On a Super Bowl pregame show some years back, a segment was aired on the long list of star quarterbacks to come out of southwestern Pennsylvania.

The honor roll included Montana, Marino, Namath, Unitas, Blanda, among others. And the list went all the way back to a trailblazer from Connellsville High School who grew up in the Great Depression and interrupted his schooling at Notre Dame to serve as a Navy officer in World War II.

"Wasn't that fun? They mentioned me first," Johnny Lujack said to his wife.

"Yes," she said teasingly, "and 100 million people are wondering who that first guy was."

If anyone still wonders, an opportunity to get reacquainted occurs this weekend when the Johnny Lujack Training Facility is formally dedicated in Connellsville and he is inducted into the inaugural class of the Fayette County Sports Hall of Fame.

If the years before 24-hour sports channels seem more like the Stone Age than the Information Age, the days before American households even had TV sets must seem prehistoric. Here's an introduction to the original:

• Three national championships won at Notre Dame in 1943, '46 and '47 under coach Frank Leahy while being named a two-time All-American in '46 and '47. The gap of nearly three years was spent in the U.S. Navy as an ensign on a submarine chaser in the Atlantic.

• The Heisman Trophy winner of 1947, when he was named the Associated Press Athlete of the Year. Also in '47, he graced the cover of Life magazine, which was the Twitter of its day but had color photographs and was sold at news stands.

• A four-sport letterman at Notre Dame. In addition to quarterbacking the football team and being a starting guard on the basketball team, he also played baseball and was a track star. During a baseball game, he had two singles and a triple in four at-bats. In between innings, he also won the high jump and the javelin throw in a track meet. His roommate jokingly told him: "If you change clothes real quick, I think we can find a swim meet somewhere."

• A two-time All-Pro with the Chicago Bears, first as a safety and then as a quarterback. He also kicked field goals and extra points, which made him a combination of Troy Polamalu, Ben Roethlisberger and Jeff Reed.

Little wonder that he is a standout among standouts in Fayette County, which has produced its share of big-time athletes.

"Every event needs a headliner, and who could be a better headliner than Johnny Lujack?" said George Von Benko, a broadcaster and writer from Uniontown who is among the organizers of the Fayette Hall of Fame.

"This man has won so many honors and so many awards, but he's just as fired up about this as he was about any of them. This is home. This is where he started. He's never forgotten where he came from," he added.

Displays and exhibits from the Hall of Fame are being housed at the Uniontown Public Library.

On Friday, a contingent from Connellsville Area High School will greet the Lujack family at Latrobe Airport to begin a special day for the 1941 graduate.

It has been seven decades since he performed on the high school field, but the Johnny Lujack Training Facility -- a combination workout center and coach's room for studying film -- is brand new. It was completed this year after its namesake donated $50,000 for its construction.

A plaque inside the 40-by-60-foot building reads: "Connellsville provided him opportunities that started his career; his generosity will provide the same opportunities to the youth of Connellsville for years to come."

Now, the high school track and football field are graced with two remarkable monuments. The new Lujack facility sits catty-cornered to the Olympic Oak brought home by the late John Woodruff, the African-American track pioneer who is also being inducted into the Fayette Hall of Fame. Woodruff won a gold medal in the 800-meter at the 1936 Berlin Olympics that put to rest Adolph Hitler's theories on the "master race."

Displays honoring both athletes, complete with a replica of the Heisman Trophy and a replica of the Olympic gold medal, also adorn a hallway at Connellsville Area High School.

"I don't know if we'll ever see two athletes like them ever again, but it gives our kids a chance to dream," said athletic director James Lembo. "Having two men achieve the highest honor in their sport is something you can always take pride in."

In Lujack's day, Connellsville competed under the name of Cokers -- a tribute to the coke that purified the coal fed into beehive ovens in the area's heyday. The school adopted the name Falcons in 1966 after a merger with Dunbar Township High School.

This is not his first trip back. Lujack accepted an invitation from the current athletic administration to return in 1994 under one condition: that his teammates from the '41 team that went 8-0-1 were recognized, too.

"He always believed that football is a team sport and individual honors are secondary," said Lembo. "The timing was perfect for us this time. Johnny donated the money for the weight room because he wanted to give something back, and we wanted to honor him when he came back for the Hall of Fame induction."

Lujack, 84, has been married to the former Patricia Schierbrock of Davenport, Iowa, for 61 years. They have homes in Iowa and California, and he still plays golf as many as five times a week. After football he became a partner in a car dealership with his father-in-law.

Sports opened many doors for him, but it was something that came naturally to Lujack, one of six children in a Polish Catholic family.

"To me, it was fun," he said. "Our only entertainment was playing sports. Those were hard times during the Depression. We had enough to get by, but you had to work and work hard."

In his youth, he fell in love with Notre Dame while listening to a radio broadcast of the Fighting Irish.

"I've been very fortunate in my life," he said in a telephone interview. "I never thought I was good enough to go to Notre Dame. I said lots of times that if I could just make the traveling squad in my junior or senior year, I could probably come back to Connellsville and run for mayor, and win it hands down."

He did a lot more than just make the team or win a local election. When he comes back, fame follows him home.