How Tennessee's Johnny Majors became a star

The crowd on the south end of Crump Stadium suddenly rose to their feet.

Johnny Majors was striding down the sideline towards them. For a moment, it looked like Don Morris was going to catch him.

Morris had narrowed the gap, but not enough. He laid out with his hands out-stretched, missing Majors’ by inches as he finished off an 81-yard touchdown run that put Tennessee ahead of Mississippi State for good, and Majors into Vols football lore on a sweltering day in Memphis on Sept. 25, 1954.

One week earlier, Majors seemed destined for a small role–if any at all–as a sophomore in Tennessee’s backfield.

 By the time the Vols had put the finishing touch on a 19-7 triumph in front of 28,000 inspired onlookers, the young sophomore tailback known by sportswriters as John “Drum” Majors was on the pathway to becoming Johnny Majors: All-American Tennessee tailback and later its head coach.

“He was a trouble-maker for the Maroons all the time that he was in the game,” Bob Wilson penned in the Knoxville News-Sentinel the following day.

“Nothing could stop the capacity crowd from talking about this Majors–a reissue of ‘Gone with the Wind,’” David Bloom wrote for the Memphis Commercial Appeal.

The shy, reserved Majors didn’t have as much to say about the performance. He smiled at reporters during the postgame scrum in the locker room.

“This is going to be a mighty tough league,” he said.

Majors shot up the depth chart out of necessity, then rushed for more than 100 yards and snagged an interception to headline the Vols’ win over Darrell Royal’s Mississippi State team. 

This is the story of taking a chance and how Majors’ legend status was born out of that afternoon in Memphis

The Huntland Hornet

Farmer Johnson steered his car down the seven mile road between Winchester and Huntland.

The Tennessee assistant coach was visiting family in Winchester in the spring of 1952 when some locals told him about a football star from Lynchburg that was dazzling at nearby Huntland High School. He was going to check him out.

“They insisted he was the greatest high school back that had ever played in those parts,” Johnson later told reporters.

Johnson pulled up on a practice and watched No. 35 run off tackle and take off. It was as good as he had seen any Tennessee tailback do it in the single wing offense back in Knoxville. Then he saw him throw a pass, then punt and kick.

After practice ended, Johnson approached John Majors and his coach, Shirley Majors. He told the father and son that Tennessee was interested, but John Majors hesitated. So did his father.

The younger Majors didn’t feel like he was good enough to play in the SEC—a feeling that would plague him for the next couple of months.

 He had his sights set on Sewanee or Tennessee Tech, places where he thought he’d be a better fit.

Johnson extended an invite to campus anyway and Majors visited several times during the ‘52 season. But word spread throughout the south about the “Huntland Hornet,” who shattered all kinds of state records and rushed for 2,550 yards his senior year.

Majors accounted for 213 points that season, most of which came on long runs. His father refused to use him anytime Huntland reached the 20-yard line. Shirley Majors was adamant about not showing favoritism, but he was glad to be on that side of it.

Shirley Majors watched from the opposing sideline as John Majors ran for two scores as a freshman in Lynchburg’s 19-13 win over Huntland in 1949 and decided that night that he wouldn’t lose to one of his sons again. The family moved to Huntland the next year.

“What I saw in one practice opened my eyes,” Johnson said. “He did everything well that a tailback is supposed to do.”

Alabama, Georgia Tech and Auburn saw it, too.

The SEC powers extended offers, but when the freshmen signing period opened though, Majors inked with Tennessee. He was the first incoming freshman player to sign with the program that year.

Majors was part of Robert R. Neyland’s final recruiting class, but he wouldn’t play a down for him. The legendary Vols coach retired following the 1952 season and Harvey Robinson took over.

Neyland was around, though. He remained the school’s athletic director and lounged in the stands at Shields-Watkins Field during practices. 

That’s where he sat one afternoon when Majors broke off a couple of runs in his first scrimmage.

Majors picked up 7 yards, then 15. After being brought down at the end of a run, he heard a booming voice.

“Who is No. 10?” Neyland bellowed from the bleachers.

“That’s Majors, General,” Johnson yelled back. “From Huntland!”

After the scrimmage, Majors, who stood outside East Stadium Hall with tears in his eyes as he questioned his decision to come to Tennessee after a family friend dropped him off a few weeks earlier, was now darting down the street to Ellis and Earnest drugstore. He needed to make a call to Huntland.

“Daddy,” Majors recalled the phone call to his father in his 1986 autobiography “You Can Go Home Again.”’ “They miss tackles up here just like they do in high school!”

‘That kid beat us today’

Johnny Majors came crashing to the turf.

He spent his freshman season as a scout team quarterback, running the T-formation against Tennessee’s starting defense.

 A week before the Mississippi State game, he was a reserve back with no clear path to playing time.

The 164-pound Majors was on the doorstep of his first career touchdown in the first quarter. The ball came loose and rolled into the end zone where teammate Keith Drummond fell on it for the Vols’ score, instead. Then Majors missed the extra point.

Now, he was 76 yards from the end zone after Joe Silveri tossed him for a 15-yard loss in the second quarter. 

An offsides penalty on the Bulldogs moved the ball up five yards to the 19. In the huddle, Majors called 57-W.

It was one of a handful of plays Tennessee had added to the playbook that week after Johnny Cventick and Tommy Priest went down with injuries to move Majors and Pat Oleksiak up the depth chart.

Majors took the snap, faked the handoff to the fullback and ran wide towards the weakside of the field. 

He danced through and around the Mississippi State defense. Oleksiak laid the block that sprung him into the open. He was gone.

“He was the big show,” the News-Sentinel’s Tom Siler wrote. “He has a jerky style of running that confounds tacklers. Obviously, he has speed.”

In one, long 81-yard stride, Majors had become a fan favorite. The Sunday papers throughout the south praised his heroics.

“Majors murdered ‘em,” one headline in the Nashville Tennessean read. “Stand-in tailback paves way,” read another in the Atlanta Journal and Constitution.

Majors had a fan club by the time he hit the sideline. A Nashville Banner photographer pulled him to the side after the run to snap a picture of him with Tennessee cheerleaders Donna Gardner and Nancy Boone—with the coaching staff’s permission. 

“I did what I was told to do, but there is no way I would ever let that happen on the Tennessee sidelines today,” Majors said years later as a head coach, first at Pittsburgh where he won the 1976 national championship and at Tennessee, where he led the Vols to SEC titles in 1985 and 1990. 

Majors’ touchdown wasn’t Tennessee’s last score that day, but it could have been. Mississippi State didn’t score again with one of its drives being wiped out by a Majors interception that he took back 40 yards before being dragged down.

It was a preview of things to come. Majors helped carry the Vols to an SEC title under Bowden Wyatt and finished second in a controversial Heisman Trophy race two years later.

The Majors family was there to see it, too.
Shirley and Elizabeth, their four sons, Larry, Joe, Bill and 5-year-old Bobby, and daughter Shirley Ann drove down from Huntland to be a part of the capacity crowd. 

Bill and Bobby followed in their old brother’s footsteps, both playing for Tennessee.

Bill Majors was in on the stop of Billy Cannon in the Vols’ upset of No. 1 LSU five years later, and Bobby Majors was an All-American in 1971 following one of the best individual seasons from a defensive back in school history.

“I’m ready to enroll (Bobby), too at Tennessee,” a smiling Elizabeth Majors told reporters after the game. “I like Tennessee.”

“Send ‘em all up to us,” Robinson added. “We can’t get a hold of too many boys like Johnny.”

The Johnny Majors experience was much different across the field in the Mississippi State locker room, where a dejected Darrell Royal, still a few years away from beginning his own legendary coaching career at Texas, was surrounded by newsmen.

Among the barrage of questions hurled at him, Royal had one for them.

“Why did they ever consider holding that boy out for a year,” Royal said. “That kid beat us today.”