Johnny Majors put Pitt back on the national football map again

I wish I had done one more interview with Johnny Majors.  I nearly did.

I called the former Pitt football coach and College Football Hall of Fame member at the outset of this month.  I called him on his cell phone at his home in Knoxville, Tennessee.  I recognized his voice, with that signature Tennessee twang, but he didn’t sound like his usual upbeat self. Something was amiss.

He said he couldn’t talk, that he was on his way out the door for an appointment, but that I should get back to him.  I never did.  My mistake.  Johnny Majors died last Wednesday at his home at age 85.

My advice: if you have a friend or family member in questionable health, don’t wait to make that call.

Majors will be missed by all Pitt fans.  We will never forget that he came to Pittsburgh in 1973 and won the national championship in 1976 with a Panthers’ team starring Heisman Trophy winner Tony Dorsett.

They combined their talents to completely turn around what had been a sorry football program to one of the nation’s best.  “No one player had a greater effect on a college football program than Tony Dorsett,” Majors often said.

Majors had been quite the football player himself, as a tailback in a single-wing offense at Tennessee, and finished runner-up in the Heisman Trophy voting to Notre Dame’s Paul Hornung in 1956.

It was tough to beat out a Notre Dame quarterback for such honors, even though the Irish had a won-loss record that season of 2-8.  Hornung is the only player from a losing team ever to win the award.  Connellsville’s John Lujack, another quarterback, was an earlier winner of the Heisman Trophy, as was Turtle Creek’s Leon Hart, a tight end and linebacker.  

Few writers bother to mention that Jim Brown of Syracuse University finished fifth in the balloting the year Hornung won the Heisman Trophy.  Talk about an oversight.

I was urged to contact Coach Majors by Dave Janasek, a running back who played on Pitt’s national championship football team.  He is not to be confused with my Merrill Lynch investment manager, Dave Jancisin, originally from Homeville.

Janasek told me that Johnny’s wife, Mary Lynn, a beautiful and warm-hearted woman, was not doing so well health-wise.  It was Mary Lynn who discovered her husband after he died.

I can remember meeting them both at social outings at the home of Armand Dellovade, a Canonsburg businessman and loyal Pitt booster, who threw the biggest and best parties at his palatial estate about four times a year.

I remember being at such a party the night we were hoping to hear that Pitt’s Larry Fitzgerald would win the Heisman Trophy, but Fitz finished second to Oklahoma’s Jason White in a close vote for the 2003 award.  Fitzgerald’s No. 1 has been retired at Pitt, and he is in the school’s Athletic Hall of Fame. Johnny Majors was there that night, telling stories about what it was like to finish runner-up for the Heisman Trophy.

I had several long sessions with Majors at those sessions, taking advantage of the fact that I was able to talk to and get so many wonderful stories from one of America’s greatest football coaches.  I never took talking to this man for granted.  I may have overstayed my welcome but I am always at work.  I am confident in saying that no other sportswriter has talked to Johnny Majors on more occasions in recent years.

Johnny Majors would seize my forearm from time to time, to make sure, I thought, that he held my attention, so he could tell me another story.  I asked my wife Kathie to bring me a plate of food offerings so I didn’t lose my seat next to him.

I recall introducing him to the great wrestler Bruno Sammartino, another Pittsburgh treasure, whom he had never met before that evening at Dellovade’s party.

I had planned and promised to write a follow-up column this week on what my friends had to say about what’s dominating the news in America these days, but then I learned about the death of Johnny Majors, five days after the fact, and decided to write about him instead.

With the infrequency of newspaper publication these days, it’s difficult to keep up with who’s dying.

Johnny Majors is a safer subject.  I also read in Sunday’s newspaper that the editor of The Philadelphia Inquirer had been let go after some negative reaction to a headline he allowed over a column about the death and follow-up rioting related to George Floyd in Minneapolis.  The headline was regarded as “insensitive” and I don’t want to risk anyone’s wrath, no matter what I or my friends might say on the subject, even though we all believe Floyd’s death was an American tragedy.  I have since learned that an editor at The New York Times was dismissed for a similar reason.       

It was unlikely I would ever see Johnny Majors again even before his death.  His good friend Armand Dellovade died at his home in Cecil Township on February 4, 2019.  The parties are over.  I recall that one of Armand’s brothers told me at the funeral home in Canonsburg, “A lot of guys in this room are going to have four voids on their social calendar this coming year.” How true.

One of my favorite Johnny Major stories was one he told that involved Phyllis George, the former Miss America who was the first woman to serve as a sportscaster at nationally-televised events for CBS.

George was absolutely gushing when she approached Coach Majors after his Pitt team won the Sugar Bowl to seal its No. 1 ranking in all the major polls in 1976. 

“I have an exclusive,” announced George, giving Johnny Majors her best smile, “Tony Dorsett told me that he is changing the pronunciation of his name from Dors-ett to Dor-SETT!”

Majors smiled and responded, “Geez, Phyllis, if that’s going to get you so excited, how about telling everyone I am changing my name to Johnny Ma-JOURS!”

Phyllis George died on May 14 at age 70.

I can recall sitting in the front row of a gathering at the Pittsburgh Athletic Association (PAA) at a dinner named in Johnny Majors’ honor and hearing him re-tell that story.  I was mouthing the words to the story – I had memorized it and wanted to make sure Johnny got it right – and I spotted his wife Mary Lynn, even closer to her husband, mouthing the words just as well, in case he needed any prompting. Johnny was getting forgetful, but he came through with flying colors.

When I was writing a book called Glory Years, I did a lengthy interview with Johnny for a chapter in the book.  He was great.  I asked him to bring me some photographs from his storied career, and he brought an assortment that was the best any of my subjects had ever presented to me.

As he showed me the pictures, real classics, many of his boyhood family, he offered descriptions and more stories, and I took notes and ended up doubling the size of his chapter.  It was better than ever.

Johnny Majors was a natural-born story-teller.  He played football in an era when college football ruled the South, and head football coaches would sit up with favored sportswriters on the eve of a big contest, and tell stories.  They were confident that their favorite columnists would look after them, no matter how much bourbon they might be sipping.

I enjoyed an evening like that during my student days as the sports editor of The Pitt News when Penn State’s Joe Paterno hosted a casual off-the-record gathering at the Nittany Lion Inn on the eve of a football contest with arch-rival Pitt.

Those days, like Johnny Majors, are gone.  Over-zealous sportswriters, eager to gain personal acclaim, ignored the off-the-record aspect of the gatherings and ruined the day for the rest of us. No college coaches host such parties these days.

Johnny Majors grew up in Lynchburg, Tennessee, where they make Jack Daniels Whiskey at a local distillery.  Intriguingly enough, Lynchburg is located in Moore County, a dry country where you cannot legally purchase alcoholic beverages.  I believe that Johnny Majors preferred drinking Johnny Walker Red, though others remember him as a gin drinker.

Either way, that got him in trouble from time to time.  Majors was reported to have fallen asleep while sitting in the stands at Pitt Stadium and watching practice from on high. That was during his second tenure as the Pitt coach.

After his first four years at Pitt, Majors returned to his alma mater, and coached at Tennessee for 16 seasons (1977-1992).  He came back to Pitt for three more seasons, but the second act was not nearly as much of a winner as the first go-around.  Majors remained a popular figure in Pittsburgh and stayed on for quite a while before returning to Tennessee.

He was divided in his loyalties.   He liked Pittsburgh a lot and was one of the reasons it became known as The City of Champions.      

When I read the obituaries in Sunday’s newspaper, I also learned of the death at 75 of a boyhood friend Billy Fonzi, a retired mailman from Munhall, who grew up a few doors from us on Sunnyside Street in Glenwood.  I hadn’t seen him in over 50 years, but I could still see his face when he was a glowing cherubic teenager.

I saw another familiar face and name, Charlie Hitson, who lived with his German-born wife Mia, in our neighborhood in Upper St. Clair. I learned some things in the obit I hadn’t known and made him an even more admirable man.

Kathie and I attended a memorial service this past Sunday for her Uncle Palmer Hyde at the home of her Aunt Gail Hyde in Ruffsdale, out near Mt. Pleasant.  He was a favorite uncle, who had seen service in Japan after the A-Bomb had been dropped in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  I never remember him telling war stories.  That was 75 years ago, the anniversary coming up soon.

Funerals have been different for several months because of the concern for the coronavirus.  I turned away from any hug attempts and it was awkward.  We are all going to need some hugs when this pandemic, hopefully, comes to an end.

Valley Mirror columnist Jim O’Brien wrote about Johnny Majors in Glory Years, from his Pittsburgh Proud collection. This article appeared in the Valley Mirror on June 11, 2020.