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Tennessee football: ESPNU to air Johnny Majors documentary

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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The late Tennessee football Volunteers player and coach will be featured in a show on the ESPN network.

Exactly one month after he passed away, a documentary on Tennessee football legend Johnny Majors will be shown. “Johnny Majors: Straight Ahead” will air on ESPNU Friday, July 3 at 8 p.m. ET, according to a release from UTSports.

Majors, who was an All-American player and head coach for the Vols, passed away at age 85 back on June 3. The College Football Hall-of-Famer’s accomplishments include being a Heisman Trophy runner-up on the 1956 SEC Championship Vols, winning three SEC championships as head coach of the program and winning a national title with the Pittsburgh Panthers.

The documentary on Friday will be part of a five-hour special dedicated to Majors. It will begin with the 1990 Tennessee football team’s comeback win over the Virginia Cavaliers in the Sugar Bowl and end with the 1976 Pitt Panthers’ Sugar Bowl win over the Georgia Bulldogs to capture that national title.

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After playing with the Vols from 1954 to 1956, Majors had a legendary coaching career. Even his assistant coaching career, which included time with UT, the Mississippi State Maroons/Bulldogs and the Arkansas Razorbacks, was legendary as he helped Frank Broyles capture a national title in 1964 and back to back Southwest Conference titles.

In 1968, Majors got his first head coaching job with the Iowa State Cyclones, and in his fourth and fifth years there, he took the program to its first two bowl games in history. He spent four years at Pitt after that, where he not only won that national title but also coached Heisman Trophy winner Tony Dorsett.

Following the title win, he went back home to Knoxville and rebuilt the Vols into a national power over a 16-year career before he was replaced by Phillip Fulmer in 1992. He then spent four more seasons at Pitt in the mid-1990s before ending his coaching carer for good.

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As a legend whose No. 45 is retired by Tennessee football, Majors certainly deserves a day dedicated to him by the ESPN channel that focuses on college athletics. He’s one of the greatest Vol legends of all time, and he’s certainly a college football legend. So Friday’s scheduled events are definitely appropriate .

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