Commentary by Tracy McCue, Sumner Newscow — I would like to say that my earliest memory of watching an NFL game was the Immaculate Reception game played 50 years ago today between the Oakland Raiders and the Pittsburgh Steelers.

I was 8 at the time and was just discovering my love for the NFL. But I don’t remember watching it. It would have been permanently seared in my memory if I had done so. Because at 8, you remember everything that you care about.

That’s too bad. It was NFL’s greatest moment.

The filming of the Immaculate Reception is the Zapruder film of sports. It is a historical event recorded with enough film to tease us – confirming our suspicions and yet confirming nothing.

I’m not equating a football play to the Kennedy Assassination. What I am comparing is the dynamics of our obsession. We will forever debate it and never have an answer.

It was Dec. 23, 1972. The Raiders played the Steelers in the first round of the AFC playoffs. And with 22 seconds left with Oakland leading 7-6, the Steelers were facing a 4th-and-10 situation from their own 40.

Legendary Steeler Quarterback Terry Bradshaw went back to pass but was pressured and had to get the ball off quickly. He threw the ball to the nearest available receiver. The ball ricocheted off a football player into the hands of the recently departed Franco Harris, who would take it in for a 60-yard touchdown.

It would be the first Pittsburgh playoff win in its history and it ushered in the Steel Curtain dynasty. The Steelers would go on to win four Super Bowl Championships. It also created the NFL’s best rivalry at the time between the Raiders and Steelers.
As quarterback Terry Bradshaw says today:

“We’re striving so hard to not make a mistake now in our TV coverage that we’re missing out on really what made the NFL so great …People absolutely got in an uproar and therefore when those teams played again, TV ratings would go through the roof and the competition in those games was fierce. The Steeler-Raider rivalry started right there. They felt we robbed them of an opportunity to go to the Super Bowl and if I was on their side I’d have felt the same way. Every time we played, Oakland was just brutal. Those were the hardest games of my career, playing the Raiders after that playoff game in ’72.”

The play itself has become legendary.

•In a recent NFL.com poll, voters called it the greatest moment in NFL history.

•NFL Films has declared it the greatest play in NFL history.

•Today, the Western Pennsylvania Sports Museum has a whole wing dedicated to that very play.

•A Franco Harris statute now sits right next to George Washington at the Pittsburgh International Airport.

•An insurance salesman somehow got the football on that play and built a vault in his home to contain it (see the great article here). The ball itself is worth more than a million dollars.

•There have been countless articles and specials.

•And 50 years later the Raiders and Steelers are scheduled to play it again tomorrow evening.

The fact that Harris died just two days before the 50th anniversary adds to the lore of the moment.

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Like the Kennedy assassination, I can’t decide whether justice was ever served. Was Oswald the lone gunman? Was that a legal touchdown?

For years, the main debate was whether Harris caught the ball off the ricochet or just trapped it on the ground, making it incomplete. In recent years, that has been answered.

Until 1997, was no conclusive footage that could determine whether the ball hit the ground. Even Harris couldn’t answer the question, stating everything went fuzzy for him at that moment.

Strangely enough, the actual footage of the NBC telecast of the game was lost for over 25 years.

With no Internet, old film cartridges were stored in vaults almost haphazardly – much like you and I throw things in storage bins. It got lost in the shuffle. All that was available in those days was the highlight reel clip distributed to various news stations for their five to 10-minute sportscasts on the evening news.

NFL Films also had footage, including that iconic front view of Harris. But even that angle didn’t show the ball hitting or not hitting the ground.

It wasn’t until 1997, before that AFC Championship Game telecast that year, that someone unearthed the Curt Gowdy NBC broadcast. What was essential about that film is it contained a camera view from the far end zone that shows that Harris caught the ball and never touched the ground.

However, there is a larger question that nobody has definitively been able to answer: who touched the ball to cause it to ricochet?

Bradshaw threw to running back John “Frenchy” Fuqua, who collided with Raiders safety Jack Tatum. Had the ball hit Fuqua first, it would have been declared illegal because the rules at the time stated that only the original receiver touching the ball could catch it. However, if the ball bounces off a defender, it is a live ball.

To this day, much like the alleged bullets at the grassy knoll, no one can tell precisely who touches it. There have been various conspiracy theories, but the best explanation might have come from John Fetkovich, an emeritus professor of physics at Carnegie Mellon University, who said:

“Based on the trajectory of the bounced ball and observation of moment, that the ball must have bounced off Tatum, who was running upfield at time, faster than that Fuqua, who was running across and down the field.”

In other words, physics would dictate the ball could only bounce the way it did from Tatum’s path in an opposite direction.

If the same play had occurred today, it would have resulted in a 15-minute instant replay review. Every angle would be examined, and the replay booth probably would have let the play stand. I’m sure it would still be controversial and debated on talk shows for the next week.

But it would be soon forgotten when the subsequent instant replay controversy occurred.

But in 1972, it had enough mystique to make it the play of the century.

RIP Franco. You may be mortal, but your touchdown 50 years ago will live in immortality.

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