Ranking all 6 Tennessee football head coaches who played for Vols
Playing for Bowden Wyatt on that 1956 SEC Championship team was Johnny Majors, a player who was robbed of the Heisman Trophy by Paul Hornung, who was 2-8 with the Notre Dame Fighting Irish. He would come home years later.
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In 1977, Tennessee football appeared to make the greatest home run hire of all time with Majors. He had been the biggest legend to ever play for the Vols. And he was taking over a program that had suffered to playing .500 ball under Bill Battle.
What’s more, Majors was coming off a national championship with the Pitt Panthers in 1976, a program he built from the ground up four years earlier. So on paper, you couldn’t get a better hire than a national title winner who played for your school.
However, Majors’s rebuilding took years. He was 4-7 in 1977, had two losing seasons his first four, and never had a top 25 finish his first eight. He finally got things going, though, in 1985, winning the SEC title that year and finishing in the top 5.
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In 1989, Majors ushered in what would be the greatest period of the modern era for the Vols. They would win the SEC in 1989 and 1990 and then go 9-3 in 1991. But a health issue kept him out early in 1992, and he struggled in his return, forcing him out later in the year. It was an ugly scenario, but he still remains a top 2 coach to ever lead Rocky Top after playing for them.