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Tennessee football’s top 10 seasons with Johnny Majors

By Caleb Calhoun

Johnny Majors, Head Coach for the University of Tennessee Volunteers stands with his team during the NCAA Southeastern Conference college football game against the University of Notre Dame Fighting Irish on 10 November 1990 at the Neyland Stadium in Knoxville, Tennessee, United States. Notre Dame won the game 34 - 29. (Photo by Rick Stewart/Allsport/Getty Images)
Johnny Majors, Head Coach for the University of Tennessee Volunteers stands with his team during the NCAA Southeastern Conference college football game against the University of Notre Dame Fighting Irish on 10 November 1990 at the Neyland Stadium in Knoxville, Tennessee, United States. Notre Dame won the game 34 - 29. (Photo by Rick Stewart/Allsport/Getty Images) /
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Photo by Jonathan Daniel/Allsport/Getty Images
Photo by Jonathan Daniel/Allsport/Getty Images /

These are the Tennessee football Volunteers’ best years with Johnny Majors in the program.

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. 

Johnny Majors spent a total of 22 years with Tennessee football during his career. The Vols had him for three years as a player, three years as an assistant coach and another 16 as a head coach. He also was with them in 1953 as a member of the Freshman team, although he couldn’t contribute anything to it. So that one doesn’t count toward the 22 years.

Still, it’s pretty clear that Majors dedicated over a quarter of his life to the program, and that program got good results because of him, including multiple SEC Championships and its emergence into the modern era. It’s hard to overstate how much Majors meant to Rocky Top.

Without the contributions of Majors, Bowden Wyatt would never have been successful with Tennessee football as a head coach, and the Vols may never have updated their program to be able to succeed under Phillip Fulmer. All of that is due to great years Majors helped produce.

But which ones were the best? Well, it’s time to break that down. In this post, we’re going to take a look at the greatest seasons Rocky Top enjoyed when Majors was with the program and rank all of them.

To be clear, Majors could be with the program in either of those three capacities we mentioned in the first paragraph: player, assistant coach or head coach. It just has to include a year when Majors was with the team in some way.

Plenty of seasons among those 22 were unforgettable ones, and Majors had a huge hand in making sure that happened. In addition to championships, they included memorable games, incredible performances and standout finishes.

So how many of these years truly stand out? What was Majors’ role in making sure that happened? Let’s break it all down here. These are Tennessee football’s 10 greatest seasons when Johnny Majors was affiliated with it.

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