SOUTH BEND, Ind. — You know you are something special when you are greeted at the front gate by Knute Rockne. He seems a little stiff, considering he’s made of bronze, but his features are lifelike and you wonder how he stands the oppressive heat that turns the College Football Hall of Fame into more hell than heaven.

If you listen closely, though, you may even hear Rockne greet you this way:

“Welcome to home of Major Harris for eternity.”

I don’t want to knock the Rock, but that is not essentially true, even though Harris goes through the final stage of his year-long induction into the Hall of Fame tonight as he joins 23 others in this year’s class at the final ceremony.

See, in a year, the Hall of Fame will be on the move again, heading to Atlanta, and you wonder if they are going to bring Notre Dame’s Rockne with them or just leave him there for the pigeons and as a reminder of the glory that once was the Fighting Irish’s but is no more.

A rollicking block party at the Hall has just begun, with a rib cook off and all different sorts of festivities. Fittingly enough, the entertainers’ second song is “Country Roads,” and you have to admit that even just blocks from the Notre Dame campus it sounds awfully good.

This Hall of Fame class has a distinct West Virginia edge to it for not only does Harris go in for his heroics as the WVU quarterback during the late 1980s which led him to be a two-time Heisman Trophy finalist, there is also Penn State’s Curt Warner, who may have worn blue and white but bled blue and gold through his Pineville roots, and Marshall’s Troy Brown.

Not that this is unusual for while WVU does not have the representation of Notre Dame, Michigan, Ohio State, Oklahoma, Nebraska, USC or the other traditional college football powers who have been able to buy national championships over the years, there is a enough West Virginia players and coaches to make a trip worth one’s while.

But before we venture into this West Virginia “wing” of the College Football Hall of Fame, let us try to get them to correct one glaring oversight. One of the displays features the great rivalries of college football from Ohio State-Michigan to USC-UCLA to Oklahoma-Texas to Army-Navy to Cal-Stanford and on and on … but not far enough.

Indeed, they completely overlook The Backyard Brawl, which is like ignoring the Hatfields and McCoys when it comes to feudin’. Of course, you understand, they have to draw the line somewhere, but when they list Pitt vs. Penn State as one of the great rivalries, they have certainly gone too far for this is now a defunct rivalry and has been since dormant since 2000.

A rivalry that is no longer played is no longer a rivalry.

But let us get back to the presence of WVU in the Hall, including players such as Ira Errett Rodgers from the early days of college football; Joe Sydahar, who went on to star with the Chicago Bears; Bruce Bosley and Sam Huff, a pair of Hall of Fame players from the same team, Huff also gaining induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame; and now, of course, Harris.

There are others from the state, perhaps the most notable being Cliff Battles, who rose from West Virginia Wesleyan to the professional ranks.

But it is through its coaches that WVU has had the greatest impact. For whatever reason, and it remains true today with the likes of Nick Saban winning national championship, Rich Rodriguez stirring the pot in Michigan and Bill Stewart coaching his state university.

The truth of the matter is that coaching profession as it now is was begun by Fielding Yost at the turn of the 20th century when he was paid as much as a professor at the University of Michigan. From that point on, followed by the great Walter Camp at Yale, the world understood how serious college football had become.

Indeed, Yost well may have been the greatest football coach ever, measured in terms of how far ahead of the curve he was. A tackle at WVU in 1896, he became coach at Michigan in 1901 and solidified his job there rather well when he first team went undefeated and outscored its opponents, 555-0.

Honest.

He did not lose until the final game of his fifth season, losing to Chicago University, coached by Amos Alonzo Stagg, but for those five years his team outscored its opponents 2,821 to 45, earning it the moniker of the “point-a-minute offense.”

What do we owe to Yost? He invented the linebacker position, meaning we would not have had Sam Huff or Grant Wiley. He helped invent bowl games and coached and won the first one.

But he was just one of many great, innovative coaches from West Virginia. Some coached so well that they became legends, such as Bobby Bowden, a former WVU head coach who not only won more games than any other Division I coach other than Joe Paterno, but turned out a family of coaches in Terry and Tommy, both from Morgantown.

And if looking for the greatest quipsters among Hall of Fame coaches, go no further than Lou Holtz of Follansbee or John McKay of Everrettsville, a now defunct community.

These are some of the lines attributed to McKay:

• Following a 51-0 loss to Notre Dame in 1966. “I told my team it doesn’t matter. There are 750 million people in China who don’t even know this game was played.”

• Following a game in 1967 in which O.J. Simpson carried the ball over 30 times, McKay was asked “Why are you giving the ball to Simpson so often?” McKay replied, “Why not? it’s not heavy, and he doesn’t belong to a union.”

• And then there was the greatest of all coaching quotes coming after yet another Tampa Bay Buccaneer loss in their early seasons. Asked what he thought of his team’s execution, he replied “I’m in favor of it.”

And Holtz was not far behind that:

• “A lifetime contract for a coach means if you’re ahead in the third quarter and moving the ball, they can’t fire you.”

• “Coaching is nothing more than eliminating mistakes before you get fired.”

• “If he’s got golf clubs in his truck or a camper in his driveway, I don’t hire him.”

• “No one has ever drowned in sweat.”

• “On this team, we’re all united in a common goal: to keep my job.”

Far less quotable but good enough to win more games than any coach ever at WVU was Don Nehlen, who had this knack of putting together an unbeaten team every five years or so, possessing the ability to adapt to his personnel better than any coach, winning with drop-back passer Marc Bulger and scrambler Major Harris.

Perhaps the most accomplished man ever to coach West Virginia who is enshrined in the Hall of Fame is Greasy Neale, who came out Parkersburg and wound up in both the Pro and College Football Halls of Fame.

Neale coached his alma mater at WVU for three years, took Washington & Jefferson to the Rose Bowl. That’s right, Washington and Jefferson. He also found time to play eight major leagues baseball seasons, most of them with the New York Giants, playing in the fixed 1919 Chicago Black Sox World Series.

There aren’t many people who can say they played in a World Series, the Rose Bowl and the NFL championship game, as he did with the Philadelphia Eagles.

And finally you can find coach Ben Schwartzwalder of Syracuse in the Hall of Fame. He played at WVU, weighing 146 pounds while playing guard, captaining the 1933 team.

Schwartzwalder, who was born in Point Pleasant and coached at Sistersville and Parkersburg, simply coached Jim Brown, Ernie Davis, Jim Nance, Floyd Little and Larry Csonka while at Syracuse after being a war hero. A paratrooper during the D-Day invasion, he won a Silver Star, a Bronze Star, a Purple Heart, four Battle Stars and a Presidential Unit Citation.

He also earned a plague right here at the Hall of Fame, where he will share space with Major Harris forever.

E-mail Bob Hertzel at bhertzel@hotmail.com.