25 greatest SEC Football coaches of all time
By John Buhler
17. Johnny Majors
Johnny Majors is revered by the fine folks in Knoxville. He was almost the Tennessee Volunteers’ first Heisman Trophy winner back in 1956 as a triple-option tailback. So the Heisman Trophy voters gave it to Paul Hornung, who played on a two-win Notre Dame team, but whatever. Majors would have a second football life as a great head coach for three programs.
Majors would get his first crack at being a college head coach with the Big Eight’s Iowa State Cyclones in 1968. Five years later, he’d leave for the Pittsburgh Panthers gig, where he would win the 1976 National Championship. It didn’t last forever at Pittsburgh for Majors, has he was coming home to Rocky Top in 1977.
For 15.5 years, Majors was the head football coach at Tennessee, going 116-62-8 overall, 57-40-3 in SEC play and 7-4 in bowl games. While Majors would never win a national title at his alma mater, he would lead the Volunteers to three SEC Championships during his reign.
He would, unfortunately, be forced out by Tennessee mid-way through the 1992 NCAA season in favor of Phillip Fulmer. Majors would go back to Pittsburgh in 1993, but it wasn’t the same. He would retire from coaching after the 1996 NCAA season with the Panthers.