[Ads-l] antedating "immaculate reception"

[Ben Zimmer]

On Thu, Dec 22, 2022 at 7:45 PM Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>
wrote:

> 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.
>

The story goes that Cope was the first to use the phrase on air, but it was
coined by a couple of fans, Michael Ord and Sharon Levosky, who came up
with it at a post-game celebration. Levosky called up Cope to tell him
about it and he used it on that night's newscast on WTAE-TV.

See: "Couple who coined name for Immaculate Reception never sought credit,"
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Nov. 11, 2012
https://web.archive.org/web/20160217053740/https://www.post-gazette.com/sports/steelers/2012/11/11/Couple-who-coined-name-for-Immaculate-Reception-never-sought-credit/stories/201211110191

--bgz

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