatherhood, and of restored priorities.

“It’s Only a Game” is about what remains when winning is no longer enough. Johnson does not soften his language about faith. He does not point to a vague higher power. In true Oklahoma fashion, he names God plainly.

“I think we’re here to add value to creation,” Johnson said. “If my story can help one person who’s in crisis, then it’s worth telling.”

This is not a book about championships. It is about knees hitting red dirt at rock bottom. It is about surrender replacing control. And, it is about learning that identity rooted in achievement will always fail, and faith rooted in grace will not.

This article appears in Let the Games Begin.