“That wasn’t Gerard Phelan who caught that ball. That was God that caught the ball.”- Mark MacDonald, BC offensive lineman.
“For this is God, our God unto eternity, and for ever and ever: he shall rule us for ever more.”- Psalm 47.
They are still out there on the field.
In uniforms matted with earth and mud, on 100 yards of torn turf, they remain 10 years later, locked in time. Forever prisoners inside the stadium, forever part of college football’s most memorable play.
It is still wet. It is still cold.
“And I am tired,” recalled Gerard Phelan earlier this week.
Dusk is approaching – always, always fast approaching – and the Orange Bowl clock shows six seconds.
Six seconds to pull off a miracle.
Ten years have passed – players and coaches have moved, careers have been carved, families have been started – but they can never permanently leave behind the Orange Bowl, or the final six seconds that gave BC its now-legendary 47-45 victory over the Hurricanes.
A decade later, the participants live those final six seconds nearly every day, like a badge of courage or Jacob Marley’s chain.
“It’s never forgotten,” said former Boston College coach Jack Bicknell. “It’s always out there … somewhere.”
The Miracle over Miami. The Hail Flutie. The Pass. The Play.
“I’m asked about it weekly,” Phelan said. “In fact, two or three times a week.”
Boston College quarterback Doug Flutie is still taking the snap at center from the Miami 48-yard line. He’s still scrambling, still twisting his little body for one … last … throw. Phelan is falling back in the end zone. And Hurricanes defensive backs Darrell Fullington and Reggie Sutton are still leaping, stretching … man, the ball is oh-so-close to their fingertips.
A crowd of 30,235 gaze at the flight of the ball. It is up there, sailing 63 yards through a wet-and-blustery night sky.
It has become a part of history, hasn’t it? Like Carlton Fisk’s home run. Like Neil Armstrong’s walk on the moon. Sixty minutes of a football game neatly packaged into six seconds. And you wonder if that’s fair. Maybe it’s not and that’s why Flutie has refused to discuss it 10 years later.
Flutie, who spent several unsuccessful seasons in the NFL, has set several Canadian Football League records while playing for Calgary.
“Because of what happened last weekend with his football career, he’s not interested in what happened 10 years ago,” says Ron Rooke, the Stampeders’ vice president for marketing and communications. The Stampeders lost to British Columbia last Sunday, denying them a berth in the CFL title game. The game-winning play was a Hail Mary pass caught by Flutie’s brother.
But on Nov. 23, 1984, the Eagles and Hurricanes played their guts out for 60 full minutes. The numbers:
— The teams combined for a total of 1,282 yards, 919 through the air.
— Phelan caught 11 passes for 226 yards.
— Flutie completed 34 of 46 passes for 472 yards, three touchdowns and no interceptions.
— With the ‘Canes losing 41-38 with 5:13 remaining in the fourth quarter, quarterback Bernie Kosar, who would pass for 447 yards on the day, drove the offense on a 15-play touchdown drive, completing 6 of 8 passes for 96 yards. Suddenly, Miami held a 45-41 lead with 28 seconds remaining in the game.
“It looked to me like we lost the game,” Bicknell recalled.
Bicknell, who now works for NFL Properties doing clinics in Europe, stood on those sidelines and was already thinking ahead.
“We had to play Holy Cross the next week, which was always a nightmare game for us, and then we had the Cotton Bowl, which was going to be the school’s first bowl game since 1943,” Bicknell said. “I was on the sidelines thinking about what I was going to say to the team. I would tell them they put in a great effort, that they have nothing to be ashamed about, and we still have two games left.”
Kosar, now with the Dolphins, also believed it was over.
“It was the only time in my career I kind of canceled the game before the game was over,” he said. “I was standing on the sidelines, and the fans were starting to come closer to the field, and I was standing there talking with them.”
But the Eagles had 28 seconds left, and, after receiving the kickoff, the ball on their 20-yard line.
Center Jack Bicknell Jr., who along with Flutie and Phelan were the only players to touch the ball on the final play, remembers walking into the huddle for the final drive.
“I really don’t remember wondering how much time was left, or looking at the clock,” said Bicknell Jr., an assistant coach with the University of New Hampshire. “I remember Doug was in charge, as he had been, and, to be honest, it never really entered my mind that we would lose.”
Phelan, now a vice president with a financial printing service in Boston, said that, despite the time, the Eagles were confident.
“We had so much good fortune that year, and I guess we had just grown accustomed to winning, that we just never gave up,” Phelan said. “We had a lot of momentum carrying us into that game.”
With the ball on the 20, Flutie completed a 19-yard pass to Troy Stradford and a 13-yard pass to Scott Gieselman that moved the ball to Miami’s 48. After an incompletion, the clock stopped.
Six seconds.
The Miami defense broke huddle and went into its “30 red-zone double out” coverage.
In the Eagles’ huddle, Phelan recalled, “we all had a good idea what play would be called.”
The play, “Trips right, flood tip,” was a last-second, desperation, Hail Mary pass that the Eagles practiced on Thursday. They has used it twice earlier in the season, resulting in a touchdown at the end of the first half against Temple, and an incompletion against West Virginia.
“It was pretty simple,” Bicknell said. “We’d line up three guys on the right, send them downfield, throw it toward them and hope the ball bounces, or someone tips it, in our hands.”
The Eagles broke their huddle with Phelan, Ken Bell and Kelvin Martin split right. “At first, they had a man on me,” Phelan said. “But there was an inadvertent whistle, and when we lined up again no one was on me. I was open.”
While Flutie was flushed out of the pocket and forced to scramble right, Phelan ran 48 yards down the field.
“No one touched me,” he said.
At about the 10-yard line, Phelan saw Fullington, the Hurricanes’ last line of defense. “And he let me go right by,” Phelan said. “It was very surprising to me. Why didn’t he try to stop me? It made no sense. I guess they might have thought Doug couldn’t throw it that far.”
Fullington, now working in advertising in Tampa, remembers only total chaos on the last play.
“I don’t think I said that he couldn’t throw it that far,” Fullington said. “But if I didn’t think he could, I should have thought better.”
From his 37, Flutie let the ball go. Phelan, standing in the end zone, saw the ball coming toward him. Then, he lost it.
“I’m in the end zone alone,” Phelan said. “But Sutton and about eight other bodies are in front of me, and the ball is difficult to pick out of the lights, and then Sutton reaches up for the ball.”
Phelan lost the ball.
“I felt for sure he would intercept it,” Phelan said.
But the ball arched over Sutton, Fullington, and all the other bodies in front of Phelan. “No way that ball comes through clean,” Phelan said. “I was hoping for a tip … anything.”
But as Phelan was going down, the ball cleared everyone and landed in his chest. He cradled the ball in his arms.
The Catholic School had won on a Hail Mary.
There was no time remaining on the clock.
William Flynn, the Eagles’ athletic director from 1957-92, had come down to the field from the press box moments before the Eagles’ final drive.
“The press box was on the Miami side, so I told my wife we better get over to the other side, so we walked around the end zone much to the objection of the police,” Flynn, 79, recalls. “On the last play, I’m standing 10 feet from the corner of the end zone [where) Phelan eventually caught the ball. I’m wondering how I can tell these boys what a great job they did despite losing, and all of a sudden the ball is practically in my lap. Then, bedlam.”
Kosar never saw the play. “I just saw all their guys with their hands in the air going crazy running down the field,” said Kosar, who finished second to Flutie in the Heisman voting. “I’m obviously reminded of it on highlight shows, and Ian Sinclair, our center on that team, kidded me for the next 10 years by saying, ‘How’s it feel to be six seconds from winning the Heisman?”‘ Bicknell Jr. was knocked to the ground immediately after snapping the ball and was in the process of picking himself up when Phelan caught the ball.
“Even when I knew he caught the ball, I just stood there for a moment and looked around,” Bicknell Jr. said.
For what?
“For a penalty flag,” he said. “I wanted to make sure the play wasn’t called back.”
Bicknell, standing on the sidelines, also didn’t see Phelan catch the ball. Instead, he saw a referee on the other side of the end zone raise his arms to signal a touchdown.
“I couldn’t believe it,” Bicknell said. “I was shocked. I went to the middle of the field to shake hands with their coach, Jimmy Johnson. And he just sort of stared at me, like he couldn’t believe it either.”
Immediately after the game, Bill Trout, an administrative assistant and the Hurricanes’ defensive ends coach, resigned, citing philosophical differences with Johnson. It was the second devastating loss of the year for the Hurricanes. Two weeks earlier they blew a 31-0 halftime lead to Maryland and lost 42-40.
Today, the play remains very much a part of the participants’ lives.
Bicknell, who coached the Barcelona team in the World League, remembers being asked about the play by the team’s public information director.
“He was from Mexico, lived there when the play happened, yet he would tell me everything about it.”
While in Colorado recently, Phelan heard his name being called while he was sitting in a hot tub.
“From two stories up in an apartment complex, some guy yells down, ‘Yeah, Phelan. You know how much money you cost me.”‘ Reid Oslin, the Eagles’ football information director, has the radio call of the play on his office answering machine.
Bicknell believes the play will live forever.
“There was a certain mystique,” he said. “There was a little quarterback in Doug, at least in terms of football standards, there was the Heisman race, and it was the day after Thanksgiving and a lot of people are home. It wasn’t a Saturday, either, when there are other games on television.”
Two years after his Hail Mary, Flutie was asked about the Miracle over Miami.
“I have the video recorder at my place and I’ll watch it every time I go by the TV,” he said. “I’ll just flick it one more time to take a look at it.
“I enjoy it, and I’ll still enjoy it 10 years from now.”
