View attachment 284690This is my avatar pic. This is me when I was 8 years old at the 1986 O&W game that at the time broke a Guinness attendance record for “spring game”. The hat I’m wearing had a little button under the bill that played Rocky Top.
Unfortunately at some point in my 20’s somebody spilled some whiskey on the picture and the colors bled. Thankfully my father in law is into photo restoration and he was able to bring it back much closer to its original glory.
My brother who is 9 years older also had his “official portrait with Coach Majors “so this was a BIG DEAL to me! For a native born Tennesseean/VFL to me this was like meeting Santa, only by this age I’m pretty sure I no longer believed in Santa but I knew that Coach Majors was the real deal.
My grandfather, who is now 90 and still knows every coaching change , recruit commit , score , etc... associated with The Big Orange was very well connected in the UTAD back in the day. I remember Gus Manning calling him several times each season looking for extra tickets because at one time my grandfather had the most obscene number of tickets that you could imagine. He gave a lot of them away to friends , business associates, strangers, etc...If it was a big game he would “make a couple of bucks”.When a no name opponent was in town we would head over to the bookstore before watching the band where my grandfather would unload countless extra tickets to “the guy in the green jacket”
We would see Coach Majors at the Hyatt on Friday nights before games where he filmed a tv show with Pat Ryan IIRC. I remember bumping into Coach Majors @the Dallas Hyatt before 1990 Cotton Bowl where he was heading to a 50’s style sock hop with his mother.I still remember that coach had on an old fashioned TN letter sweater and orange and white saddle oxfords !Whether he really knew us or not he always went out of his way to come over and speak and to me this was bigger than being in the presence of The President , Santa , Michael Jordan ... you name it .
RIP and thanks for all the memories Coach Majors.