Miracle man
Tennessee native left a big footprint wherever he went as a beloved coach, but the biggest was at Pitt, where he saved football
Johnny Majors went home to Tennessee in 2007 for what he called the “fourth quarter” of his life. Knoxville, to be exact, where he and wife Mary
Lynn lived in a house on a hill overlooking his beloved Tennessee River.
Majors died there, too, 12 days after his 85th birthday, in his sleep on the back deck. The same spot where he’d spent an hour talking to his trusted Pitt assistant and eventual successor, Jackie Sherrill, two nights earlier.
“I’m just glad I got to talk to him that night, so I get to remember him laughing and telling stories,” Sherrill said Wednesday. “We talked about football, old times, Pitt, Iowa State. He sounded good. He said his health was good and that he wanted to make sure we got together soon.
“Then I talked to his son this morning. He said [Majors] went to sleep on his deck last night and didn’t wake up.”
If you want to know — or feel — the kind of impact Majors had on people, consider what happened next: Sherrill, a coach so rugged he once had a bull castrated in front of his Mississippi State team, went silent and cried when I offered condolences on losing his “friend.”
“You know, Coach was more than a friend,” he said.
The line went still for almost 10 seconds.
“Excuse me,” Sherrill said. “I told my wife this morning, and she hugged me, and her comment was that Coach was the biggest father figure I had.”
More silence, now softly punctured with tears.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for that to happen,” he said. “We had 53 years, and it’s really hard in this business to stay as close as we did.”
Similar tributes poured in, from Tony Dorsett, Matt Cavanaugh and other members of Pitt’s magical 1976 team. And from NFL analyst Charles Davis, who played for Majors at Tennessee and told utsports.com, “I have literally thought about him in some form or fashion every single day of my life since I got to Tennessee. … I can easily say I love the man.”
Clearly, the legacy here goes far beyond football — but make no mistake, Majors was a brilliant football man who delivered one of the finest coaching jobs this town, maybe any, has ever seen.
He worked a miracle, actually, when you consider where Pitt was when he arrived. And get this straight, too: Majors might have been the consummate Southern gentleman — he could charm you with quotes like “My ol’ daddy told me, ‘You don’t want to get into a stinkin’ contest with a skunk.’ ” — but inside that chest beat the heart of a cut-throat competitor.
Remember, Majors was a great player at Tennessee. A legend. He finished second in the 1956 Heisman Trophy race. He was so revered that the actor Harvey Lee Yeary — “The Six-Million Dollar Man” — adopted the stage name Lee Majors after his childhood hero (found that out in Wednesday’s New York Times).
So let’s go back to 1972, when the 38-year-old Majors left Iowa State for a huge contract ($35,000 per year, among the highest in the country) and an even bigger rebuilding job.
Pitt was coming off its worst season (1-10) in 82 years of existence. It was 18-56 over the previous seven years, including four one-win seasons.
“I don’t know if it ever came out,” Sherrill said. “But I think [the administration] was at a point where if they were not going to be able to turn it around, they were going to drop down a division in football.”
The turnaround began with Majors’ first training camp, when he used a sudden surge in scholarships to take something like 75 players into the searing heat of Pitt’s Johnstown campus.
The goal was simple: build the best-conditioned football team in America. And see who survived.
“It was pretty damn hard and pretty damn hot,” Dorsett later said. “And I was ready to come home.”
Many did. As then-freshman center John Pelusi recalled Wednesday, “Five buses went and only three came back.”
Sherrill was the lead recruiter. Majors had given him a simple directive: “Bring in anybody who can help us win.”
Sherrill brought in Dorsett. That changed everything.
Marino Parascenzo covered the Panthers for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and recounted Wednesday what happened in Dorsett’s first intrasquad scrimmage.
“[Majors] had him listed at No. 3 tailback.” Parascenzo recalled. “I said, ‘John, this kid has this reputation, and you have him third?’ He said, ‘He ain’t done anything yet.’ Well, Dorsett gets his first carry, and Johnny is standing with his back to us, and Dorsett breaks through the line and flies off to his right. David Spates, a really fast defensive back, has an angle on him but doesn’t even come close to closing the gap.
“I think [Dorsett] went 74 yards. Johnny stood there with his arms folded and didn’t say a word. He just turned around, looked at us and grinned.”
Pitt went to a bowl game that season. Three years later, it went 12-0 and won the national championship. The miracle was complete. The Panthers had risen from the dead.
And what a coaching job it was. Majors lost his starting quarterback, Robert Haygood, in the second game, but Pitt did not flinch. It trailed at the half precisely once all season.
Majors knew how to motivate. He could be tough and forgiving — like when he canceled curfew the first part of Sugar Bowl week in New Orleans.
Just as Chuck Noll had done with his Steelers two years earlier in the same city in the lead-up to the Super Bowl, Majors let his players get Bourbon Street “out of their system” when they arrived.
The players appreciated that. And to hear his explayers tell it, not a single one begrudged Majors leaving for a new job after Pitt routed Georgia. He was, after all, headed home to Tennessee.
After 16 years coaching the Vols, plus a painful second act Pitt, Johnny Majors eventually went home for good in 2007.
To the house on the hill, overlooking his beloved Tennessee River.