Hokies linebacker hopes to tattoo opposition

By Randy King

BLACKSBURG

Jake Johnson is a hulking inside linebacker with a chiseled physique.

He's also a man with a revelation many Virginia Tech football fans might find startling: The sophomore, who's projected to start in the gut of Tech's defense this fall, confesses his body used to be as soft as a baby's behind.

"Yeah, I started getting fat, man," Johnson said of his younger days. "I don't know what happened. I ate a lot. From the third to the sixth grade was a horrible stage for me. People picked on me all the time. I was like, 'Man, I've got to change something.' "

He did, and it all started with Johnson watching television, particularly pro wrestling.

"I loved 'Stone Cold' and 'The Rock,' all those guys. Those guys were my idols!" Johnson said.

"I started working out while watching wrestling on TV. I would do pushups, I would do situps all night. I wanted to be big like them, so I worked out and lost the weight. Then, in the seventh grade, I was a lot skinnier, and it was the first time I ever played football.

"So everything started there. Since, nobody has really messed with me."

Roly-poly kid? No more. Pound for pound, the 6-foot-2, 228-pound Johnson is probably the strongest player on the roster.

"I'm a weight-room addict," said Johnson, a standout linebacker and fullback at Fredericksburg's Stafford High. "I hit the weight room hard, like two or three hours a day, trying to get stronger and faster and make it to college and play. It's been the same since I've been here. I'm always in the weight room until the coaches turn the lights off."

It was coordinator Bud Foster's perennial lights-out defense that convinced Johnson Tech was the place for him. Virginia and Maryland, his other major suitors, both saw him as more of a fullback, he said.

"Never heard anything about fullback from coach Foster," Johnson said. "When I started hearing stuff about Tech - because I always liked U.Va. when I was little because my grandparents are from Charlottesville - but once I started getting into football and learning about how good our defense was... top five, No. 1, all that good stuff, I knew that this was the place to be."

Before arriving on campus last June for second-session summer classes, Johnson already had achieved semi-cult hero status inside Hokie Nation from a picture that circulated on the Internet from his 2007 summer-camp visit to Tech. Johnson worked out that day in a sleeveless T-shirt that flaunted his bulging biceps. His long locks and wild-eyed expression instantly infatuated the program's pilgrims.

Johnson, who wasn't redshirted last season because of the Hokies' lack of linebacker depth, didn't cut his shoulder-length locks until mid-November.

"I had my hair long for about three years," Johnson said. "It was a little different looking in the mirror. I kept doing a double take."

Perhaps in lieu of the loss of his mane, Johnson's arms each are now adorned with huge, colorful tattoos that almost run from his shoulders to mid-forearms. He got his right arm done in high school, and had his left arm decorated last summer.

"One is the 'Grim Reaper' and the other is the 'Tribal.' And I'm going to get 'Only the Strong Survive' in there somewhere," Johnson said.

Foster knows those schemes, too. Evidently, he had the long hair working when he was a strong safety/outside linebacker under Tech coach Frank Beamer at Murray State from 1977-80.

"I sure did, but it wasn't quite that long," said Foster, who last season revealed he added a tattoo of a lunch pail - the longtime symbol of Tech's defense - to parts unknown.

"Jake is a great kid, a good student. So if that's the worst thing he does... I'll be all right."

Meanwhile, the 18-year-old wild child is looking forward to helping Foster's bunch repeatedly tattoo opposing offenses this fall. He's not called "The Animal" for nothing.

"I can't wait," Johnson said. "This is what I've been working for all this time. Hopefully, I can be on the team that brings the first national championship to Virginia Tech."

Nothing soft about that.