The Majors Coaching Tree

Thirty of Johnny Majors’ assistants became head coaches – including national champions Johnson, Fulmer, and Cignetti

3:41 a.m. July 25, 2026

DUANE CROSS
MCO Publisher•Editor

Lynchburg’s Johnny Majors had been out of coaching for nearly 30 years when one of his old assistants carried Indiana to the top of college football.

On Jan. 19, 2026, Curt Cignetti completed a 16-0 season by beating Miami, 27-21, in the College Football Playoff National Championship. Indiana, of all programs, had gone from football afterthought to the last unbeaten team standing.

Cignetti had done what Majors spent much of his career doing: walk into a place accustomed to expecting little and change what it believed possible.

Their coaching paths first crossed from opposite sidelines. Cignetti began his coaching career as a Pittsburgh graduate assistant in 1983. His first game came Sept. 3 at Neyland Stadium, where Pitt defeated Majors’ Vols, 13-3.

A decade later, the two were on the same side. When Majors returned for a second turn at Pittsburgh in 1993, he hired Cignetti to coach quarterbacks and tight ends. Cignetti was still years from becoming a head coach, much less lifting a championship trophy.

Majors had an eye for coaches before many of them had made their names.

Some won championships. Some took hard jobs and stayed long enough to build programs. Others discovered that a head coach’s chair can grow hot in a hurry. One, Willie Jeffries, broke a barrier at the highest level of college football.

By the time the branches had spread, 30 of Majors’ assistants had become head coaches.

And the roots ran all the way back to Moore County.

A roll call across generations

At the top of major-college football, three of Majors’ former assistants won national championships.

Jimmy Johnson led Miami to the 1987 national title. Phillip Fulmer won the 1998 championship at Tennessee. Cignetti led Indiana to a 16-0 season, capped by the national championship in January 2026.

Three assistants. Three major-college national champions. Nearly four decades apart.

Johnson also won two Super Bowls with the Dallas Cowboys. Jon Gruden led Tampa Bay to its first Super Bowl title. Dom Capers became the first head coach of both the Carolina Panthers and Houston Texans.

Dave Wannstedt coached the Chicago Bears, Miami Dolphins, and Pitt. Jackie Sherrill won at Pitt, Texas A&M, and Mississippi State. Walt Harris led Pitt and Stanford.

Tennessee fans know another branch by heart. David Cutcliffe led Ole Miss and Duke; Daryl Dickey coached Presbyterian and West Georgia; Randy Sanders took over at East Tennessee State. Kevin Steele, Ron Zook, and Tommy West also became major-college head coaches.

The full count reaches 30. The others are Lynn Amedee, Joe Avezzano, Bob Babich, Kippy Brown, King Block, Ray Greene, Ray Hamilton, Willie Jeffries, Ken Karcher, Ollie Keller, Larry Lacewell, Larry Marmie, Gary Nord, Bill Pace, Al Saunders, and Charles Coe.

Some became famous. Some became football men known mostly to other football men.

All 30 had stood in Johnny Majors’ meeting room, coached his players, recruited for his program, and watched him go about the business of building a team.

The first staff

The tree began to take shape in Ames, Iowa.

Majors was 32 when Iowa State hired him late in 1967. Still remembered first as the Tennessee tailback who finished second in the 1956 Heisman Trophy voting, he had spent the intervening years as an assistant at Tennessee, Mississippi State, and Arkansas.

Now he had his own program.

Iowa State had never been to a bowl game. Majors did not inherit a machine in need of polishing. He inherited a program in need of belief.

He also assembled a staff filled with men who would leave their own marks on the game.

Jimmy Johnson handled the interior linemen. Larry Lacewell coordinated the defense. Jackie Sherrill coached the offensive backs.

Ollie Keller worked with the offensive backfield during Majors’ first season. He later led Northeast Louisiana – now Louisiana-Monroe – from 1972 through 1975.

They were young coaches learning that a rebuilding job began long before Saturday afternoon.

The work began in living rooms. Majors and his assistants had to sell Iowa State to recruits with better offers, persuade the players already there that losing was not permanent, and convince supporters that the Cyclones could matter.

The victories came slowly, but by 1971 Iowa State had reached the first bowl game in school history. Majors had proved he could lift a program. His assistants had learned how it was done.

They carried those lessons with them when they left Ames.

Majors took the same work east to Pittsburgh.

The Pitt rebuild

Pittsburgh hired Majors in 1973. The Panthers had not been to a bowl game in 17 years. Once proud, they had become ordinary. Majors arrived with no intention of leaving them that way.

Sherrill followed from Iowa State, serving as assistant head coach and defensive coordinator from 1973 through 1975 and becoming one of Majors’ most unrelenting recruiters.

Willie Jeffries joined Majors’ first Pitt staff, working with the defensive line and helping recruit a freshman class that included Tony Dorsett. His stay lasted only months. Jeffries left later in 1973 to become head coach at his alma mater, South Carolina State.

He spent 29 seasons as a head coach at South Carolina State, Wichita State, and Howard, winning three Black college national championships and seven Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference titles.

In 1979, Wichita State hired Jeffries as the first Black head football coach at an NCAA Division I-A program at a predominantly white university. He did more than earn a head coach’s chair. Jeffries opened a door.

Back at Pitt, Majors and his staff assembled a roster that included Dorsett, Matt Cavanaugh, Al Romano, Randy Holloway, and enough talent to turn a rebuilding project into a national power.

Sherrill helped Majors stock the shelves, but he did not remain long enough to see the finished product. After the 1975 season, Sherrill left to become head coach at Washington State.

Pitt entered 1976 with Majors in charge and a roster assembled over three demanding recruiting cycles. The Panthers went 12-0. Dorsett won the Heisman Trophy. Pitt handled Georgia in the Sugar Bowl. The Panthers made the voters’ decision easy: They were national champions.

Then Majors went home.

Tennessee hired him after the championship season, calling back one of the greatest players in school history to restore a program that had lost its footing.

Pitt did not look far for a replacement. It handed the program to Sherrill, who knew the roster, the recruits, and the standard Majors had set.

Sherrill went 50-9-1 in five seasons. His Panthers reached five bowl games, posted four top-10 finishes, and remained among the nation’s best.

Majors had rebuilt the program.

One of his own kept it there.

The Tennessee years

Majors returned to Knoxville in 1977 and spent 16 seasons restoring Tennessee, winning three Southeastern Conference championships and reaching 12 bowls.

One of Majors’ Tennessee breakthroughs came against one of his own.

No. 8 Tennessee faced second-ranked Miami in the 1986 Sugar Bowl, with Jimmy Johnson coaching the Hurricanes. The Vols won, 35-7, giving Majors his first New Year’s Day bowl victory at Tennessee and launching a five-game bowl winning streak.

Majors and Johnson had come a long way from their days together in Ames.

Majors’ coaching tree spread widest during those Tennessee years.

Fulmer joined Majors’ staff in 1980. A former Tennessee offensive lineman, he rose through the ranks, became offensive coordinator, and succeeded Majors in 1992. Six years later, Tennessee went 13-0 and won its first national championship in 47 years.

Walt Harris joined the staff in 1983 as offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach. He directed Tennessee’s offense through 1988. His 1985 unit helped the Vols win the SEC and rout Miami in the Sugar Bowl. Harris’ path would eventually lead back to Pitt.

Majors had restored Tennessee to national relevance. One of his own carried the Vols back to the championship.

Cutcliffe later led Ole Miss and Duke. Dickey, Sanders, Steele, Zook, Nord, and West also moved from Majors’ staff to head coaching jobs of their own.

Majors’ assistants reached the professional game, too. Capers coached defensive backs at Tennessee before beginning an NFL career that would take him to two expansion franchises. Gruden arrived in Knoxville as a young graduate assistant, years before he became one of the most recognizable coaches in the sport. Al Saunders became head coach of the San Diego Chargers. Kippy Brown coached the Memphis Maniax of the XFL.

Majors did not produce 30 copies of himself. Some became offensive specialists, others defensive architects. There were recruiters, organizers, college lifers, and NFL men.

They borrowed what fit and carried away the rest.

Majors did not spend his career guarding a reputation from the comfort of established programs. He took Iowa State before its first bowl, Pitt after 17 years without one, and Tennessee when his alma mater needed rebuilding.

That sort of work stays with an assistant. Years later, when their own calls came, many accepted jobs that offered more problems than promises.

The last great branch

Cignetti’s path was not a straight climb.

A decade after opening his coaching career across from Majors at Neyland Stadium, Cignetti joined him at Pitt. He coached quarterbacks and tight ends and worked as recruiting coordinator.

Then Majors retired after the 1996 season, and Pitt again turned to one of his former assistants. Harris took over in 1997. He had spent six seasons helping Majors build Tennessee’s offense. Now he succeeded him at Pitt, just as Sherrill had two decades earlier.

In his first season, Harris led the Panthers back to a bowl game. He remained at Pitt for eight seasons.

Cignetti stayed through 1999, working first for Majors and then for Harris. He later worked at North Carolina State and under Nick Saban at Alabama. Still, the chance to run his own program did not come quickly.

After 26 years as a college assistant, his first head-coaching opportunity came at Indiana University of Pennsylvania in 2011. Cignetti won there, then at Elon, then at James Madison.

He arrived at Indiana before the 2024 season with a long résumé and little patience for the suggestion that the Hoosiers needed years to become competitive.

They did not need years. They needed Cignetti. By the end of his second season, Indiana was 16-0 and national champion.

Cignetti did not win with Majors’ offense. He did not recruit in Majors’ world. College football had changed beyond recognition since the old coach’s final season. The transfer portal allowed rosters to be remade in months rather than assembled over four or five recruiting classes. Money, television, and conference realignment had redrawn the sport.

But coaching had not changed all that much. It still came down to finding players, hiring teachers, demanding more, and making a program believe before the scoreboard gave it reason.

Majors had done it at Iowa State, Pitt, and Tennessee.

Cignetti did it at Indiana.

Johnny Majors last stalked a college sideline in 1996. Nearly three decades later, one of his former assistants stood beneath a shower of championship confetti.

That is the measure of a coaching tree – not merely how many branches it produces, but how long its lessons endure.

From Lynchburg to Ames. From Ames to Pittsburgh. From Pittsburgh to Knoxville and back again.

Then on to Bloomington, where Curt Cignetti built a national champion.