Coach who ‘saved Pitt football,’ led Panthers to national title
The cover of Pitt football’s 1973 media guide was simple, yet foreboding. Blue and yellow lines ran down the middle. Just off center, the face of a new, hopeful coach beamed with a slogan flanking him to the left: “A Major Change in Pitt Football.”
Indeed, that proved to be the case. Johnny Majors, the man who brought the Panthers to prominence and led them to their most recent football national title, died Wednesday at his home in Tennessee. He was 85.
Mr. Majors led Pitt for two stints over his 39-year coaching career, guiding the Panthers to one of the best stretches in school history from 1973-76, a tenure capped by a national championship. He returned as coach from 1993-96 and was inducted into the Pitt Athletics Hall of Fame in 2019.
“On Sunday night, we talked for about an hour,” said Jackie Sherrill, Mr. Majors’ right-hand man as an assistant coach and his successor at Pitt. “We just told stories and laughed, and the last parting words from him were, ‘We need to see each other. Either you come to Tennessee, or I’ll come to Texas.’ So it’s kind of a shock. He was talking about how he was in good health, and all of a sudden he’s not with us.”
Born in Lynchburg, Tenn., Mr. Majors grew up in a football family, the son of a coach and the oldest of five football-playing brothers. The former tailback starred at the University of Tennessee from 195356 and finished second to Notre Dame’s Paul Hornung in the 1956 Heisman Trophy balloting.
Mr. Majors returned to the Volunteers as a graduate assistant in 1957 and slowly worked his way up the coaching ranks before getting his first head coaching job at Iowa
State University in 1968. He spent five years with the Cyclones, guiding them to the first two bowl appearances in program history in 1971 and 1972.
Then Pitt called.
The Panthers’ program was on life support. Pitt historian Sam Sciullo Jr. said there was little interest from the fan base and no financial commitment by the university to the football program. Carl DePasqua was fired after going 13-29 in four seasons at the helm, finishing 1-11 in his final year in 1972.
“There could not have been a better choice,” said Alex Kramer, a close friend of Mr. Majors and a former Pitt football administrator. “He was a perfect fit in every way, and not only in his skill as a coach. Greater than that was his personality, his enthusiasm, his desire to succeed and his happiness in being the head coach at the University of Pittsburgh.”
Mr. Sciullo describes Pitt’s transformation under Majors as “the ‘Wizard of Oz’ going from black and white to color, when Dorothy walks through the door.”
“He saved Pitt football,” Mr. Sciullo said. “Pitt football was at death’s door in 1972 . ... They were close to pulling the plug on the thing. If they didn’t make a go of it, Pitt might be playing Millersville these days.”
In Mr. Majors’ first season, Pitt went 6-5-1 and made the postseason for the first time in 17 years. The Panthers lost to Arizona State in the Fiesta Bowl, but it was clear Pitt had something going. Mr. Majors earned National Coach of the Year honors by both the Football Writers Association of
America and the Walter Camp Foundation.
Mr. Majors’ ebullient arrival translated on the recruiting trail. Before there were rules against doing so, Pitt took on 70-plus freshman recruits in 1973, a class that laid the foundation for the national title charge a few years later. Among those who joined Pitt was Hopewell High School alum Tony Dorsett, who would go on to win Pitt’s lone Heisman Trophy in 1976.
“Rest in heaven, coach,” Mr. Dorsett tweeted Wednesday. “Words could never express what you meant to me. Catch you on the other side.”
That 1976 season was magical all around. Pitt opened the year with a 31-10 victory over No. 11 Notre Dame in South Bend, Ind. Mr. Majors lost quarterback Robert Haygood for the season with a torn anterior cruciate ligament in the second game, forcing backup Matt Cavanaugh to step in. The Panthers didn’t miss a beat, thanks in large part to Mr. Majors’ leadership.
“I found him to be one of the most motivational guys I’ve ever been around. I’ve worked for Bill Walsh, Bill Parcells ... and he was as good as any of them,” said Mr. Cavanaugh, a longtime NFL assistant after his playing days. “He had a way about him. He had a belief in what he was doing. He had a method of getting his point across and teaching and holding people accountable, and yet having fun doing it . ... Guys wanted to play and play hard and win for him.”
Mr. Cavanaugh, Mr. Dorsett and the Panthers cruised to a national title in 1976. They won every game by 10 points or more, with the exception of a 24-16 victory over rival West Virginia. They beat Penn State for the first time in a decade, and they smothered No. 5 Georgia in a title-clinching Sugar Bowl victory.
A month before that Sugar Bowl appearance, though, Mr. Majors faced a crossroads. Tennessee, his alma mater, had a coaching vacancy and wanted Mr. Majors to fill it. After a few days of agonizing over the decision, Mr. Majors resigned in a subdued news conference at Pitt Stadium.
“I love Pittsburgh, and it’s always hard to leave a place,” Majors told The Pittsburgh Press. “But I have roots there.”
The Volunteers’ program had fallen into a funk under former coach Bill Battle, losing five games in back-toback seasons for the first time in a decade. But Tennessee eventually rebounded with Mr. Majors working his magic as he did at Iowa State and Pitt.
The Volunteers made it to the Bluebonnet Bowl in Mr. Majors’ third season. Starting in 1981, they posted a winning record in 10 of the next 11 seasons. That stretch was highlighted by Southeastern Conference titles in 1985, 1989 and 1990. Mr. Majors’ 1989 team went 11-1 and finished the season ranked No. 5 in the country.
In 1987, Mr. Majors was inducted to the College Football Hall of Fame. His time at Tennessee came to an end in 1992 when he resigned in November. He had a falling out with Tennessee brass and learned his contract would not be extended following the season.
“I still love the game of football, and if there’s an opportunity to coach elsewhere, I certainly would consider it,” Mr. Majors said at the time.
It didn’t take long for that new opportunity to present itself. Just over a month after his resignation, Mr. Majors signed a contract to return as Pitt’s head coach. This time, though, he had more difficulty restoring life into the program, which had fallen on hard times in the late 1980s. He coached just four years the second time around at Pitt, with a 12-32 record, before resigning at the end of the 1996 season. Still, Mr. Majors brought a spark.
“I remember when we would do games on the road and all the alumni would be in a room having snacks and cocktails,” said Mark May, an All-American at Pitt in 1980 who served as the Panthers’ color commentator on WTAE Radio in 1994. “He’d walk into the room, and the whole attitude in the room would take a step forward. He would brighten up the room. He just had a way about him.”
Mr. Majors stayed at Pitt as a special assistant to the athletic director and chancellor until July 2007, when he and his wife, Mary Lynn, moved back to Knoxville to be closer to their family. His wife told Sports Radio WNML that her husband spent his final hours “doing something he dearly loved: looking out over his cherished Tennessee River.”
“He was my mentor, my boss and my friend. That’s been going on for 53 years,” Mr. Sherrill said. “Every place he ever went, he built. From Iowa State to Pittsburgh to Tennessee. We lost a great man, a great person and a great coach.”