A Majors Success

To get the players needed to win football games, says University of Pittsburgh Football Coach Johnny Majors, "we had to spend some money on them." Such candor will win Majors, 39, no popularity contest with fellow coaches; nor, for that matter, will his coaching record. Last year he took over a team that had lost ten of eleven games the previous season and bought Pitt a winning record for the first time in ten years. Despite a 14-10 loss to heavily favored Notre Dame two weeks ago, this year's Panthers have run up a 7-3 record. This week Majors has them poised to pounce on their archrival Perm State, a team they have not beaten since 1965.

Pitt has shown little concern over the fact that the price of such success comes high. The football team, exclusive of scholarship awards, * eats up $600,000 of the university's $2 million athletic budget. But Majors' arrival on the urban campus means that for the first time in a decade, the high-risk investment is paying off.

All-America. Attendance at Pitt's 56,500-seat stadium has more than doubled in two years; an average of 45,000 fans now turn out for each home game.

Pitt's Thanksgiving scrap with Perm State will be televised nationally on ABC, which will pay each school $244,000 for the privilege. The exposure only help national program, and if the Panthers manage to maul the Nittany Lions, their chances for future TV loot increase.

An All-America tailback at the University of Tennessee in 1956, Majors served as an assistant at Tennessee, Mississippi State and Arkansas. In 1968 he took over as head coach at Iowa State, where football fortunes were even bleaker than at Pitt. Four seasons later Iowa State had an 8-3 record and went to its first post-season bowl game.

By then Majors was itching for another move and Pitt was more than willing to pay the price. Johnny's brother Joe was dispatched to Pittsburgh under an assumed name to confer with school officials. He came back with the promise that Majors could recruit with few Limitations, would earn a salary estimated at $30,000 and have his own half-hour television show--a job worth at least $10,000. Majors was more than satisfied.

His second day on the job, the new coach dropped in on the son of a steelworker in nearby Aliquippa. He went back ten more times in the next few months and finally talked Halfback Tony Dorsett into turning down some 100 other recruiters and coming to Pitt. Dorsett, who became the nation's first freshman All-America in 29 years, now says, "If it weren't for the coaching change, I wouldn't be here." That coup was just for openers. Capitalizing on the university's promise of a virtually blank check and his own folksy down-home delivery, Majors managed to attract 70-odd freshmen and junior college players to Pitt on full football scholarships that first year.

Salesman Majors next set out to win over alumni. "It didn't matter whether it was breakfast, lunch or dinner," he says. "I didn't turn anyone down because I never knew who might help our program." He found out soon enough. Pitt alumni contributed $181,000 to athletics, some of which he used to enlarge and carpet a locker room. New showers followed, a players' lounge, stereo system and color TV. "Carpeting floors doesn't win ball games for you,"he says, "but it sure makes things more comfortable."

Pitt is comfortable enough with Majors to have offered him a new five-year contract. Rumors last month had him running off to coach his alma mater. But with his new contract in hand, Majors says his goal is to win the national championship, perhaps as soon as 1976. At Pitt's athletic cash register ringing.

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