[Ads-l] antedating "immaculate reception"

Laurence Horn laurence.horn at YALE.EDU
Fri Dec 23 00:45:14 UTC 2022


OK, not as historically significant as "scientist" or "physicist", but
topical, since the death of Franco Harris earlier this week.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/21/sports/football/franco-harris-dead-steelers.html

Not just the obituaries, but all l the stories about Harris over the last
five decades have led off with his role in this all-time play (which I
remember seeing live and whose golden anniversary is this Saturday), but of
course what has made the play especially unforgettable is the coinage, due
I presume to a sportswriter (maybe the same or next day?).  But who was
it?  Most sources, like the wiki-entry
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franco_Harris, treat it as though the
immortal monicker was foreordained. The legendary longtime Steelers
announcer Myron Cope made it famous, but as far as I know he didn't come up
with the name himself.

LH

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