Buckeyes' Paris Johnson excels at football, but his passion and caring extend beyond the field

Paris Johnson Jr. is a scholar-athlete. He can speak Chinese and is learning Portuguese.

Ohio State's right guard has a foundation he started in high school that focuses on helping veterans and disadvantaged youth.

Even though he’s only 20, his position coach considers him the “father” of the offensive line because of the way his linemates gravitate toward him.

And, oh yeah, Johnson is a pretty decent football player. He earned All-Big Ten honors this season, even though he is not playing his natural position.

As Ohio State gets set to play Utah in the Rose Bowl, Johnson not only wants to finish the 2021 season successfully but is looking ahead to what should be quite a bright future, on and off the field.

Paris Johnson was receiving Big Ten offers as a high school freshman

Monica Daniels had a strong sign her son would be tall when he was 22½ inches at birth. Paris’ father played briefly in the NFL, so athleticism is in his genes. But Daniels considered Paris to be merely an above-average athlete until his freshman year at St. Xavier High School.

He had grown to 6 feet 3 and weighed 205 pounds. He played primarily defensive end, but college coaches accurately pegged him as a future offensive lineman. That May, Johnson got his first scholarship offer, from Rutgers.

When St. X coach Steve Specht called Daniels to tell her, she was stunned.

“I said, ‘Big Ten?! Division I?! What, are you joking?' ” she said with a laugh. “And he was like, ‘This is just the beginning, Monica.’ ”

Specht was right. Johnson, who would grow to 6-6 and 315 pounds, became the top-ranked recruit in Ohio.

But Ohio State was not at the top of Johnson’s wish list at first. Daniels is from Detroit, and Johnson’s family members were fans of either Michigan or Michigan State. His dad was on the Spartans' coaching staff.

Even in Ohio, Miami was the offer Johnson coveted — and was disappointed when it didn’t happen quickly — because Daniels and several other relatives were RedHawk alums.

In fact, Johnson attended the Spartans’ 2015 victory over Ohio State and was gleeful about that famous upset. When OSU offered Johnson, he was pleased, but it wasn’t until he developed a relationship with coach Urban Meyer and others in the program that it rose to the top of the list.

Ohio State offensive lineman is a scholar and philanthropist

As hard as Johnson worked to develop as a football player, that has never been his complete identity. Daniels described him a curious child, always reading, always asking questions, always an excellent student. That’s no surprise considering Daniels was a high school college counselor.

“Education is extremely important in our household,” she said. “There's an expectation to be a scholarly athlete, not just a student-athlete, to be scholarly in everything that he did.”

Johnson is a journalism major who wrote a profile of Buckeyes left guard Thayer Munford for The Lantern student newspaper. He started to learn Mandarin Chinese in fifth grade and has begun to learn Portuguese because he wants to visit Brazil.

Johnson is also fascinated by history, especially history that’s been overlooked in traditional teaching.

“It's really important to study history because I feel like the history that we don't talk about is the history that we find ourselves repeating,” he said. “I'm passionate about history. I love Black history. I love history about the ‘60s. I love World War II history, the Vietnam War.”

Johnson combines his intelligence with a natural empathy. In his sophomore season at St. Xavier, just as he was blossoming into a big-time prospect, the Bombers had a scrimmage against an inner-city Cincinnati school.

From the start, he noticed something that troubled him. As the opposing players came to the sideline, some would exchange equipment with teammates. Johnson realized the team didn’t have enough helmets and pads for each player.

“It was hard to see that because when you're playing a game that you love, and it's a physical game, it's not fair to have somebody that lines up with the safest, newest equipment across from somebody where you don't know how old that equipment is," he said. "You don't know how safe it is. You don’t even know if it fits them right.”

That scrimmage sparked him to want to do more. He established the Paris Johnson Jr. Foundation, which he has expanded since attending Ohio State. The foundation primarily focuses on helping military veterans in need and underprivileged youth.

More: Paris Johnson's foundation

The Foundation has donated funds to a Cincinnati Veterans Administration hospital, distributed free turkeys on Thanksgiving and provided Christmas gifts to those in need.

“It’s a feeling that you can't get from doing anything else, not even football,” he said. “The last event that we did for the homeless veterans in Columbus, a lot of them were talking to me about how it'd be great if there were more things like this — to get food, to get groceries, to get blankets, but (also) just to have conversation, to hear their stories. Not everybody needs something. A lot of times it’s just companionship, that talking, that understanding.”

Johnson a mentor to other Ohio State offensive linemen

None of this surprises Greg Studrawa, Ohio State’s offensive line coach.

“He's a great kid,” he said. “He’s caring. He's like the father of the group. Guys talk to him about their problems. He just has that kind of personality. He’s an open, honest kid.”

Studrawa said it’s typical for players to split into cliques. He said Johnson bridges those, even though he’s only a sophomore.

“They flock to him," Studrawa said. "He has already established his leadership capabilities just by who he is. It's not like he walks around and promotes it. It's just one of those things where it's just who the kid is. He cares about people. He asked questions. He gets involved.”

Part of the respect his teammates have for him comes from his work ethic. He always gives maximum effort and is also a football junkie, said Studrawa.

“They emulate who they want to be, and he’s the guy,” he said. “He’s really a joy, such a pleasurable kid to be around.”

Johnson willingly played guard this year, but the plan is for him to switch to his natural position of tackle next year.

He acknowledged playing on the interior of the line this season was difficult at times, but he and Studrawa believe that having blocked heavier defensive tackles at guard will benefit Johnson when he moves outside.

“He'll be so much better off when he moves out to tackle because he'll understand leverage,” Studrawa said. “The leverage out there is totally different than the leverage on the inside. There's not some 340-pound guy (at defensive end) that you have to get underneath his pads and really drive and dig your legs.”

To his mom, Johnson has already achieved more than she ever expected. That struck her particularly hard before a Buckeyes game this year. Daniels was entering Ohio Stadium when a vendor asked if she wanted to buy a game program. She looked at it and saw OSU’s starting offensive line was featured on the cover.

“I broke down in tears,” Daniels said. “I immediately thought about how God gave me more than I could possibly imagine. I never knew he would play at an elite level and play at Ohio State. It all hit me when I saw that program. I was totally blown away. It still feels surreal to me.”

Bill Rabinowitz covers Ohio State football for The Columbus Dispatch. Contact him at brabinowitz@dispatch.com or on Twitter @brdispatch.

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This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Ohio State football's Paris Johnson makes mark on and off the field