Jackie Sherrill says Johnny Majors was his 'father figure'

Jackie Sherrill said he had little trouble replacing Johnny Majors as Pitt’s coach in 1977.

He had recruited and coached most of the players over three seasons at Pitt.

After spending the 1976 season as coach at Washington State, Sherrill was the logical choice to replace Majors, who left for Tennessee, his alma mater. Bumper stickers popped up around town, declaring, “Jackie’s back!…Back Jack!”

“I knew Pittsburgh,” Sherrill said. “I knew all the administrators, the (athletic director), Cas Myslinski.

“It wasn’t hard on that part.”

Yet, there was a tricky difference.

“I wasn’t Coach Majors,” Sherrill said Wednesday, the day after Majors died at the age of 85.

“He was the best PR guy who’s been in our business for a long time. He was political and at times I wasn’t very political.”

Yet, the two men who knew each other for 53 years are the two most successful coaches in Pitt history. When Pitt was most recently a national power, they were the architects. Majors led Pitt to its most recent national championship in 1976; Sherrill compiled the best winning percentage in school history (.842, 50-9-1).

When word reached Sherrill on Wednesday morning that his friend had died overnight, the first face he saw was that of his wife, Peggy.

“This morning when I told her coach had passed, she hugged me and said, ‘I’m sorry,’ and her comment was, ‘He was the closest father figure that you ever had.’ ”

Two nights before Majors died, the two men talked on the phone for more than hour while Majors sat on his back porch at his home in Knoxville, Tenn.

“We talked about the players at Pitt. We talked about Iowa State (where Majors had hired Sherill in 1968),” Sherrill said. “You name it, we talked about it.”

Sherrill first met Majors when they were assistants on coach Frank Broyles’ staff at Arkansas. Sherrill followed Majors to Iowa State and, later, to Pitt.

“Coach was very loyal,” Sherrill said. “If he met you, 10 years later, he would still know you and tell you where you all met.

“He was very honest, and he had a lot of integrity. To his players, he was more than just a coach, all the way down to a father figure, which he was for me.”

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