Decided to copy the part about Majors, in case ppl didn't have an insider account, before people asked.
"Jimmy Johnson, Jackie Sherrill, Kevin Steele, and David Cutcliffe worked for college coaching legend Johnny Majors while he was at Iowa State, Pittsburgh and Tennessee. When Johnson landed head-coaching jobs at Oklahoma State and Miami, he hired Pat Jones, Tommy Tuberville, Butch Davis and Larry Coker. They in turn helped launch the careers of Ed Orgeron, Greg Schiano, Gene Chizik and Will Muschamp. Every great college head coach has a good-looking line of coaches who he's taught to have success on the field. But what about those coaches who have mentored this generation of expert recruiters? Do those recruiting trees exist the same way?
You better believe it, say many of the top minds on the business.
Coaches from all over the country were asked whether coaching trees existed with recruiting. Almost all of the responses were of the affirmative. Florida State recruiting coordinator Tim Brewster, widely considered one of the best recruiters in the game today, said the best head coaches know they can't just out-coach other teams on Saturdays. They have to be able to go out and get the future talent.
"As Darrell Royal used to say, 'It's not the X's and the O's but the Jimmys and the Joes,'" Brewster said. "You have to out-hustle everybody else on the recruiting trail as a head coach and also teach your assistants to be effective." Here's a look at what many recruiters today believe are some of the best recruiting trees of all time.
Johnny Majors
Head-coaching stops: Iowa State (1968-1972), Pittsburgh (1973-1976, 1993-1996), Tennessee (1977-1992)
Majors' coaching tree is one of the most impressive ever in college football. He has connections with many well-known names such as Jon Gruden, Dave Wannstedt, Dave Campo and Dom Capers, but the list of star recruiters he's connected with is simply amazing.
[+] EnlargeJimmy Johnson
AP Photo/Raul DemolinaJimmy Johnson changed the direction of Miami football by recruiting the local market.
Majors' first staff at Iowa State in 1968 featured two of the best recruiters in the game -- Sherrill and Johnson. While he ran into trouble with the NCAA time after time at Texas A&M and Mississippi State, many still consider Sherrill one of the SEC's best recruiters ever. There are still stories told in South Florida about the recruiting heroics that Johnson pulled off while coaching the Miami Hurricanes.
Steele was also hired by Majors in 1980 as a graduate assistant at Tennessee, and many consider Steele one of the best recruiters over the past 20 years. After stops at Alabama, Clemson, Baylor, Nebraska, Tennessee and Oklahoma State, he's now back running the Crimson Tide's juggernaut recruiting efforts as the team's director of player personnel. Other names such as Cutcliffe, Phillip Fulmer, Jack Sells, Tommy West and Ron Zook are on Majors' recruiting tree. One SEC coach called Cutcliffe the "most underappreciated recruiter in the game over the last 15 years." Fulmer, West and Zook were definitely go-to recruiters before becoming head coaches. And despite a fall from grace after he allegedly faxed hand-drawn diagrams of offensive plays to Zook when he was the head coach at Florida, it's hard to argue against the success that Sells had as a recruiter at Tennessee.
Top recruits landed: DB Dale Carter, QB Matt Cavanaugh, LB Keith DeLong, RB Tony Dorsett, RB Charlie Garner, WR Willie Gault, QB Andy Kelly, RB Johnnie Jones, WR Tim McGee, WR Carl Pickens, QB Heath Shuler, DE Reggie White
Quotable: "Johnny Majors was ahead of his time," said Texas-San Antonio defensive line coach Eric Roark, who coached under Fulmer at Tennessee in 2001. "He understood before a lot of people did that it took players, more than it did schemes. The way he recruited and taught his assistants how to recruit forever changed the SEC.""
