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To Steelers president Dan Rooney, it seems as if it happened only yesterday. To the players that made such history, it's remembered as a blessed event and destined to be celebrated and embraced another 30 years from now and beyond.

"The Immaculate Reception."

For the Steelers and The Steeler Nation, it's a holiday and a holy day, a birthday and an anniversary, a christening and a confirmation. Which explains why Franco Harris and his former teammates will gather tonight, the night before the most remarkable play in NFL history officially turns 30, and revel in its unimaginable nature, it's staying power and in each other.

"We'll be celebrating this weekend," former Steelers linebacker Andy Russell said last week, as the play's birthday approached. "We'll be celebrating for the rest of our lives, I think."

Harris wouldn't have it any other way, Russell says, which is why Harris has been able to convince, cajole and compel his former comrades to congregate periodically for special events, such as Super Bowls, ever since they went their separate ways professionally.

"Of all the former Steelers, Franco's the best at making sure that everybody stays together," Russell said.

There's a definite symmetry in that, as it was Franco that brought them together initially and brought the Steelers back from the dead Dec. 23, 1972, with the clock winding down and the Raiders all over Terry Bradshaw and the outlook as bleak as could be.

What happened next changed everything and can't be completely explained even today.

"I guess the story is pretty well told, but I can't say well-documented," Harris said. "That's the mystery of it."

"It's just so unique in the way it happened," Rooney said. "It was folklore that just can't be topped."

THE SETTING

Any Steelers fan worth his Terrible Towel knows the circumstances by now.

After being stunned by a 30-yard scramble for a touchdown from backup quarterback Ken Stabler with 1:13 remaining, the Steelers find themselves trailing the Oakland Raiders, 7-6, with 22 seconds left in the second playoff game in franchise history and the first since 1947. Worse still, they're facing a fourth-and-10 from their own 40-yard line.

Steelers coach Chuck Noll sends rookie wide receiver Barry Pearson in from the bench to tell Bradshaw to call "66 Option." It's a pass designed for Pearson, whom Noll believes might be overlooked by the Oakland defense because he hasn't caught a pass all game.

When the call was made, Harris remembers his heart sinking.

"I was like, 'Arrrrgh, I can't believe it, the last play of the season and it's a pass play and I'm supposed to be in there blocking. It's a pass play, but I can't be a part of this other than to stay in and block,'" Harris said. "I went into the huddle thinking, 'It's been a great year for the team and a great year personally and this is the last play; just go to the end.' Then they called that play and I'm like 'Oh man.' That was disappointing."

What transpired next is almost unexplainable.

Bradshaw scrambles for his life and fires the ball downfield, not for Pearson but to a secondary target, running back John "Frenchy" Fuqua. The Raiders secondary converges and defensive back Jack Tatum blasts Fuqua either just before, just after or at the precise moment the ball arrives at the Oakland 35. The ball ricochets back approximately 7 yards, where Harris miraculously cradles it inches above the ground and begins lumbering for the end zone.

"I didn't see it," Russell said. "I saw the ball thrown and I saw it deflected back. Then, I dropped my head to look at the ground, dejected that the season was over.

"Then, I heard this roaring and I looked up and I saw Franco sprinting down the sideline."

Harris caught the ball, eluded Raiders defensive back Jimmy Warren at the 11 and got into the end zone with five seconds remaining.

Where did he come from? How did he get there? And what was he doing in a position to catch a deflected pass in the first place?

JoePa knows.

"I've always preached that no matter where the ball is, always go to the ball because that's where things will be happening, that's where you can make things happen," Harris said. "I got that from Joe Paterno (during Harris' days at Penn State). That was Joe Paterno all the time, 'Go to the ball.' With him telling us enough times, I guess that got kind of ingrained.

"From my first practice (with the Steelers), I just started going to the ball. With (Bradshaw) scrambling, I told myself, 'Maybe you can catch an outlet pass.' When he threw it downfield, in my mind was, 'Go to the ball, you can throw a block, or, if there's a fumble, you can help out going to the ball.' And before I knew it, the ball was coming to me.

"I got the ball and I was just saying 'Get into the end zone.' Even though we had a great kicker at that time in Roy Gerela, I was saying in my mind, 'Don't even leave it for a field goal. Get into the end zone, we just can't chance anything.'"

The Raiders hadn't intended to leave anything to chance, either, but the way defensive back George Atkinson remembers it, Tatum's enthusiasm got the best of him and the Raiders.

"The last thing we said in the huddle was, 'Look, we got this game won. All we gotta do is knock the ball down,'" Atkinson has said. "And guess what happens? 'Tate' went for the knockout."

And history was made.

NFL Films, upon the occasion of the NFL's 75th anniversary in 1994, declared "The Immaculate Reception" to be the most memorable play of all time.

"It was a blend of the romantic, drama, luck and fate, and it had historical relevance," said NFL Films president Steve Sabol, an NFL Films cameraman at the game. "It's the kind of thing that gets handed down from generation to generation, an heirloom play, something that fathers pass along to their sons."

THE CONTROVERSY

Steelers founder Art Rooney Sr. missed the miraculous happening, having already started his decent to the Steelers' locker room.

Rooney's son Dan saw the whole thing.

"I saw the play first and then I saw the play on the replay, and as soon as it happened, I went down to the press box because I knew it was going to be controversial with (Raiders owner) Al Davis being there," Rooney said. "It was really something."

At issue was the play's legality. NFL rules at the time stipulated that a ball could not be deflected from one offensive player to another without first touching a defender. Thus, if the ball had bounced off Tatum, the play was within the rules. But if it had deflected off Fuqua, or Tatum and then Fuqua to Harris, the pass should have been ruled incomplete.

Referee Fred Swearingen's crew failed to make a definitive ruling initially, and while Steelers players and fans mobbed Harris in the end zone, the plot thickened as Swearingen retreated to a dugout phone at Three Rivers Stadium and engaged in a conversation.

Was he calling the press box? Was he calling stadium security? Was he calling for a pizza?

"What bothers me about it then and still bothers me now is if it was a touchdown, why didn't they call it a touchdown right away?" then-Raiders coach John Madden has often complained over the years. "If (Swearingen) didn't know it was a touchdown when it happened, how did he know it was a touchdown after he went and talked on the phone?"

"Reception" lore has attributed the conversation to an impromptu use of instant replay for the first time in NFL history. Several in the Raiders organization have also suggested — perhaps jokingly, perhaps not — that Swearingen called stadium security to ascertain how many guards were available to escort the officiating crew out of the stadium in the event the touchdown wasn't allowed. Swearingen was told six, legend has it, and thus trotted to the center of the field and shouted "six for Pittsburgh!"

Rooney insists Swearingen only phoned then-NFL Supervisor of Officials Art McNally to report what the crew had seen and how it intended to rule.

"McNally said, 'Call it the way you saw it,'" Rooney said. "They never looked at anything. It was rather quite simple, really."

But did the ball hit Fuqua or Tatum?

Fuqua claims to be the only person who knows for certain and has repeatedly refused to reveal the secret.

"I don't think anybody knows, that's the good part about it," Harris said. "The mystery lives on.

"I don't think they were going to change (the call) that day. Things happened, they called the touchdown. Without instant relay, how could you not call it one?

"As far as we're concerned, in Pittsburgh Steelers' lore, it was a touchdown."

Steelers broadcaster Myron Cope insists in his recently released book, "Double Yoi," to have viewed a film of the play frame by frame two days after it happened, and to have ascertained at that time that the play was legal and to have "aired my findings."

"No question about it — Bradshaw's pass struck Tatum squarely on his right shoulder. I mean it. I saw it," Cope wrote.

Cope also contends that the film has been lost in WTAE-TV's library and is likely never to be found.

Sabol maintained NFL Films is still in possession of the original TV feed and that determining which player the ball hit is impossible.

"All the cameras are on the same side of the field and the ball is obscured by their bodies," Sabol said. "And we (at NFL Films) had seven cameramen there and no one got the whole play.

"I love Myron, but this is our business and we've never seen it or heard of (such definitive footage)."

"Let's keep Frenchy's secret going," Rooney said. "I don't think he knows what happened. Myron Cope claims he's the only one that knows what happened and that they can't find the film, which seems rather remarkable to me that you can't find the film in a room you know it's in whether it's marked or not.

"I've looked at it 10 times. I have to say that I can't see from that. In fact, when instant replay came up and they were debating it, we were against it. One of the reasons I was against it was I said there would be a play, and I used that as an example, where you're not going to be able to see. That's when they came up with this idea … you can't overturn because the evidence is inconclusive. If you can't see then, you go by the referees."

Sabol, like Russell, never saw the collision. He was shooting the Raiders' sideline and was focused in on Madden at the time.

"Looking at Madden's face, you knew whatever had happened was not good for the Raiders," Sabol said. "He was in complete, slack-jawed disbelief." Russell argues that the ruling followed the spirit if not the letter of the NFL's law.

"I suspect the ball bounced off Frenchy," Russell said. "But it seems to me the intent of the law or rule was that an offensive player wasn't allowed to bat a ball back to a teammate. Frenchy was trying to catch the ball. The momentum was clearly provided by Tatum. He caused that ball to ricochet back."

Harris doesn't want to know.

"Keep it Immaculate," he said.

THE LEGACY

"After 30 years, I guess what amazes me more than anything is how it has grown, how it's become even bigger than it was before, how it continues to grow," Harris said. "And I guess I'm even more amazed that young kids know about it now.

"I'm amazed at how people relate to the play. I still get stories, people come up to me and tell me where they were at, what they were doing. I hear sometimes the consequences of the play, like, 'Oh my uncle jumped up and down and broke his leg,' or 'so and so flipped over on his couch,' you hear all sorts of stories like that. People come up and tell me where they were at this moment and the experiences that they experienced at the time."

Harris, like the Steelers of the day, went on to bigger and better things. He became a Super Bowl MVP and a Hall-of-Famer. Still, at 52, he has no problems being remembered mostly for one play above all others.

"To me, when I look at 1972, that was a magic year and this capped that year," he said. "Something that wonderful, how can you not enjoy that and really appreciate that?

"That was the beginning of it all. You took a situation that seemed totally lost and, boom, it turned right around and brought happiness and hope. Now, the Pittsburgh Steelers are going to the (AFC) Championship Game, one game away from the Super Bowl. And to have that kind of feeling and spirit during that time and also around Christmas time, which has such a wonderful spirit and feeling of its own; the city was phenomenal, people just went crazy."

"I really think that made us the team of destiny, so to speak," Rooney said. "It was just a great thing. It really did a lot for us."

Not that those four Super Bowl trophies the Steelers went on to secure resulted entirely from "Immaculate Reception" magic.

Rooney remembers getting a feeling that his team was turning the corner and turning into something special when the Steelers defeated the Minnesota Vikings, 23-10, to improve to 8-3 in late November.

And he's relatively certain the Steelers of that era would have achieved greatness even if Harris had never caught that ball.

"Oh yeah, because we became the best team in the NFL," he said. "The Pittsburgh Steelers of the middle 1970s, there was nobody that ever played, for sure, better defense than that team played, and our offense wasn't too bad, either."

"The Immaculate Reception," thus, stands out perhaps not as the catalyst for, but as the crowning symbol of the NFL's upcoming Steel Age.

The Steelers stubbed their toes the following week, losing the AFC Championship Game to Miami, 21-17. And they went just 10-4 (down from 11-3) and were drummed out of the playoffs in the first round by those same Raiders the following season.

But by 1974 there was no stopping the Steelers.

"We were down for all that long time and then we started up," Rooney said. "This play really projected us. We became bigger than life. We won the four Super Bowls. We became the team of the National Football League. When they talk about the big locations and things like that, you have to remember, for television ratings, we had the highest ratings of any team in the league during that period of time.

"I always say, 'Hey, we did our share.' We got the people watching us in 'Podunk.' That was as big as New York City when you take the thousands of towns of Steelers fans into account."

Russell, likewise, appreciates the symbolism as much as he does Harris' instincts and athleticism, which were essential even given the fluke nature of the play.

"That play culminated what I believe was the quintessential Steelers season of all time," he said. "In 1972, that team came into is own. From perennial loser to winner, to division champ, it just kind of culminated an unbelievable turnaround year that I believe reflects the turnaround the city was going through from its economic woes and the collapse of the Steel industry. We were not going to be pushed around any more as city and as a football team.

"I think the fans subconsciously viewed the Steelers as a symbol of the city's reemergence. There was an incredible affection between the fans and the players and between the players and the fans. And that play was the most critical moment.

"I, to this day, think we were a better team than the Dolphins, and that we should have won our first Super Bowl in 1972. We didn't get it done, but that's part of the game. Franco's play, that goes down as an exclamation point to the all-time most significant season, the season that was the most exciting and incredible that we ever had."

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