Roy Exum: The Vols’ Darkest Days

  • Sunday, June 7, 2020
  • Roy Exum
Roy Exum
Roy Exum

With Johnny Mayors’ death this week, it’s time I put Tennessee’s darkest days finally to bed. It is also time for me to bury a lot of my personal hurt for Johnny, and any remnants of resentment I still carry, over the way Tennessee’s greatest football hero was suddenly cast out by lesser men with far less values. I greatly rejoice that John’s mortal race has now been won – has it ever! His indomitable spirit has now soared into the heavens, with his Providence-provided great friend Pat Dye as his seat-mate in Heaven’s chariot, yet I wonder if those who bushwhacked him at the very pinnacle of his career will be as fortunate.

As I now bury my personal distaste and anger that has seethed within me for what? the last 28 years? only in this, John’s greatest victory as he marched through his cherished Pearly Gates, can I finally forgive those who shattered his very life’s dreams during the darkest days in the University of Tennessee’s as well as the state’s history.

Johnny would want me to do that, and he would be pleased.

I had an insider’s view of the debauchery, the two of us close personal friends, and because my line of work called for me to cover sports and its people during what should have never been allowed to occur within a sane society. In what would turn into Johnny’s Waterloo in the 1992 season, Tennessee had emerged into a national powerhouse. In both ’89 and ’90, they won SEC titles while mastering both the Cotton and Sugar Bowls. They had established a permanent berth in the nation’s Top Ten and in 1991 won another nine games. Man, Johnny had finally guided UT into college football’s Camelot.

But there was something evil festering. The summer before, Johnny and Doug Dickey, Tennessee’s athletic director, had driven down from Knoxville to meet John’s youngest brother, Bobby, a two-time All-American defensive back, and me for golf at The Honors Course. We had a spectacular time, which was made even better when Joe, another Majors brother who starred at Florida State and was a lobbyist in Nashville, joined us for lunch at the turn.

Since I was the worst golfer among us that day, I was paired with Bobby and he was on fire. He hit a one-iron off three tees to card an awesome 71 on his own ball and it couldn’t have been a better day. That is, except at the end of laughter-laden lunch, Joe and Doug parted with a few terse words over something. On the back nine, Doug and I were waiting our turn when I casually asked him, “Did John get his contract deal done?” and Coach Dickey shrugged it off, telling me all that was lacking was Johnny’s signature, “just a formality.” I thought no more about it, mostly because it was none of my business.

Closer to the start of fall practice another warning sounded. I got word that Johnny was at some Big Orange picnic in Nashville when a former teammate of his, Bill Johnson, a banker out of Sparta who was on the UT Board of Trustees, said something about the contract that he shouldn’t have to Majors. Johnny said something he shouldn’t have back, then came a second verse, and I got it strong from an eyewitness the two had to be physically separated. I immediately ragged Johnny about it, but despite my joking I knew he was deeply bothered by some underlying circumstances. And I was like “So what? You’re invincible … forget the ‘little people.’”

Then the unthinkable exploded the last week of August. Johnny had a heart attack, this three weeks after his dear buddy and UT trainer Tim Kerin died from one, and he underwent four bypasses. I was up there pretty quick and the first thing he said was, “If this ever happens to you, do not sneeze!”

As we talked that day in the hospital, I remember distinctly telling him this setback could have a silver lining. “You can recruit while you recover, you’ve got a cast-iron contract, a great staff to hold things together, and Rocky Top ain’t never been taller. Plus, you’ll feel like a new man for years to come. Pal, you’ll finish your career like Secretariat! Lots of pluses, John.”

“I haven’t signed the contract … and Fulmer wants my job … I’m gonna’ coach again this fall …” Now it was my turn for a heart attack – Tim, Johnny and now me, watching the Titanic set sail.

Oh mercy. I saw Coach Dickey in the hospital hall and begged him to ban Johnny from the field for a year. “Anybody who’s had their chest cracked goes through mood swings and stuff, Coach Dickey, you know that …  Doug, don’t let him do this to himself.” Dickey shook his head, chuckling over John’s stubborn trait. “You know him as well as I do, he’s told me he’s the coach.

“Well, call his doctors and tell them to forbid it. Get 'Doctor Joe' to put his foot down." (Johnson was  a great university president at the time who was also a family friend; he was on my grandfather’s Blue Cross-Blue Shield board. I told Coach Dickey, “All shuffled and cut, this isn’t right … don’t let this happen.”

But it did. Phillip Fulmer and I had known one another for years and, when Johnny told me Phillip was after his job, I chalked it up to some surgically induced paranoia. Johnny and Phillip had a personal as well as professional friendship. John made Phillip his Assistant Head Coach because Majors knew Phillip would do the right thing in any situation.

Now we had us a fix! A real lulu! Looking back, three little things loomed large. Joe Majors joining us for lunch wasn’t happenstance. The Majors family is a tightly woven cloth. Joe could say to Coach Dickey what John could not. Obviously he said it. The kerfuffle between Johnny and Johnson wasn’t a misunderstanding; it was a simmering pot. Johnson apparently went into overdrive after that in … what? … some misplaced lust for power? And Kerin’s fatal heart attack gave the bums their window. Tim, who Johnny had brought to Knoxville, was far more than the trainer; he was the football program’s glue.

Dr. Bill Youmans, the Vols’ orthopedic surgeon for years, firmly believes had Tim not died, he would have never let John coach in 1992, would have urged John to put the contract into play … everybody else had signed it … and a coup would have been averted.

I saw Phillip Fulmer maybe a dozen times after he took over day-to-day duties. He did a fabulous job getting the team focused and, even leg-weary from practice, all of us could tell this Vol bunch was going to be special. I called Johnny one morning when I was in Knoxville and Mary Lynn told me he was down in the basement. “He’s trying to blow a whistle in a way it doesn’t hurt!”

The start of the season was welcomed. It seemed to dim the angst and, after three weeks, an excited staff and jubilant Fulmer led the team to as many wins, a gimme 38-3 over SW Louisiana but then two mighty glories; a 34-31 spine-tingler over Georgia in Athens but then what was the biggest win of the entire year, a thorough 34-14 trouncing over a No. 4 Steve Spurrier-led Florida (which is what triggered the endless zingers that Spurrier would pester Fulmer and UT with for years.)

The Georgia and Florida wins caused Johnny to return a bit quicker than he had privately planned. Johnson, the Sparta banker, was working stealthily and as Tennessee extended the year to five straight wins, shellacking both Cincinnati and LSU without giving up a point, Johnny was unable to get himself and the players into the same comfort zone. Let’s face it, Johnny was still struggling with the heart surgery aftermath but far worst was that the relationship with Fulmer had been broached, splitting the staff and, whether you’ll admit it or not, affecting the players.

They are reading in the Knoxville News-Sentinel that telephone records reveal Johnson and Fulmer had talked 28 times and when Arkansas, of all teams, upsets UT 25-24 and knocks them out of the Top Ten, the ouster effort of Majors was well known. Alabama, a defensive juggernaut that would win the national championship in 1992, out-lasted Tennessee 14-7 in Knoxville and, as has happened ever since Bear Bryant poured the mold, the Alabama domination over an embarrassed UT was what fueled the Johnson-Dickey successful coup of Tennessee’s favorite son.

Yeah, Dickey was in on it. Johnson had the bloody hands, all right, but it was Dickey who pieced together the roadwork for Fulmer to inherit one of the best football programs in America. The Vols had an off week after losing to No. 4 Alabama and that’s when Johnson and Dickey sold the dirty doings to the Athletic Board and Trustees. Tennessee played South Carolina in Columbia, and with “the other USC” totally out-classed and out-talented and out-coached, there was no one else to blame for the sickening one-point loss except the henchmen who had stolen the soul of the Orange like none other than The Grinch himself.

With three straight losses after five promising wins, the Tuesday press conference in Knoxville was like attending a funeral. Johnny wasn’t talking, but he told me he wasn’t giving up, and that brings us to the Friday morning before UT would face Memphis in Liberty Bowl Stadium the next day. He knew I wouldn’t be there, with me doubting all that was good and proper in the world of college sports. So, I was sitting at my desk, ready to leave for Georgia at Auburn the next day when my telephone rang at 10:30 a.m. It was Johnny. “It’s over. I’m going to resign in few hours …”

I walked out into our news room, told the copy desk to hold the press until I could knock out a short bulletin, “but you can go ahead with the banner headline: “Majors Forced Out; Quits at UT”

John coached the team to closing wins against Kentucky and at Vandy, the regular season ending at 8-3, and UT 17th in the polls. “Hold it right there!” said ESPN’s Lee Corso, the day after Majors’ resignation stunned the college football world. “Are you telling me that because of three losses, by a total of nine points, Tennessee is firing the single most important person responsible for its height of success? Are you telling me, that after winning nine or more games in four of the past five seasons, they have the audacity to fire the greatest singular personality in the history of the school, Johnny Majors? I seem to be confused …”

Had Majors hijacked an airliner, fought with ISIS terrorists, killed 22 persons with his car in some drunken rage at a rock festival … you name it … what on earth could his own Big Orange family have done to him any worse than in a sadistic, torturous way in those four months he tried his hardest to live up to his name after enduring open-heart bypass surgery. It was inhumane. He opted not to coach the bowl game that year, instead stumbling back to Pittsburgh where he tried to renew the verve he had left behind after leading Pitt to the 1976 national championship.

I forgave Phillip in my heart by the next season. He was drawn into it as, I figured, an accomplice by association. Johnson was using him, demanding Fulmer follow “or else.” Phillip’s life dream was to coach Tennessee and, my goodness, who wouldn’t want to inherit a candy factory with the cabinets already full? He paid great dividends, too, with his national championship and many great victories in return. Remember, too, that Dickey was still Phillip’s boss. The thin tightrope he was forced to walk wasn’t exactly a peach. Fulmer was a super coach and is just as worthy as an athletic director. Still, I don’t have to guess those ghosts haunt him too, at times.

For a long time, I didn’t see Johnny after I left the newspaper in 2000. I left the SEC days back at the paper, so my life has found a distinctively different path. Several years ago, fate brought us together again and, so help me, it was as we’d seen each other the week before. It was delicious. After my leg was amputated he came to see me at Siskin Hospital and, while neither of us wanted to revisit what I have always considered the greatest travesty I ever witnessed, when he was leaving the hospital he told me, “in the end I’ll still be the same John Majors and you’ll be the same Roy Boy. Aren’t you glad neither of us ever changed?”

* * *

So, that’s it. The dirty deed is gone. John’s in heaven, void of the demons who destroyed his lifelong dream. Because I am assured he’s cleansed, I am now able to cast aside the curse as well, this finally for good. All is forgiven. And no need to bury the ashes. That’s what the wind is for.

royexum@aol.com

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