The cover of Pitt football's 1973 media guide was simple, yet foreboding. Blue and yellow lines ran vertically down the middle. The year was noted in the top right corner. And just off center, the face of a new, hopeful coach beamed with a slogan flanking him to the left: "A Major Change in Pitt Football."
Indeed, that proved to be the case.
Johnny Majors _ the last football coach to lead Pitt to a national championship and the man who brought the Panthers to prominence _ died Wednesday at age 85.
Majors led Pitt for two stints over his 39-year coaching career, guiding the Panthers to one of the best stretches in school history from 1973-76 and returning for a less successful tenure from 1993-96. He was inducted into the Pitt Athletics Hall of Fame in 2019.
"On Sunday night, we talked for about an hour," Jackie Sherrill, Majors' right-hand man and later his successor at Pitt, said Wednesday. "We just told stories and laughed, and the last parting words from him were, 'We need to see each other. Either you come to Tennessee, or I'll come to Texas.' So it's kind of a shock. He was talking about how he was in good health, and all of a sudden he's not with us."
"He saved Pitt football," Pitt historian Sam Sciullo Jr., said. "Pitt football was at death's door in 1972. ... They were close to pulling the plug on the thing. If they didn't make a go of it, Pitt might be playing Millersville these days."
Enter Majors, who breathed life into a withering program after doing the same elsewhere.
Born in Lynchburg, Tenn., Majors grew up in a football family, the son of a coach and the oldest of five football-playing brothers. The former tailback starred at Tennessee from 1953-56 and finished second to Notre Dame's Paul Hornung in the 1956 Heisman Trophy balloting.
Majors returned to the Volunteers as a graduate assistant in 1957 and slowly worked his way up the coaching ranks before getting his first head coaching job with Iowa State in 1968. He spent five years with the Cyclones, guiding them to the first two bowl appearances in program history in 1971 and 1972.
Then, Pitt called.
The Panthers' program was on life support at the time. Sciullo said there was little interest from the fan base and no financial commitment by the university to the program, both of which were justifiable. Carl DePasqua was fired after going 13-29 in four seasons at the helm, finishing 1-11 in his final year in 1972.
Throughout the 1972 season, a secret three-man search committee, tapped by Pitt athletic director Cas Myslinski, pursued Majors as DePasqua's replacement. Sciullo said his father, Sam, and two fellow boosters, Bob Miller and Bill Baierl, was Pitt's three-man team, with Miller taking the lead and running up substantial monthly phone bills from Pittsburgh to Ames, Iowa.
The persistence worked, as Pitt pried Majors away from Iowa State in 1973.
"There could not have been a better choice," said Alex Kramer, a close friend of Majors and a former Pitt football administrator. "He was a perfect fit in every way, and not only in his skill as a coach. Greater than that was his personality, his enthusiasm, his desire to succeed and his happiness in being the head coach at the University of Pittsburgh."
Sciullo describes Pitt's transformation under Majors as "the Wizard of Oz going from black and white to color, when Dorothy walks through the door."
In Majors' first season, Pitt went 6-5-1 and made the postseason for the first time in 17 years, appearing in the Fiesta Bowl. The Panthers lost to Arizona State in the desert, but it was clear Pitt had something going. Majors earned National Coach of the Year honors by both the Football Writers Association of America and the Walter Camp Foundation _ but his greatest success in 1973 might have been before the season even started.
Majors' ebullient arrival translated on the recruiting trail. Before there were rules against doing so, Pitt took on 70-plus freshman recruits in 1973, a class that laid the foundation for the Panthers' national title charge a few years later. Among those who joined Pitt was Tony Dorsett, the program's lone Heisman Trophy winner.
"I remember the late Myron Cope had a radio talk show, and he would play the William Tell Overture (the "Lone Ranger" theme) in the background when he would talk about John in recruiting," Kramer said. "He was tireless."
Majors' "certain charm," as Kramer called it, paid off. In 1973, Dorsett rushed for 1,686 yards and 13 touchdowns as a true freshman, spiking interest in the program. Sciullo said donor money and booster support came pouring in _ and Majors' momentum didn't slow down in the coming years.
Pitt went 7-4 under Majors each of the next two seasons and following the 1975 campaign earned a bid to the Sun Bowl. The Panthers beat Kansas, 33-19, for the program's first bowl win in 38 years. That game, Majors would later say, took the team "from good to great" and set the stage for a magical 1976 season.
Pitt opened the year with a 31-10 victory over No. 11 Notre Dame in South Bend, Ind. Majors lost quarterback Robert Haygood for the season with a torn anterior cruciate ligament in the second game, a 42-14 victory at Georgia Tech, forcing backup Matt Cavanaugh to step in. The Panthers didn't miss a beat, thanks in large part to Majors' leadership.
"I found him to be one of the most motivational guys I've ever been around. I've worked for Bill Walsh, Bill Parcells ... and he was as good as any of them," said Cavanaugh, a longtime NFL assistant after his playing days. "He had a way about him. He had a belief in what he was doing. He had a method of getting his point across and teaching and holding people accountable, and yet having fun doing it. ... Guys wanted to play and play hard and win for him."
Cavanaugh, Dorsett and the Panthers cruised to a national title in 1976. They won every game by 10 points or more, with the exception of a 24-16 victory over rival West Virginia. They beat Penn State for the first time in a decade. And they smothered No. 5 Georgia in a title-clinching Sugar Bowl victory.
A month before the Sugar Bowl appearance, though, Majors faced a crossroads in his career and life. Tennessee, his alma mater, had a coaching vacancy, and wanted Majors to fill it. After a few days of agonizing over the decision, Majors resigned as Pitt's head coach in a subdued press conference at Pitt Stadium.
"I love Pittsburgh, and it's always hard to leave a place," Majors said at the time, according to The Pittsburgh Press. "But I have roots there."
"He told me before the Penn State game that he was leaving," added John Pelusi, a senior center and captain on the '76 team. "I said, 'Coach, I don't understand why you want to leave here.' ... And he just said, 'You know, I want to go home. My alma mater is calling.'"
The Volunteers' program had fallen into a bit of a funk under former coach Bill Battle, losing five games in back-to-back years for the first time in a decade. But Tennessee eventually rebounded under Majors, working his magic like he did at Iowa State and Pitt.
The Volunteers made it to the Bluebonnet Bowl in Majors' third season, and, starting in 1981, had a winning record in 10 of the next 11 seasons. That stretch was highlighted by Southeastern Conference titles in 1985, 1989 and 1990. Majors' 1989 team went 11-1 and finished the season ranked No. 5 in the country.
In 1987, while he was still coaching, Majors was inducted to the College Football Hall of Fame.
Majors' time at Tennessee came to an end in 1992 when he abruptly resigned in November of that season. He had a falling out with the Tennessee brass and learned that his contract would not be extended following the season.
"I still love the game of football, and if there's an opportunity to coach elsewhere, I certainly would consider it," Majors said at the time.
It didn't take long for that new opportunity to present itself. Just over a month after his resignation from Tennessee, Majors signed a contract to return as Pitt's head coach. This time, though, Majors had more difficulty restoring life into the program, which had fallen on hard times in the late 1980s.
He coached just four years the second time around at Pitt, going 12-32, before resigning at the end of the 1996 season.
Still, Majors brought a spark with him when he returned.
"I remember when we would do games on the road and all the alumni would be in a room having snacks and cocktails," said Mark May, an All-American at Pitt in 1980 who served as the Panthers' color commentator on WTAE Radio in 1994. "He'd walk into the room, and the whole attitude in the room would take a step forward. He would brighten up the room. He just had a way about him."
Majors stayed on at Pitt as the special assistant to the athletic director and chancellor until July 2007, when he and his wife, Mary Lynn, moved back to Knoxville to be closer to their family.
Mary Lynn Majors told Sports Radio WNML that her husband spent his final hours "doing something he dearly loved: looking out over his cherished Tennessee River."
And on Wednesday morning, former Pitt players and supporters remembered their cherished coach.
Kramer was "very proud" to be Majors' friend. May said every time he saw Majors over the years, the coach "would always shake your hand, give you a hug and pat you on the back." Pelusi added that Majors was a Pittsburgher at heart and someone you didn't want to disappoint, "just like your mom or dad."
Sherrill's relationship with Majors, meanwhile, went way back. The two met in 1967, when Majors was an assistant at Arkansas and Sherrill was brought in for a graduate level role. Sherrill left in 1968, following Majors to Iowa State. That's when their friendship _ and coaching careers _ took off.
"He was my mentor, my boss and my friend. That's been going on for 53 years," Sherrill said. "Every place he ever went, he built. From Iowa State to Pittsburgh to Tennessee. We lost a great man, a great person and a great coach."
