Major Harris was a lot of things in his short but storied football career.

For starters, he was the greatest quarterback in West Virginia University history, though Pat White presents a good argument for seizing that title. Harris will be a hall of famer, after his pending induction into the College Football Hall of Fame. He was so elected in April.

There is one other unofficial, perhaps off-the-wall title you could give Harris: the godfather of semipro football in Charleston.

A timeline is needed to explain this. From the time of the demise of the second edition of the Charleston Rockets in the early 1980s to the birth of the West Virginia Lightning in 1994, there was no reported semipro activity in the capital city.

Almost every year since, it seems somebody gives semipro football a go, allowing adults who excelled in high school and/or college ball an avenue to keep their love for the game alive. Teams such as today's new version of the West Virginia Lightning do so against long financial odds.

And that seemingly has spread to basketball and soccer, again with mixed results.

One could argue that Harris' two-year stay with the West Virginia Lightning/Charleston Rockets stoked the competitive juices of players and those daring enough to own a team. Or perhaps Harris didn't leave much of a legacy for future teams such as the Blitzin' Bulldogs, the West Virginia Cardinals and Mountain State Titans.

You can't argue this: Harris made a couple of summers a little more interesting in Charleston, and he brought some of the biggest sports crowds ever at Laidley Field.

If there is anything such as a golden era to semipro sports in this town, 1995-96 would qualify.

"That was fun," said Scott Tinsley, offensive coordinator for the '96 Rockets. "Those were some good times and we were pretty good, too. With Major, everybody else just kind of had to fill in their roles. I've never coached a more gifted athlete than Major Harris. He could make things happen when there wasn't anything there.

"He came up to me early in the season and said, 'Coach, all those pass plays you got, those are really neat, look like they're really good plays. You just keep calling them and I'll run around until somebody gets open.' It worked most of the time."

Harris' presence drew several old WVU teammates and the team improved, winning a National Minor League of Football championship. The fans responded, as crowds even approached the 10,000 mark. The fever once caught Lou Ann Lanham-Henson, Laidley Field's venerable manager, off guard.

"The one that surprised me the most was a game against the Washington, D.C., Chiefs," she recalled. "It was 90, 92, 93 degrees and the Chiefs' bus broke down on the way to the game, and it was the first time we were serving the beer. The longer [the Chiefs] were delayed, the more [the fans] drank. There were lines down Elizabeth Street.

"We ran out of food, drink and beer by the end of the first quarter because we had not expected that many people at all."

She and her staff were a bit more ready on Labor Day 1996, when the rechristened Rockets, under new ownership, took on the undefeated Huntington Hawks in what became a grudge match. Several former WVU players had joined the Rockets and the Hawks were composed largely of ex-Marshall players - but with notable exceptions.

WVU's 1993 star Jake Kelchner was quarterback for the Hawks, and the Rockets' defense featured former Thundering Herd defensive end Mark Mason, a Charleston native, who played at one speed - overdrive.

After weeks of bickering between the teams, Lanham-Henson got the sides to agree on a game, which drew about 9,500. Charleston beat Huntington 16-9, surviving a late Kelchner rally that ended on the Rockets' 4-yard line. The contest also was notable for its 29 penalties.

It's virtually impossible to imagine that happening again. But semipro football hasn't vanished, and often survives in colorful fashion.

The Rockets and Hawks met again on Sept. 1, 1997 at Fairfield Stadium, with the visitors winning 13-3 before 1,887 fans. Harris was under contract to a not-yet-off-the-ground Regional Football League, and Kelchner, following Arena Football and World League stints, had an injured collarbone. It didn't help that that contest followed by a day the revival of the WVU-Marshall game, the most competitive between the schools to this day.

The Rockets finished 1997 and "absolutely did not make money," according to coach Jim Youngblood. The Hawks went 17-2, won its league and lost in a national tournament, but suffered the ignominy of having the utilities disconnected near the season's end. They clinched the Northern Ohio Football League championship in a game played without electricity or running water at Fairfield.

But the old brickyard, long since vacated by the Herd, did have one fan-friendly quirk: With the west-side temporary bleachers removed, fans could drive their vehicles to the edge and tailgate while they watched.

Harris joined the Hawks and led them to a championship in a different league, the National Football Federation, in 1998. As teammate Dan Reed relates, the organization was in such difficult fiscal straits that it wasn't going to participate in the playoffs. The players decided otherwise, paying their way to Pittsburgh to play - and win - a championship game.

"Major said that was one of the most satisfying wins he's ever had," Reed said.

Harris made one last, somewhat forgettable return to Laidley in 1999. The Regional Football League took off in 1999, but lasted a single, shortened season. Harris' team, the Toledo-based Ohio Cannon, moved a home game to Charleston, but a paid gate of 139 watched Harris play just a quarter and a half.

The turn of the millennium brought the Mountain State Titans, who won the 2003 Ohio Valley Football League title but moved to Huntington in 2005 and fizzled from there. The West Virginia Blitzin' Bulldogs played in 2002 before an ill-advised "change of direction" ended that venture. One of the Bulldogs' owners, J.R. Scott, founded the West Virginia Cardinals in 2003. That team lasted into 2004.

Money is the most obvious problem in semipro football - from outfitting players to securing reliable transportation to road games to renting a place to play, whether it be Laidley/UC Stadium or a middle-school field, be it in nearby Cross Lanes or far-flung Gauley Bridge.

The other side of the equation is paid attendance, or often the lack thereof. And even if a team is riding a wave of popularity, inclement weather is a sworn enemy.

Manpower is another obstacle. The phrase "semipro" should not be construed to mean players earn a paycheck - they're generally happy to not pay for their uniforms. Therefore, they have jobs. And family obligations and commitments like the rest of the world.

In other words, you practice when you can and you play with the players who can make it. Dan Reed, general manager of the present-day Lightning, said the team roster numbers 80, yet it took 30 on a recent road trip. Everybody learns to play multiple positions.

"I tried to look our roster over and I'd figure there are 10 to 15 players right now we could drop," Reed said. "But at some point, they'll show up ready to go."

Getting facilities is a whole different adventure. "Getting a place to practice could be tough," Tinsley said. "We'd work at different places. Where they throw the shot [at Laidley], we had several practices there."

Major Harris was a lot of things in his short but storied football career.

For starters, he was the greatest quarterback in West Virginia University history, though Pat White presents a good argument for seizing that title. Harris will be a hall of famer, after his pending induction into the College Football Hall of Fame. He was so elected in April.

There is one other unofficial, perhaps off-the-wall title you could give Harris: the godfather of semipro football in Charleston.

A timeline is needed to explain this. From the time of the demise of the second edition of the Charleston Rockets in the early 1980s to the birth of the West Virginia Lightning in 1994, there was no reported semipro activity in the capital city.

Almost every year since, it seems somebody gives semipro football a go, allowing adults who excelled in high school and/or college ball an avenue to keep their love for the game alive. Teams such as today's new version of the West Virginia Lightning do so against long financial odds.

And that seemingly has spread to basketball and soccer, again with mixed results.

One could argue that Harris' two-year stay with the West Virginia Lightning/Charleston Rockets stoked the competitive juices of players and those daring enough to own a team. Or perhaps Harris didn't leave much of a legacy for future teams such as the Blitzin' Bulldogs, the West Virginia Cardinals and Mountain State Titans.

You can't argue this: Harris made a couple of summers a little more interesting in Charleston, and he brought some of the biggest sports crowds ever at Laidley Field.

If there is anything such as a golden era to semipro sports in this town, 1995-96 would qualify.

"That was fun," said Scott Tinsley, offensive coordinator for the '96 Rockets. "Those were some good times and we were pretty good, too. With Major, everybody else just kind of had to fill in their roles. I've never coached a more gifted athlete than Major Harris. He could make things happen when there wasn't anything there.

"He came up to me early in the season and said, 'Coach, all those pass plays you got, those are really neat, look like they're really good plays. You just keep calling them and I'll run around until somebody gets open.' It worked most of the time."

Harris' presence drew several old WVU teammates and the team improved, winning a National Minor League of Football championship. The fans responded, as crowds even approached the 10,000 mark. The fever once caught Lou Ann Lanham-Henson, Laidley Field's venerable manager, off guard.

"The one that surprised me the most was a game against the Washington, D.C., Chiefs," she recalled. "It was 90, 92, 93 degrees and the Chiefs' bus broke down on the way to the game, and it was the first time we were serving the beer. The longer [the Chiefs] were delayed, the more [the fans] drank. There were lines down Elizabeth Street.

"We ran out of food, drink and beer by the end of the first quarter because we had not expected that many people at all."

She and her staff were a bit more ready on Labor Day 1996, when the rechristened Rockets, under new ownership, took on the undefeated Huntington Hawks in what became a grudge match. Several former WVU players had joined the Rockets and the Hawks were composed largely of ex-Marshall players - but with notable exceptions.

WVU's 1993 star Jake Kelchner was quarterback for the Hawks, and the Rockets' defense featured former Thundering Herd defensive end Mark Mason, a Charleston native, who played at one speed - overdrive.

After weeks of bickering between the teams, Lanham-Henson got the sides to agree on a game, which drew about 9,500. Charleston beat Huntington 16-9, surviving a late Kelchner rally that ended on the Rockets' 4-yard line. The contest also was notable for its 29 penalties.

It's virtually impossible to imagine that happening again. But semipro football hasn't vanished, and often survives in colorful fashion.

The Rockets and Hawks met again on Sept. 1, 1997 at Fairfield Stadium, with the visitors winning 13-3 before 1,887 fans. Harris was under contract to a not-yet-off-the-ground Regional Football League, and Kelchner, following Arena Football and World League stints, had an injured collarbone. It didn't help that that contest followed by a day the revival of the WVU-Marshall game, the most competitive between the schools to this day.

The Rockets finished 1997 and "absolutely did not make money," according to coach Jim Youngblood. The Hawks went 17-2, won its league and lost in a national tournament, but suffered the ignominy of having the utilities disconnected near the season's end. They clinched the Northern Ohio Football League championship in a game played without electricity or running water at Fairfield.

But the old brickyard, long since vacated by the Herd, did have one fan-friendly quirk: With the west-side temporary bleachers removed, fans could drive their vehicles to the edge and tailgate while they watched.

Harris joined the Hawks and led them to a championship in a different league, the National Football Federation, in 1998. As teammate Dan Reed relates, the organization was in such difficult fiscal straits that it wasn't going to participate in the playoffs. The players decided otherwise, paying their way to Pittsburgh to play - and win - a championship game.

"Major said that was one of the most satisfying wins he's ever had," Reed said.

Harris made one last, somewhat forgettable return to Laidley in 1999. The Regional Football League took off in 1999, but lasted a single, shortened season. Harris' team, the Toledo-based Ohio Cannon, moved a home game to Charleston, but a paid gate of 139 watched Harris play just a quarter and a half.

The turn of the millennium brought the Mountain State Titans, who won the 2003 Ohio Valley Football League title but moved to Huntington in 2005 and fizzled from there. The West Virginia Blitzin' Bulldogs played in 2002 before an ill-advised "change of direction" ended that venture. One of the Bulldogs' owners, J.R. Scott, founded the West Virginia Cardinals in 2003. That team lasted into 2004.

Money is the most obvious problem in semipro football - from outfitting players to securing reliable transportation to road games to renting a place to play, whether it be Laidley/UC Stadium or a middle-school field, be it in nearby Cross Lanes or far-flung Gauley Bridge.

The other side of the equation is paid attendance, or often the lack thereof. And even if a team is riding a wave of popularity, inclement weather is a sworn enemy.

Manpower is another obstacle. The phrase "semipro" should not be construed to mean players earn a paycheck - they're generally happy to not pay for their uniforms. Therefore, they have jobs. And family obligations and commitments like the rest of the world.

In other words, you practice when you can and you play with the players who can make it. Dan Reed, general manager of the present-day Lightning, said the team roster numbers 80, yet it took 30 on a recent road trip. Everybody learns to play multiple positions.

"I tried to look our roster over and I'd figure there are 10 to 15 players right now we could drop," Reed said. "But at some point, they'll show up ready to go."

Getting facilities is a whole different adventure. "Getting a place to practice could be tough," Tinsley said. "We'd work at different places. Where they throw the shot [at Laidley], we had several practices there."

Reed has spanned all those eras. He played at old Dunbar High at maybe 150 pounds, and did not play college ball. But he felt a nagging emptiness during college, and got the itch when Lightning founder Damon Grose advertised for players back in 1994. Reed ended up playing for the Lightning, Hawks and several other outfits before reuniting with big Chris "Moose" Hughes to launch the current Lightning last year.

Often riding with his father to games, he has had a lot of fun and has piled up a lot of memories.

"I've got a claim to fame - I've been able to sack both Major Harris and Jake Kelchner," Reed said. "I've had a pretty colorful career."

Today's he's serving as general manager and defensive end/linebackers coach, tries to line up sponsors and any number of other tasks. He said he's in the process of realigning the team's Web site - currently, it's sort of stuck on 2008, when it won the U.S. Football Alliance title.

But he said the bills are getting paid and sponsorship deals are improved despite the tough economy. The team receives pregame meals at Tomahawks saloon in Jefferson and its games are broadcast on the Internet on champssportsnetwork.com. And after playing last year at Andrew Jackson Middle, the team has moved to UC Stadium, where it remains in good graces.

"They seem organized," Lanham-Henson said. "They've been a good group to work with. I have no complaints."

UC Stadium has a wide variety of tenants and users, and semipro football teams haven't always been compatible. Consider this: Players aren't exactly chaperoned, as high school football players and track athletes would be. The language gets a little looser, the emotions run a little hotter and scuffles are much more prevalent.

And that's not all. In the Lightning/Rockets era, some members of the coaching staff went a little heavy on the consumption of smokeless tobacco, emitting an excess of the inevitable byproduct - much to the horror of other users.

Lanham-Henson got downwind of that one day, and made a beeline from her home to the north end of Elizabeth Street. She even barged into a team huddle to deliver her point.

"That just went through me like a hot knife through butter," she said. "Two of the football players actually said, 'Miss Lou Ann, don't hit him.' I said, 'Do you spit on your carpet at home? I'm sure you don't spit on our living-room carpet; don't spit on mine.'

"Needless to say, our relationship went downhill from there."

Semipro basketball teams have also come and gone, with a big emphasis on gone. Take your pick - there has been the Charleston Bombers, the Charleston Universal (where Clay's Jimmy Jamie was a scoring machine) and in later years, the West Virginia Wild.

Those teams may have been obscure, and unprofitable, but at least they played. That contrasts with the story of the West Virginia Miners, who announced their entrance with a considerable amount of fanfare in September 2002.

The Miners were announced as part of Pro Basketball USA, a league billed to be comparable to the Continental Basketball Association and the NBA's "D-League." Players were to average $300 a week and the team projected an average break-even attendance of 750 at the South Charleston Community Center.

The team president and coach was to be Steve Tucker, who was hired at WVU Tech in 2001-02 but failed to finish the season. Perhaps fittingly, the Miners never played a game and a shell of a four-team league tried to launch under a different name.

As it turns out, the league's founder was Ted Stepien, whose stewardship of the Cleveland Cavaliers in the early 1980s was so discredited the league stepped in to limit team moves. To this day, NBA teams cannot trade first-round draft picks in consecutive years, a restriction called the "Stepien Rule." When Stepien sold the team, the new owners were awarded bonus draft picks from 1983 to 1986 to compensate for the ones dealt away.

Stepien died in 2007.

The Wild still had a pulse about that time, and some ambitions. It joined the American Basketball Association (the latter-day version founded in 2000) and trumpeted the signing of 6-foot-7 Croatian guard/forward Ivan Cubela on Dec. 18, 2008. That was the last sign of Wild life, except for owner Daniel Hicks' venture into indoor football.

With the same Wild name, Hicks entered a Huntington-based team in the Continental Indoor Football League and even rented a billboard in the Cross Lanes area. But on Feb. 20, the CIFL announced the indefinite suspension, citing the team's failure to provide key items such as proof of insurance.

"We gave Dan [Hicks] many opportunities to complete the steps needed to be an organization in this league and, unfortunately, he didn't complete several of them," CIFL co-founder Jeffery Spitaleri announced in a press release.

In soccer, the West Virginia Chaos is playing in its seventh season at Schoenbaum Stadium at Coonskin Park. On the field, the team has yet to record a winning season in the Premier Development League, and it hasn't made anybody rich.

General manager Dan Rollins said the Chaos' largest crowd has been 1,000, but the average is around 250 per home match.

"We've lost money. This is the first year we might possibly break even," Rollins said. "I've been involved five years, and we've changed owners a couple of times. Semipro sports is something you don't get into to get rich. But I think it's a great thing for the valley and we're going to do the best we can."

The squad, and its Premier Development League, function a little differently from semipro basketball and football. League rules mandate that each team carry three players under 19 years old, and there is a maximum of over-23 players. Most are college and even high school players who will maintain their eligibility, but there can be veterans who have played for pay and may be on the downside of their careers.

The Chaos' most notable alum is goalkeeper Nick Noble, who was drafted seventh overall in the Major League Soccer Superdraft out of West Virginia. He played in 17 Reserve Division matches, a U.S. Open Cup match and several international exhibitions, but never in an MLS match in two-and-a-half seasons with the Chicago Fire. He was waived by the Fire on Friday.

Could he someday return to Charleston, perhaps being the soccer version of Major Harris?

OK, that's a stretch. But in the world of semipro sports, but you never know what will happen next.

Reach Doug Smock at 304-348-5130 or dougsm...@wvgazette.com.