THE MAJOR : West Virginia’s Harris Is Not Rank and File

A couple of weeks ago, about 750 West Virginia University football boosters gathered at a Morgantown country club to honor the 1988 Mountaineers.

Among the invited guests was one James Jett, who was to be officially named by the Morgantown Touchdown Club as the state’s high school player of the year. Jett is West Virginia’s No. 1 football recruiting prospect.

He’s a 6-foot, 160-pound Anthony Carter-type wide receiver, who averaged 17 yards a catch. He was seated at the head table next to Don Nehlen, West Virgina’s coach. To some in the audience, it appeared as if Jett might be closer to 150 were it not for his Afro.

During the awards portion of the banquet, Major Harris, West Virginia’s sophomore quarterback, was given the most valuable player award. At the conclusion of his remarks, he turned and stared at Jett for a few seconds.

Then, showing everyone in the room that his sense of command on the football field extends to the banquet table, he said, “James, I want to tell you that you’re going to look just great in West Virginia blue and gold, providing you do one thing: Get a HAIRCUT!”

The room exploded in laughter and Harris walked off the dais to loud applause. Even Jett enjoyed the moment.

That’s Major Harris. In command. So what could be more natural than a command performance?

Before the 1984 football season began at Brashear High School in Pittsburgh, Coach Ron Wabby lined up a half-dozen quarterback candidates on the 50-yard line and had them put one knee on the ground. Throw the ball as far as you can, the coach told them.

Balls sailed to the 10, some even to the 5 and the goal line.

Then 16-year-old Major Harris threw. Out of the end zone.

“A lot of college coaches recruited him as a defensive back, and a lot of them didn’t really understand what kind of an arm he really had,” Wabby recalled recently. “And in addition to that arm, he’s a superb athlete . . . he can do all the game-breaking stuff that a coach can’t teach.

“So Maj was turned off by all the college recruiters who started talking to him about playing defensive back. In fact, to Maj, it was never a question of whether he would play quarterback or defensive back in college, it was a question of quarterback or basketball.”

Harris, 6-1 and 215, sat with a reporter recently in West Virginia’s 15,000-seat Coliseum, watching a couple of members of WVU’s basketball team play half-court with some non-varsity players. And he wondered what might have been.

“I can hold my own with those guys,” he said, pointing to the varsity players. “If I’d played any other football position but quarterback, I might have tried to play both sports.”

Harris grew up in Pittsburgh’s Hill District, spawning ground of some big-time basketball names: Maurice Stokes, Connie Hawkins and Maurice Lucas.

His mother was a computer operator in a Pittsburgh steel mill until she was recently laid off, his father is a television repairman. His given name is Major, named for an uncle who was a foot soldier in Vietnam.

When West Virginia’s 11-0 football team tries to win a national championship by beating Notre Dame in the Fiesta Bowl Monday, viewers might logically wonder: How did Ohio State, Pittsburgh, Penn State and so many other Eastern football powers miss this guy?

“A lot of schools got the word that I wanted to play quarterback,” Harris said.

“There were three who said I could play quarterback--West Virginia, Syracuse and Arizona State. At one time, I’d wanted to go to Pitt, but Pitt had a coaching change that year (Foge Fazio left and Mike Gottfried arrived), so I ruled them out. It came down to WVU and Arizona State.”

And so this affable, gifted athlete has been the man in command while the Mountaineers have gone through their first unbeaten regular season in 97 years of competing in football.

To Mike Jacobs, WVU offensive coordinator, Harris was a hunch play.

“We looked at Maj very closely his last two high school seasons,” Jacobs said. “Finally, we decided he had the kind of tools that could be developed into that one great quarterback every football coach in the country looks for, the kind of kid who turns you into a great coach.”

The head man, Nehlen, said the difference between 11-0 and 6-5 in 1987 is Harris’ rapid maturation.

“We put Maj in there last year, his first year, knowing it would take him time to develop, but we needed him immediately,” Nehlen said.

Harris is in his second football season at WVU, in his third year in school.

“The kid was put under a lot of pressure and handled it beautifully,” Nehlen said. “I mean, in his second college game, he’s in Ohio Stadium before 80,000, playing Ohio State.”

For the first half of the 1987 season, Harris was under wraps and fighting the reins.

Mickey Furfari, who covers WVU for the Morgantown Dominion Post, said: “For the first four games last year, Nehlen really restricted him, as to what he’d let him do offensively. But in the Pitt game, you could see he really had it, that he was going to be a great college quarterback, and soon. West Virginia lost (6-3) that game, but by that point he’d really arrived. On the field, he was in complete command.

“Really, from that point, it’s been the Major Harris Show around here.”

Unfortunately for him, it has been somewhat of a Major Harris Show for other reasons, too. Harris hasn’t been in the news for his football exploits alone since he arrived in Morgantown. In the summer of 1987, in Pittsburgh, he arrived at the scene of a rowdy party to find police had been called. When he heard a window break, he decided to leave.

A police car followed him, he said, and Pittsburgh police officer Thomas Palmieri stopped him, and, according to Harris, beat him with a flashlight. He was jailed overnight, but a judge later dropped charges. Now, Harris is contemplating charges of his own.

“Maj is still upset about it,” says Wabby, his high school coach. “He told me: ‘Coach, the only reason I got in trouble that night is that I wouldn’t run. I could have run away from those guys. But the reason I didn’t run was because I hadn’t done anything wrong.’ ”

In a Sports Illustrated interview, Harris indicated the affair would end if the officer would admit he’d beaten him “and tell the judge the truth.”

Harris comes into the Fiesta Bowl with a 5-yards-per-carry rushing average, an average of 159 yards per game passing with 57.5% accuracy, and 1,749 yards in total offense.

Yet it has been non-playbook plays that have broken up several games this season and last.

“He kills you with the broken play,” said Jerry Sandusky, Penn State’s offensive coordinator. West Virginia beat Penn State in Morgantown this year, 51-30, on national TV. It was 41-8 at halftime.

“You can be doing a good job of coverage on him on a passing down, but he can break one tackle, head upfield and hurt you with a big gain,” Sandusky said. “He’s a great quarterback and a great competitor.”

Harris bristles at critics who point to weaknesses in West Virginia’s schedule. Nevertheless, compared to others, it was. Cal State Fullerton, Bowling Green and East Carolina were among the conquered.

“It’s not like we were beating those teams by three points,” he said. “We blew ‘em out. We’ve scored 50 points five times.”

Notre Dame, of course, is not Fullerton, Bowling Green or East Carolina. But then, an 11-0 record in almost any circumstances is nothing to sneeze at.

In fact, an 11-0 record is the kind of high achievement produced only by a team with a leader who is, well, in command. In a major way.