KNOXVILLE, Tenn. -- When I first metJohnny Majors, he was a third-year coach at Tennessee, and I was a second-year sports columnist at the Jackson (Mississippi) Clarion-Ledger.
We didn't talk that much about Tennessee when we had lunch at the SEC spring meetings in 1979. I was more interested in what he did elsewhere.
Majors, who died Wednesday morning at 85, was a Tennessee native who came close to winning the Heisman Trophy as a single-wing tailback with the Vols. He then returned to his alma mater after the 1976 football season to rebuild a program that he almost led to a national championship as a player in 1956.