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The Official Web Site of the WVU Varsity Club |
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Profile: Major Harris
Harris, one of college football’s most exciting players in the 1980s, has once again given professional football another shot when he was signed to play quarterback for the Charleston Swamp Foxes of the Arena Football League in February, 2003. Since Harris announced he was leaving school in the winter of 1990, he has embarked upon a gypsy-like professional career that has taken him to places like British Columbia, Columbus, Ohio, Wheeling, W.Va., and now North Charleston, S.C. This wasn’t what he expected when he stepped into West Virginia University’s Jerry West room at the WVU Coliseum to announce that he was entering the NFL draft a year early. Harris was short by NFL quarterback standards and he had a hitch in his throwing motion that was going to require extensive repairing. Even though Doug Williams had recently proved that a black quarterback was capable of leading a team to a Super Bowl title, at the time NFL teams were overly cautious about drafting black quarterbacks. Those were some of the reasons Harris was drafted in the 12th and final round by the Oakland Raiders. Eccentric owner Al Davis had developed a reputation for drafting projects, but even a tempting talent like Harris stretched the bounds of Davis’ passion for tinkering. “Around here we’re willing to gamble,” said Al LoCasale, executive assistant for the Raiders. “He had so much more athletic ability than those left in the last round.” But Harris knew his days were numbered in mini-camp. That meant his only real option was to go to Canada and develop much like Warren Moon did a decade before. Unlike Moon who played in a precise, regimented system at Washington, Harris was more of a freelancer who made up things as he went. His most famous play at West Virginia University was a 26-yard touchdown run against Penn State when he forgot the play and ran the wrong way. It was much more difficult to get away with that in professional football. Major’s first year in Canadian Football with the British Columbia Lions was a disaster. It just so happened that BC also signed Doug Flutie, who had many of the same qualities as Major with a lot more experience. So Harris sat. For the first time since he first began faking out grade school kids in Pittsburgh’s Hill District, Harris wasn’t playing football. It was apparent that there was no room for Harris at British Columbia with Flutie on the roster and Harris wasn’t interested in serving an apprenticeship, so he ordered his agent Ed Abrams to begin looking for another team for him to play for. BC wasn’t particularly pleased with Abrams’ backdoor dealings and effectively sealed off his rights to any other CFL team. Harris spent his last two months at BC on injured reserve after a bizarre bathroom accident. His CFL totals were ordinary: 18 completions in 42 attempts for 300 yards and 3 touchdowns. He also rushed 19 times for 140 yards and 3 TDs. Yet Kent Spencer, who covered the team for the Vancouver Providence, once recalled for the Washington Post one of Harris’ last plays: “I think he was supposed to role left. He ended up cutting right, broke four or five tackles and threw a touchdown pass that eliminated the other team from the playoffs.” Confused, hurt and homesick, Harris was looking for a place to play back in the U.S. As irony would have it, just after Harris made his decision to leave Flutie also left the Lions creating an opening at quarterback. Harris was off to Columbus, Ohio, to play in the Arena Football League for $500 a game. Bob Gries, the son of a Cleveland Browns minority shareholder, was the owner of the Tampa Bay Storm and once pursued Harris before he signed with BC, offering him a contract that would have been the highest even today. Harris refused. Now he was back in the league with the Columbus Thunderbolts where he set an AFL record with 429 rushing yards. He played a total of three years with the franchise that later moved to Cleveland, passing for 2,159 yards and 29 touchdowns. Torn cartilage in his right knee forced him to give up the game at 25. After finishing his degree at WVU, Harris gave indoor football another try with a franchise in Wheeling, W.Va. He also played semi-professional football in Charleston, W.Va., before earning a well-publicized tryout with the Cincinnati Bengals in 2001 that essentially amounted to a day’s worth of throwing passes. But a persistent Harris is back today, giving professional football one more chance. A chance to play quarterback in college was all Major Harris was interested in doing as a senior at Brashear High School in Pittsburgh, Pa. When Harris was 16, he threw a football more than 70 yards in the air for the winning touchdown against Indiana (Pa.) High. That year, Pitt coach Foge Fazio told Harris he was going to be the next Dan Marino. Major grew up in a tough section of Pittsburgh and was above the crime and drugs that was prevalent in his neighborhood. He just wanted to play ball. Harris was one of the city’s top basketball players and averaged 23.6 points and 9 rebounds per game as a senior, but it was as a quarterback of the Brashear Bulls that Harris made a big name for himself. He was the Pittsburgh City League player of the year and many schools were interested in him, but not as a quarterback. Fazio left Pitt to coach the defense at Notre Dame and the Panthers’ new coach Mike Gottfried was only interested in Harris as a defensive back. “Major at defensive back?” asked his high school coach Ron Wabby. “Major couldn’t hit a teddy bear without apologizing.” Harris did have an offer to play quarterback at West Virginia University where Coach Don Nehlen was going through a quarterback crisis. Nehlen had resurrected West Virginia’s program behind the pinpoint passing of Oliver Luck and Jeff Hostetler, but had reached a turning point in 1985 when his team missed out on a bowl bid for the first time since 1981. Nehlen had Harris at football camp in the summer before his senior year of high school and grew mesmerized watching him play a two-hand touch game. “The kids couldn’t touch him,” the former coach recalled. “And I knew if they couldn’t touch him, they surely couldn’t tackle him.” Nehlen also signed Florida prep quarterback Browning Nagle and the two spent their freshman season in 1986 as redshirts. The Mountaineers had a disappointing 4-7 season in 1986 and Nehlen withstood the pressure of playing both Harris and Nagle. In the spring of 1987 the two battled it out in spring practice and Harris won the starting job. Nagle transferred to Louisville. Major took over the offense that fall and struggled in his first four games before the light came on against East Carolina. Harris completed 6 of 12 passes for 95 yards and two touchdowns, but it was a long touchdown run that captured the attention of the fans that day. That performance catapulted West Virginia to a 4-2 record over the rest of the regular season and helped the Mountaineers land a bid in the Sun Bowl against Oklahoma State when Ohio State backed out. One of the main reasons the bowl picked West Virginia was because of its exciting, young quarterback. Harris rushed for more than 100 yards against nationally ranked Oklahoma State and nearly led West Virginia to an upset victory. The Major Harris era in Morgantown had begun. In his remaining two years, there has been no bigger draw in school history. Even Jerry West and Hot Rod Hundley couldn’t compare to Harris when it came to attracting fans. West Virginia averaged more than 60,000 fans per game during Harris’ last two seasons – the only two times in school history that has ever happened. Harris played before the second-largest gate ever at Mountaineer Field against Pitt in 1989, and five of the top 16 crowds in Mountaineer Field history were games Harris played in. His two-year record at Mountaineer Field was 10-1-1 and as a sophomore in 1988, he put West Virginia football in the nation’s limelight. He led WVU to its first-ever undefeated regular season and a matchup against Notre Dame in the Fiesta Bowl. A shoulder injury on the third play of the game limited Harris and was part of the reason Notre Dame won handily, 34-21. Still, West Virginia finished No. 5 in the AP poll for its highest-ever ranking. A year later in 1989, Harris led the Mountaineers to an 8-3-1 record, a trip to the Gator Bowl, and a No. 21 national ranking. Harris, a two-time Heisman Trophy finalist, became one of two players at the time to have passed for more than 5,000 yards and rushed for more than 2,000. His 7,334 yards of total offense ranks second to quarterback Marc Bulger on the WVU career list, and Harris averaged 7.2 yards every time he touched the football. He had a career passing rating of 143.31. Yet statistics weren’t the true measure of Major Harris. It was only when you combined the charisma and easy-going demeanor with his marvelous athletic ability that you came up with the complete Major Harris. “Girls used to knock on our apartment door just to get his autograph,” said his college roommate Jamie LeMon. In fact, he was so popular in West Virginia that he received seven write-in votes for governor in 1988. Another story that reached the national news came in the midst of Major’s run toward the Heisman Trophy in 1989. Fifteen-year-old Billie Turley was in Morgantown at Children’s Hospital getting treatment for glaucoma. Turley made his way over to the football complex and ran into Harris in the hallway. After a short meeting Harris told Billie to hang on for a few minutes. The quarterback raced home and found a Heisman Trophy windbreaker presented to him at the 1988 banquet sitting on his couch, grabbed it and made his way back to the Puskar Center. He gave Turley the windbreaker. “When I’m 50 years old, I’ll still remember this day,” he said. West Virginians will always remember Major Harris, too. Harris was inducted into the West Virginia University Sports Hall of Fame in 1999 and is also a candidate for induction into the College Football Hall of Fame. |
The professional
football life of 35-year-old Major Harris has been resuscitated one
more time. |
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