A 1957 UT graduate, Johnny Majors was an All-American tailback. When the team won the 1956 SEC Championship, Majors was named the SEC’s most valuable player and made every All-American team. He was runner-up to Notre Dame’s Paul Hornung for the Heisman Trophy.
He was a student member of the UT coaching staff following graduation until he accepted a post in 1960 as an assistant coach at Mississippi State. In 1964 he moved to the coaching staff of the University of Arkansas. He became head coach at the University of Iowa in 1968 and was named the Big Eight Coach of the Year in 1971. Majors became head coach at the University of Pittsburgh in 1973, and his team won the national championship in 1976. He returned to UT as head coach in 1977.
At Tennessee, Majors’s teams won 115 SEC games and three SEC championships (but were 4-12 against Alabama). He underwent surgery for a heart condition—a quintuple bypass—on August 25, 1992, and Assistant Head Coach Phillip Fulmer stood in for him, going 3-0.
Majors returned to work less than a month after undergoing the surgery. In November he issued a terse resignation, saying, “Since I have not been given the opportunity by the UT administration to remain as head football coach past this current season, I am, effective December 31st, 1992, relinquishing all my duties connected with The University of Tennessee.” He subsequently announced that he would not coach the team in the Hall of Fame Bowl. UT bought out the remaining two years of his contract for $600,000.
Philip Fulmer, who had stood in for Majors while he was out for the surgery, replaced him, touching off a fan debate about the propriety of Fulmer’s actions and about university decision-making. The speculation that Fulmer had worked assiduously to have Majors removed was fueled by comments by members of Majors’s family and insinuations by Majors himself.
In 1993 Majors returned to the University of Pittsburgh as head coach. He retired from football coaching in 1996.
In 1973 the Football Writers Association and the Walter Camp Foundation named Majors Coach of the Year. In 1976 both the Football Writers Association and the American Football Coaches Association named him National Coach of the Year. He is a charter inductee into the Tennessee Sports Hall of Fame. In 1980, playing in his own invitational golf tournament at the Lake Tansi Resort, Majors won a new Chevette with a hole in one on the course’s ninth hole. He hit a 4-iron into the cup on the par 3, 175-yard hole. In 2003 he was honored by the East Tennessee Chapter of the College Football Hall of Fame and the Knoxville Quarterback Club by being named the Robert R. Neyland Memorial Trophy winner.
He was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame as a player in 1987, and UT retired his jersey, Number 45, in a ceremony prior to the UT-Florida game in September 2012.