Tennessee football: Johnny Majors may be Vols greatest legend

No other All-American won a championship as a player and coach with the Tennessee football Volunteers.

Note: This is part of a series of posts remembering Johnny Majors and all that he accomplished for Tennessee football as a player and a coach. 

When it comes to legends on Rocky Top, Pat Summitt probably stands above everybody. However, Tennessee football specifically is a different story. The program has people on there as players and others on there as coaches.

Robert Neyland is the towering figure of the program as its greatest coach. Hey may rival Summitt just in general. Peyton Manning, Al Wilson and Reggie White stand out as players. Doug Dickey and Phillip Fulmer stand out as both athletic directors and coaches.

Johnny Majors, however, was a rare commodity. He stood out as a player and a coach. Not only was he an All-American player, but he also was a guy who won an SEC Championship as a player and then three more as a head coach.

Now, having success as a player and coach isn’t unique to Majors. After all, Fulmer won an SEC Championship playing for Tennessee football and then a national championship as a head coach. Wyatt, meanwhile, was an All-American player for a national title Vols team and then won an SEC title as a coach. So on paper, that looks even better than Majors.

However, Majors’ success tells a different story. In 1977, when Majors decided to rebuild the Vols on the heels of winning a national championship with the Pittsburgh Panthers, his status as a player was the equivalent of what Manning’s is today. This is a guy who was robbed of a Heisman Trophy and played for a team in 1956 that had a decent claim to the national title.

Not only was he all of those things, but he left a program where he had just coached a Heisman winner and won a national title all so he could rebuild his alma mater. We know the success of Majors rebuilding UT, as it took a while, but the Vols did win the SEC in 1985, 1989 and 1990.

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When you take into account being that notable of a figure for the program, Majors may be the only person who could have competed with Neyland or Summitt in terms of legendary status on Rocky Top. For people who make the argument of Wyatt accomplishing everything he did, we should note that Wyatt’s only great season as a UT coach came when Majors was playing for him.

Fulmer, to be fair, has a chance to get into this category. He wasn’t on Majors’ level as a player, but he did win an SEC Championship then, and he was a bit more successful than Majors as a coach of the Vols specifically.

If Jeremy Pruitt wins an SEC Championship on Rocky Top, Fulmer will have helped Tennessee football win one as a player, a coach and an athletic director. That will be hard for anybody to top, and he’s probably already on the Mt. Rushmore of Vol legends.

For now, though, Majors is the most accomplished Vol in different capacities, and that’s enough to potentially make him the most legendary Vol of all time. He will be sorely missed by Tennessee football fans everywhere.

For more posts remembering Johnny Majors’ accomplishments on Rocky Top as a player and coach for Tennessee football, please click here.