College Football Hall of Famer Johnny Majors has died at the age of 85. Majors was a legendary tailback at Tennessee before a coaching career that led him to Iowa State and Pitt before eventually ending up coaching at Tennessee.
Majors was a Tennessee football legend, twice winning the SEC Player of the Year Award and finishing second in the Heisman Trophy voting to Paul Hornung of Notre Dame in 1956.
After a brief stint in the Canadian Football League, Majors got into coaching as a graduate assistant at Tennessee before stops as an assistant at Mississippi State and Arkansas.
In 1968 he earned his first head coaching job at Iowa State where he went 24-30-1 in five seasons, earning bowl berths in his last two years there.
He took the Pitt job in 1973 and led them to three bowl games in four years, culminating in a national championship after a 12-0 season in 1976.
Majors then returned to Tennessee where he coached the Volunteers from 1977 to 1992, going 116-62-8 along the way and winning three SEC Championships as well as a pair of Sugar Bowl wins and a Cotton Bowl victory as well. After being forced to step down in 1992, Majors
Majors returned to Pitt from 1993 through 1996 but failed to find the same success, going just 12-32 in his second stint with the Panthers.
In terms of a Notre Dame connection, Majors wasn’t just the first runner-up in Hornung’s Heisman season but also coached against the Irish nine different times, going 2-3 in his two stints with Pitt and 2-2 during his time at Tennessee.
Majors is said to have spent his final hours doing something he very much enjoyed, looking out over the Tennessee River.
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