COLLEGE FOOTBALL : Among the Coaching Royalty, Majors Is King of Tennessee

It’s not a long drive from Johnny Majors’ house on the outskirts of Knoxville to his office in the $11 million Neyland-Thompson Sports Center located just off--what else?--Johnny Majors Drive.

Still, there are times as he maneuvers his Buick courtesy car around the University of Tennessee campus when he admits his thoughts occasionally drift back to the days when he was a dashing, slashing single-wing tailback, the home-boy, buzz-cut all-American hero who led the Volunteers to an undefeated 1956 regular season, a Southeastern Conference title and a bittersweet Sugar Bowl appearance that ended in a 13-7 loss to Baylor.

“What a time that was,” Majors said somewhat wistfully in his signature down-home twang one day recently, watching his 1992 team go through an off-week workout.

“Oh sure, there was pressure, but as an athlete you never really noticed that. I remember the feeling of walking into that stadium--it was much smaller back then, but there was still a lot of noise--and how everyone was your friend. When you’re the head coach at a place like this, they all love you when you’re winning, and they’d all like to fire you after every loss.”

In college football, there are very few places like the University of Tennessee, where, win or lose, Neyland Stadium, stuffed with 97,000 fans, becomes the fourth-largest center of population in the state on six Saturdays every fall.

And there are very few coaches like 57-year-old Johnny Majors--”Our Johnny” to the Volunteer faithful ever since he scored 565 points playing for his father, Shirley, at Huntland High in lower middle Tennessee in the early 1950s.

The Tennessee football complex--with its vast locker room, its 70-yard indoor practice field, its 12,000-square-foot weight room, its state-of-the-art training facilities--is really a Majors monument that also houses the Tennessee Football Hall of Fame.

Tennessee’s opulent facilities are hardly unique in big-time college football. And there are coaches in other precincts across America who, like Majors, also enjoy equal parts deification and-or vilification depending on their teams’ won-loss records. A dwindling few are God-like figures in states and towns where football is religion, the stadium an open-air cathedral.

“Those days are on the wane, and so is that kind of coach,” said Bill Curry, one of Bear Bryant’s unhappy successors at Alabama, now the coach at Kentucky. “The reason is simple enough. There’s just so much more scrutiny, the dragging in of people’s private lives. They didn’t write bad things about Bear Bryant or Bobby Dodd (Curry’s coach at Georgia Tech). Now, personal lives are part of the territory.

“The day of the coach on a pedestal is pretty much over. Joe Paterno may be the only one left, and I know he’s not comfortable with it.”

Paul Finebaum, a columnist for the Birmingham Post-Herald, was the beat reporter on Alabama football for Bryant’s final two seasons. It was a heady time for a young man fresh from the University of Tennessee.

“You knew you were covering the most important person in your field,” he said. Most head college football coaches in the 1990s toil in a far different landscape. The pressure is on to find the very best athletes to win the games, to fill the stadiums, to satisfy the alums, to appear on national television. To make money.

The rewards for head coaches can be dazzling. Majors, who came back to his alma mater in 1977, earns $311,000 a year, plus perks and outside income from speeches, endorsements and business ventures. But he’s only in the middle of the compensation pack among many of his peers at the Division I level.

Yet, according to the American Football Coaches Assn., most Division I coaches better get it while they can, because their average stay at a school is about three years.

“You definitely earn your money,” said Charlie McLendon, for 18 years the coach at Louisiana State, another football-intense institution, and now director of the AFCA in Orlando.

In 1988, when Tennessee lost its first six games, the papers were full of letters from angry fans, many of whom also vented their displeasure on radio talk shows around the state. Majors jokes also were rampant.

Early one morning, as one story went, Majors’ wife, Mary Lynn, turned over and shook him awake. “It’s twenty to seven.” Majors jumped from under the covers. “You mean it’s not halftime yet?”

The bad jokes and the critics have been on the rise again this month. The Vols won their first five games, only to be upset by lowly Arkansas, followed by a tough seven-point loss to No. 4 Alabama--both at home before raucous crowds. The losing continued last week at South Carolina, when the Gamecocks stunned the Vols, 24-23.

Majors was out of action for the first three games after undergoing quintuple-bypass surgery on Aug. 25. He’d been replaced by assistant head coach Phil Fulmer, who won all three, including victories over Georgia and Florida, as Tennessee vaulted to No. 8 in the country.

Majors is 2-3 since returning, and there have been more than a few suggestions--some made on a statewide syndicated Monday night radio talk show, “VolCalls”--that perhaps the team would have been better off if Fulmer had stayed at the helm.

But there is no doubt who’s in charge now, even if Majors has lost about 10 pounds and has eased back somewhat on his schedule. Outside his office door, two assistants wait like children summoned to see the school principal before a secretary allows them into his inner sanctum, an office, sitting room and separate bathroom and shower.

“He could have any job he wanted in this state, including governor,” said J.J. McCleskey, a senior safety and former walk-on who grew up in Knoxville and always dreamed about playing for him. “He’s a great man. I really believe that.”

Added senior center Brian Spivey, from Jefferson City, Tenn.: “Every boy who grows up in this state wants to play for Coach Majors. I see what he goes through, all the people always trying to shake his hand, talk to him. When he wins, he could be president. When he loses, he couldn’t get a job collecting garbage.”

Majors said he’d have it no other way, though he was not at all happy when a fan hit him in the head with a cup of ice as he left the field after the Alabama game.

“I know about the pressure,” he said. “There’s pressure to fill that stadium because all the other (sports) programs (at the school) depend on us. We’re on TV most every game. Our budget depends on our success; our bowl appearances depend on our success. We’ve filled it up about every week since I’ve been back here.”

Talking to Majors, it becomes obvious that money is hardly his main motivation.

“I love coaching. I love the university,” he said. “I enjoy the life, very definitely. It just amazes me week after week, year after year, how these people rally around the program, how they support us.

“When I first came here, I remember we played Cal Berkeley. I hadn’t seen the new upper deck in the stadium yet. My wife hadn’t either. Her reaction was to ask me, ‘Where did all these people come from?’ They’re still coming, and they’re still letting me know how they feel. That’s just the way it is.”