However his Linc debut goes replacing an Eagles legend, don't expect Harris to be fazed, since metaphorical trials by fire don't compare to the real thing. He has a reminder of that on his scarred right forearm, from the day he put out a kitchen fire after first getting his younger brother and sister away from the blaze.

Standing at Dawkins' old locker, the rookie safety converted from Virginia Tech cornerback has an easy manner, an infectious swagger ("This team right here is full of swagger"), and a willingness to engage, even in talking about his toughest days. He points to the tattoo scripted on the right side of his neck. Mama's Boy.

"I grew up as a mama's boy,'' Harris said, pointing out the inked memorial to his late mother, a portrait of Maritza Harris, on his left arm.

In a sense, his easy manner is another memorial.

"He's very effervescent - he's a charmer now," said Jim Cavanaugh, a Virginia Tech assistant coach and the team's recruiting coordinator. "He's got this way about him. He gets it from her. His mother was very charming."

Despite the trials of Macho Harris' life, this hasn't changed: "He has great confidence in himself," Cavanaugh said. "If he makes a mistake - 'Well, they got lucky.' He's not going to get himself down."

Going through the fire

It is the most unforgettable recruiting visit in Virginia Tech football history.

"I drove up, I saw the smoke curling up under the door," said Cavanaugh, who had Hokies head coach Frank Beamer with him in the car.

Two little children, a boy and a girl, were in front of Harris' house in Richmond, Va. Inside, Macho held a quilt, putting out a kitchen fire. The quilt was ablaze, too.

The grease fire started on the stove, after Harris' mother had run to the store to get more French fries for dinner. She had been making wings and fries, Macho's favorite, and ran out of fries.

"She thought she had turned the stove off," Cavanaugh said. "The knob showed 'off' and it wasn't off."

Harris had grabbed a fire extinguisher but it didn't work, so he picked up the burning pan with some towels. When he opened his back door, a rush of oxygen caused the grease to flame up.

"He was a little bit stunned," Cavanaugh said. "He was always controlled. He got those kids out. His eyebrows got singed. He was lucky he got his head back [when the pan flamed up]. That would have been horrible if he got his face burned."

Macho saved the house. The coach helped get the fire fully out, including some hot spots on the linoleum floor. Beamer, who had taken Harris' little brother and little sister further away from the house, got inside and saw Macho's right arm bubbling up.

"I thought it was nothing - I just thought I got burned a little bit," said Harris, who needed a skin graft from his hip. "Especially third-degree burns, they just hurt for a split second, then it goes numb. Coach said, 'We're taking you to the hospital.' . . . He already knew what it was.''

At the hospital, Beamer told Harris how he knew. As a boy, Beamer had helped his father burn some trash. Afterward, he'd carried a broom into the garage, too close to a gasoline can. After the resulting explosion, Beamer suffered burns to his face, neck shoulder and chest and eventually endured over 20 skin grafts.

"Not even my mother could experience what I was going through,'' Harris said. Beamer "was the only person. He was there for a reason.''