Except, for me, it was my local moment. I was there. I was sitting near the other end zone, so I didn’t really know what happened until they put those points on the scoreboard. And even then, I didn’t know. Nor did the other 600,000 people who attended the game (according to my personal polling).

Did John Elway cry? What do you think?

The play was a not a random/fluke event
The play occurred in THE Championship game — Super Bowl — against an UNDEFEATED team (major ultra-mega points)
The play occurred despite perfect execution by the defense (pressure/rush the QB/cover the receivers downfield)

The reason why the IR is not the greatest: it was a random/fluke play, did not occur in a Championship game, the Steelers lost the next game.

Reason why any of the college plays are not the greatest: its not a professional event, too wide of a disparity in the talent of players from one team to the next and one position to the next even on the same team.

Tangent alert!
I recently watched the 1982 NCAA Mens Basketball finals, and that has my vote for the coolest basketball game ever. Some reasons:
1) It’s college basketball which is far cooler than NBA basketball. It just is.

2) It’s the NCAA finals

3) It was neck and neck the entire way, with something like sixteen lead changes

4) Michael Jordan, James Worthy, and Sam Perkins on the SAME TEAM!

5) This was probably the last time in Michael Jordan’s career that he wasn’t the star of the team. He was a freshman, and Worthy was a senior and the go-to guy. Early on in the game, Jordan was catching and immediately passing it away like the role players usually do. It was bizarre to watch, knowing what was coming in future years.

6) The announcers were actually talking about Jordan’s high school baseball skill. Ha!

7) Dean Smith had been the NC coach since 1961, had made it to six final fours, but never won the big game. He was the Marty Schottenheimer of college basketball. The man revolutionized how basketball was played and was an amazing man off the basketball court as well, so it was extra cool to see his first NCAA championship.

Patrick Ewing the 7 foot freshman was bouncing around like he was hopped up on speed. Articles referred to him as “Georgetown’s 7 foot monster-child” and “A human pac-man”.

9) NC’s first FOUR scores came off Patrick Ewing goaltending violations (hopped up on speed, I tell you!). They benched him, and as soon as he came back into the game, he picked up a fifth goaltend. Something like 1 in 6 points scored by NC in the game were off Ewing goaltending violations. It was just surreal.

10) Six players in this game went on to the pros, and accumulated 77 years in the NBA, 33 all star games, collected 9 championship rings, and seven Finals MVP awards. How is that even possible? Is it worth mentioning that all 9 chamionship rings and all 7 Finals MVP awards came from the same team, North Carolina?

11) This is the game where it all started. Late in the second half, Jordan makes his first crazy impossible surrounded-by-defenders can’t-see-the-basket layup in a big game, giving his team a three point lead with time running out. Georgetown came back to take a one point lead, then with seconds left, Jordan nails the game winning shot in the biggest college game there is. At the time, I’m sure the sentiment was more like, “Wow, that freshman really came through!” but in retrospect, this is where the legend of the best basketball player of all time began.

12) This is just trivia, but… Worthy of course went to the Lakers (and played with Jabbar, who crushed Dean Smith’s hopes for a NCAA championship in 1968). In 1990, Perkins also went to the Lakers and played with his old teammate. They made it all the way to the finals, where Sam Perkins hit a game winning three pointer in game 1 of the finals. Alas, that was the only game they won. You see, this time they were playing AGAINST their old teammate, Michael Jordan. Together though, I think the three of them averaged something like 65 points a game in that Finals series.

13) One of the NBA players from that game whose name hasn’t come up yet is Sleepy Floyd. He grew up in the same town as Worthy, always second fiddle. He never won a championship and only made one all-star game, but he was no slouch. He would have led the league in assists one year if it weren’t for that pesky Magic Johnson. He holds the NBA record for the most points in a quarter in the playoffs (29!), and the most in a half (39), hit 12 consecutive shots in the 4th quarter, and finished the game with 51 points. Oh yeah, and that game was against James Worthy and the Lakers.

With that said, I’d like to propose, not the greatest play in NFL history, but the greatest back-to-back plays in NFL history.

The Minnesota Vikings had been, probably not a dynasty, but a very solid franchise during the 1970s. Unfortunately, by 1980 the franchise was showing the results of a steady decline in fortunes and talent: Fran Tarkenton had been replaced by Tommy Kramer, Chuck Foreman had been replaced by Ted Brown, the Purple People Eaters were gone, replaced by guys that nobody outside of the Upper Midwest could name today. (Randy Holloway? Mark Mullaney?) But Bud Grant was still the coach, and in 1980, his club stood at 8-6 going into the final two weeks of the season. The Vikings only needed to win one of those two games to clinch the NFC Central title, but the problem was the two games were against the top two teams in the AFC Central, the Cleveland Browns and the Houston Oilers. The game against the Browns was perceived as slightly easier, strictly because it would be played at home rather than on the road.

Though the Vikes managed to grab a lead late, the Browns pushed down the field and scored to take a 23-21 lead very, very late — there was less than a minute left when the Vikings took over at their own 20 yard line following the kickoff with no timeouts.

Kramer took the Vikes to the line of scrimmage, dropped back, and fired a long pass over the middle to tight end Joe Senser (who, if his career had not been shortened by injury, would have taken his place among the great NFL tight ends); Senser almost immediately flipped the ball back to Ted Brown in a perfectly-executed hook-and-ladder and took his defender out at the knees with nearly the same motion. The Browns were in a prevent, though, and Brown realized that if he were tackled inbounds, the game would likely be over before the club could line up for another play, so he took off for the sidelines, getting out of bounds at about midfield.

One last play, and everybody knows what’s coming: the Hail Mary. Kramer drops back, heaves the ball toward the end zone, and what looks like sixteen Browns leap into the air at the two yard line after the ball in flight. The ball bounces off a defender, though, and Viking receiver Ahmad Rashad reaches out, one-handed, and cradles the ball into his gut as he falls backward into the end zone for the game-winning touchdown.

The stadium went berserk. When my mother heard the news, she called me to make sure the house was still standing.

The combination certainly loses some points for being a regular season contest, and not even the final game of the regular season (though the Vikes would go on to lose the final game in Houston, so the win was crucial to their playoff chances). More to the point, the Vikings opening round playoff opponent, the Philadelphia Eagles, squelched them 31-16 en route to their own Super Bowl defeat.

But in terms of sheer improbability, take the Dolphins-Chargers hook-and-ladder and multiply by the Doug Flutie BC Hail Mary — that’s some serious points right there, folks.

And of course, I was 13, not 11, so I can’t possibly be overemphasizing the significance of the plays through youthful exhuberance…

With the Tyree play, on the other hand, you had a great pass rush, great downfield coverage, but even greater evasion by Manning and, greatest of all, the catch itself. And of course it was on the biggest, greatest stage in modern sports history. I hate to say it, but the Immaculate Reception doesn’t even deserve to be mentioned in the same paragraph as the Tyree play.

It was this: http://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1998/B08050OAK1998.htm at the tail end of Tom Candiotti’s nice little career. Exiting the Hated Dodgers (and this from a kid from Walnut Creek, birthplace of my brother and a place for As and Giants and not Bums, seemed wholly appropriate), he was at the end of his career and pitching his usual adequate season. And of course with the knuckler. Nothing special.

Except he was facing the Yankees, whom if I were an AL fan I might hate more that the Dodgers. And inexplicably was pitching really well. Preposterously well, really, for a guy everyone knew was near the end of the line. He was headed for a complete-game win, when who comes up in the ninth — with two out, one on, potential to tie the game — but one Darryl Strawberry. You know, The Darryl, before there was The Barry. Career OPS+ of 140 or something. A hitter. Facing some knuckleballer. Here’s the pitch..

It was slow, even for Candiotti, who was slow, even for a knuckleballer. Strawberry takes a mighty cut. The Darryl is perhaps three seconds early. The ball is still hanging in the air as he finishes his followthrough. The catcher does not put a glove on the ball until after the ump signals the strike. I mean, slow. I was just some schlub watching on the television, and yet I was thinking ‘wow!’ to myself and the ball still was not in the glove. Slow.

Straw waggles his bat. ‘Homer At The Bat’ is long past, glory is long past, but he can still hit. And this would be nice. The pitch. It dangles in the air. It is slower than the last. It gives you time to polish your glasses, adjust your stance, and swing mightily.

Strawberry does.

All air.

I mean, it’s like a fairy tale. Since Strawberry can still hit (OPS+ that year? 132), and these balls are slower than you or I could probably throw on purpose.

Candiotti takes the ball, toes the slab, all that junk. And delivers. The oh-and-two pitch. A waste pitch, usually. Not this time.

This is the slowest knuckleball I have ever seen. It is like some caricature of a knuckleball. Even the crappy teevee cameras can focus on the stitches of the seams of the baseball. They hover. It darts — slowly. Very slowly. I feel like I could drive to the Coliseum, park the car, walk to the plate, borrow the bat, take a swing, and get a hit, on the selfsame pitch. The Darryl thinks so, too. He gathers himself, you can see it, waits on the pitch, waits some more, checks his watch, sends out his drycleaning. Swings.

Do I have to speak the obvious? It was the strikeout to end all strikeouts, by a journeyman knuckler who fashioned a career against a supremely talented, deeply flawed man who in the depths of his troubles today could probably still hit better than a dozen of the more-mediocre talents on the field today. As the man said, it was gorgeous, and it was terrible, and I wasn’t sure I had seen it correctly.

Strike three, game over.