“Noooooo. Nooooo. No. No,” said Dave Wannstedt, best friend, defensive coordinator and Bears head coach.

“He’s clean and meticulous. He just tries to keep his hair combed and people get on him about it,” Wannstedt said Monday.

“I got a little touch of spray,” Johnson admitted Monday. “But just a touch.”

Johnson then went over his philosophy of life with a fine-toothed comb: “I just don’t like for my hair to hang in my eyes. It bothers me and I like to be neat. I like for things to be in order, whether it’s my home, or my sons, or my clothes, or my hair or my football team. I don’t like penalties on my football team. I don’t like foolish mistakes. I like things to be right. It just so happens that’s the way I like my hair. So I have to have a little touch of spray.

“I’m being honest with you. You want me to tell you something not true and all of a sudden sneak out a can of spray? I’m not a closet sprayer.”

If Johnson wanted to cover the hair with a hat, there are people who say the head is too big. Johnson is a driven man who describes himself as “selfish” and brags of his team as “confident.”

Knocking off the favored 49ers in San Francisco in the NFC title game was just another big win in a long line of big wins. Would the Cowboys and Johnson be in the Super Bowl if not for the bonanza Herschel Walker trade?

“Yes,” Johnson said.

To Wannstedt, Johnson is the same honest, hard-working person he has coached with almost continuously since 1977, when the two were assistants under Jackie Sherrill at Pitt.

“He probably had the most influence of any person in my life,” Wannstedt said. “There are times he’s like a brother and times he’s like afather. Most of the time, we’re just two guys working together to accomplish the same objective.

“He expects total commitment.”

Johnson said Monday he doesn’t know where his reported 162 IQ originated.

“Been a long time since I took an IQ test,” he said. “Really hasn’t been a high priority.

“What are my scholarly pursuits? I’m not into English literature. I’d say 95 percent of my time is spent in football. If that’s scholarly, then I’m pursuing something scholarly. If not, then I’m not.”

Johnson, a psychology major at Arkansas, did read a book to help his team prepare for this week.

“It’s called `Flow.’ A psychology of optimal experience,” Johnson said. “One of the groups interviewed were mountain climbers. One said his memory was only 30 seconds long and his thoughts about the future were only five minutes. If he let his mind wander, he would have trouble climbing the mountain.”

Focus is Johnson’s specialty.

“I have a very difficult time focusing in on a lot of different things,” Johnson said. “I like to kind of have blinders on and see my goal and work toward my goal and really not let anybody distract me-in fact, to the point of almost being rude to people at times. That’s how I function best in terms of attaining what I want.”

When Jerry Jones hired him from the University of Miami in 1989, Johnson informed wife Linda Kay she wouldn’t be making the trip. Wives, useful for college teas, were as superfluous as an extra punter in the pros.

Johnson explained that his mother and father would stay home in Port Arthur, Texas, this week and watch on television.

“That doesn’t take anything away from the love I have for my parents; it’s just a matter of, I have a job to do and I’m coming here to do a job and I don’t want to be distracted,” Johnson said.

Siblings weren’t encouraged to come, either. Johnson’s only guest is his girlfriend, who doesn’t live with him and often avoids him after losses.

If such single-mindedness were restricted to one week, Johnson would be better understood. But he doesn’t remember birthdays, either.

“I’m not really sure when Mother and Daddy’s birthdays are,” he told Sports Illustrated last summer.

To prepare his young players for the glare of Super Bowl week, Johnson spun a tale.

“If you have a 2-by-4 and lay it across the room, most everybody could walk across the 2-by-4 and not fall because their focus was they were going to walk that 2-by-4,” Johnson said. “But you take that same 2-by-4 and put it up 10 stories high between two buildings, then only a few of us are going to make it. We’ll be stumbling and grabbing on and going back to the start because our focus is going to be on falling. The negative thoughts will be so strong that we’ll be thinking about falling rather than thinking of what the job is at hand.

“Your focus right now for the Buffalo Bills has got to be as if we’re playing outside on the practice field this afternoon in front of nobody.”