Brooks Johnson, CPA

The old joke is that CPA stands for Certified Public Asshole. For those of you not in the know, Brooks Johnson is USATF's High Performance Division chair, was this year's Olympic relay coach, and has earned a reputation somewhere south of Tom Delay's (both in terms of competence and style).

Every now and then, a truly useful discussion breaks out at Let's Run and shows the place hasn't completely jumped the shark (mostly, but not completely). This thread started off with reference to new USATF CEO Doug Logan's recent blog post, which calls for change in USATF leadership. You don't have to be a genius to figure out he's talking about Johnson (and partners in crime Stephanie Hightower and John Chaplin). It quickly turned into a bitch session about Johnson. Even Joetta Clark delicately said he's a real piece of work. It's a fascinating read.

This is the kind of stuff I'm generally unaware of, even though I do realize USATF is even more dysfunctional than the Democratic party. The absolute best revelation: a public exchange at a coaching clinic between Johnson and Ohio State's hard-nosed forward-thinking coach Robert Gary.

The Rob Gary versus Brooks Johnson exchange in Vegas of 2005 was the most entertaining. No idea how Gary got asked back to speak again, but he did a steeple presentation on Crogan and Diemer that was really cool.

Best line came about the "critical zone" where Brooks started practically yelling at Gary that Americans had to concentrate on the last barrier to the finish line sprint when Rob came back and said "we are usually still playing about in the water when that is happening crazy ass".

I'm telling you, this is very interesting stuff. No wonder the USOC wants these guys' heads.