Urban Legends of the NFL: Did Frightened Refs Stage the Immaculate Reception? (2024)

The most important play in NFL history had just occurred, and no one knew what the heck just happened.

The intended receiver and primary defender were lying on the turf in a daze. Several of the officials missed the key moment. Even the television cameras and film crews weren't quite ready for what took place.

The Immaculate Reception was the stuff of urban legend the moment Franco Harris crossed the goal line to secure a 13-7 win and a trip to the AFC Championship Game.

There are several tales intertwined around the Immaculate Reception. We will touch on a few but focus on one: that the referees only called the play a touchdown, instead of an illegally deflected pass, out of fear for their own safety. Officiating crew chief Fred Swearingen saw Steelers fans toppling onto the field and ran to the Three Rivers Stadium dugout to call stadium security. When the safety of the officials couldn't be assured, he signaled a potentially life-saving touchdown.

Or so the story goes. Usually when told by old Raiders.

"That's ludicrous," according to Barry Mano, president of the National Association of Sports Officials, an expert on referee safety protocols.

Art McNally, the NFL's head of officiating in 1972 and the man Swearingen spoke to during that fateful dugout phone call, "literally cackles himself into a wheezing silence" when asked about the notion that the officials that day called security to check on their safety before making their decision,according to longtime Pittsburgh Post-Gazette columnist Gene Collier,writing in 1998. "'Ha! People put two and two together I guess,'" McNally said.

Did the referees, or the Raiders for that matter, have any reason to fear angry mobs of early-'70s Steelers fans?

The answer to that question is a part of the Immaculate Reception legend that is very rarely told.

The Play and the Debate

The NFL Films footage of the Immaculate Reception may be the most famous sports highlight in American history. It's as recognizable to sports fans as the Mona Lisa. But like the Mona Lisa, it's so familiar that it's easy to take its beauty and significance for granted.

Forty years after the fact,an entire episode ofA Football Lifewas devoted to the play; we'll reference it at times here. But that program was produced in 2012. Some of the old-timers retold their tales for approximately the billionth time, but you know how tall tales can get after decades of retelling.

So here's a quick recap of exactly what happened in Pittsburgh back in 1972.

WHO:Raiders (10-3-1) at Steelers (11-3).

WHAT:Divisional playoff game, which at the time was the first round of the postseason.

WHEN:December 23, 1972.

WHERE:Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh, which was a dual-use football and baseball stadium (hence the dugout). The play begins with the Steelers having the ball on their own 40-yard line, 4th-and-10 with 22 seconds left in the fourth quarter.

WHY:Entering the 1972 season, the Steelers had reached the playoffs just once in their near-40 year history. It had been nine years since they even had a winning season. The Raiders were former AFL champions enjoying their best season since the NFL-AFL completed their merger three years earlier.

The Immaculate Reception represents the birth of the Steel Curtain Dynasty, the Steelers-Raiders rivalry and the Raiders' reputation as the wrestling-style heels who win and lose on the fringes of the rulebook. It also presaged both instant replay and "What's a Catch?" debates. There was a lot going on.

HOW:Trailing 7-6 with no timeouts left on fourth down, Steelers coach Chuck Noll called a play called 66 Circle Option. The play broke down quickly because of the Raiders pass rush, which forced Terry Bradshaw to scramble and throw to fullback John "Frenchy" Fuqua.

Raiders safety Jack Tatum slammed into Fuqua just as the ball arrived. The ball ricocheted backward toward rookie running back Franco Harris, who scooped the ball up and raced 60 yards into the end zone.

That's where the only highlight any of us saw for decades ended. This Urban Legend is about what happened next...

According to NFL rules in 1972, a receiver could not legally catch a pass that had been touched, batted or deflected by another offensive player after leaving the quarterback's hand. Officials were not certain whether Bradshaw's pass had hit Fuqua or Tatum. So they huddled. Raiders coach John Madden howled that the pass bounced off Fuqua, making the catch illegal. Steelers fans had begun leaping onto the field to celebrate, even though there were still five seconds left on the clock.

After a conference with his officials, crew chief Fred Swearingen walked over to the baseball dugout, which had telephones. With instant replay decades from arrival, Swearingen spoke to someone on the phone. Then he emerged and immediately signaled a touchdown. Security began clearing fans from the field for the extra point.

Newspapers reported varying accounts of what happened in the dugout. Some said Swearingen watched a replay, though there is no evidence that there was any television equipment in the dugout. Most agree that Swearingen spoke to NFL executive Art McNally on the dugout telephone, but the details changed from story to story: McNally called Swearingen, Swearingen called McNally, McNally watched the replay, McNally made the touchdown call and so on.

Raiders safety George Atkinson offered some eyewitness testimony of the referee conference 40 years laterin the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:"We wandered over to hear what they were talking about. We thought they were deciding if the play was dead; instead, they were concerned about security. I heard it with my own ears.

"They were concerned how much security was there if they made the wrong call. Other than that, why would they have to call upstairs? For what? There was no instant replay. They were calling security there."

There are plenty of reasons to doubt Atkinson's testimony. It arrives after 40 years of telling exaggerated "wild Raiders" stories in NFL Films productions, for one thing. Referees shooed players away from their discussions in the 1970s just as they do now. Are we supposed to believe that Swearingen's crew simultaneously feared for its safety but let a bunch of hostile players nicknamed "Butch" and "The Assassin" listen in on their deliberations?

Atkinson may have been misremembering things a bit, but he was restating something that had made the rounds for decades. Some Pittsburgh folks even spokeabout the legend to NFL Films.

"People say that the referee came out and said to the security man, 'Can you protect our lives?' Steelers broadcaster Bill Hargrove said in the program. "The guy said 'no,' so he said 'touchdown.'"

Added Mark Madden, Pittsburgh talk radio personality: "I know, in my heart, that when the referees got together to debate the call, they said, 'look, if we rule this incomplete, we're not getting out of Three Rivers Stadium alive."

To get to the bottom of this, we need to find out exactly who called whom on that dugout phone after the Immaculate Reception and why.

"What Are You Going to Call?"

Thousands of words were written about the Immaculate Reception in the next day's newspapers. But while most beat writers and columnists scoured the locker room in search of quotes from Tatum, Fuqua, Harris and others, treating the referee's deliberations like a minor detail,Bob Oates of the Los Angeles Timesfocused on the mysterious phone call:

"McNally couldn't decide for sure what the television picture showed," Oates added. "But he could see it was so close that Pittsburgh, as the offensive team, deserved the benefit of the doubt. Thus he decided to intervene…

"[P]ress box witnesses noted at the time, however, that it was McNally who originated the conversation on the field phone. This was also confirmed by an NFL publicist, who said McNally telephoned Swearingen to 'make sure' the referee's decision conformed to camera evidence."

In other words, Oates was near McNally, overheard at least one side of the phone exchange, spoke to the executive and immediately typed up what happened for publication in a neutral-city paper of record. This is what researchers call a "reliable primary source."

"What's He Calling For?"

An article in a1998 issue of the trade magazineRefereeprovides another account of the conversation between McNally and Swearingen.

Swearingen states in this article that he was in no position to see whom the ball caromed off, so he gathered the crew and polled members one by one. Three officials said they did not know. Two said they thought that the ball struck Tatum but were not sure.

McNally saw the deliberation and contacted a Steelers sideline assistant via walkie-talkie. McNally told the assistant to seek out the alternate official, just in case he needed to consult with Swearingen's crew. This walkie-talkie conversation, the article notes, did not take place in McNally's press-box seat.

When McNally returned to his seat, he saw Swearingen heading for the dugout. Apparently, McNally's relayed message among security guards and alternate officials was muddled. Swearingen thought McNally was summoning him. McNally was told Swearingen needed a ruling.

Here's McNally's recollection of the conversation as of 1998:

"The first thing Fred said was, 'Two of my men ruled that the ball was touched by opposing players.' I thought all he had to do was get verification of the rules. So when he said that I said, 'You're fine. Go ahead. Everything is OK. That was the end of the conversation.'"

McNally's and Swearingen's recollections 25 years later do not precisely match Oates' quotes of the time, but the substance is the same. The phone conversation was extremely brief, with the head official doing little more than offering a blessing.

TheRefereearticle offers what likely is a bit more clear-eyed version of events given that McNally and Swearingen were speaking to a trade audience about the procedure of officiating in an unusual situation, not nostalgic Steelers or Raiders fans or NFL Films producers seeking a compelling television program. There is less likelihood of myth-making or "spin" in such a clinical version of events.

Steelers chairman Dan Rooney added one more layer to the tale in 2012. According to an article by Ed Bouchette of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Rooney (whose father, then-Steelers owner Art Rooney, had famously given up on the game and was in an elevator for the whole play) said that he himself fielded the call from Swearingen. Rooney said that a Steelers employee actually made the call on behalf of Swearingen; Rooney then called McNally over to where he was standing in the press box.

"I said, 'This is Swearingen,' " Rooney said of his conversation with McNally. "He said, 'Swearingen, what's he calling for?' I said, 'I don't know.'"

McNally took the call from the referee at the game.

Rooney's memories may be about as reliable as Atkinson's; after 40 years, people tend to put themselves into the middle of major stories. Still, the substance is similar to both the Oates and Referee magazine accounts: a brief conversation in the press box, confusion involving intermediaries about who wanted to speak to whom, McNally offering little but some moral support.

There was no mention of a call to stadium security in any of these accounts nor any other published stories from the days after the Immaculate Reception. The fact that the versions of events listed above mention stadium officials carrying walkie-talkies make it unlikely that Swearingen would turn to a dugout telephone to ask a security-related question. Who did he expect to come to their rescue? Relief pitchers?

Still, the Raiders began floating the "referees were scared" storyline just hours after the game. Gary Niver wrote an account of the Raiders' plane ride home from Pittsburghfor theSan Mateo Times, published on Christmas Day. In Niver's account, Madden (who believed that McNally made the final call, not Swearingen) learns on the plane that McNally only saw the television angle of the replay, not some conclusive angle pulled from another source.

"I didn't know that," Madden said. "But I do know that there was no way they could have reversed that touchdown even if it had been illegal. They (the officials) had to give Pittsburgh the victory to save their own lives."

So the legend likely began, with a disgruntled coach reacting to a sympathetic reporter (Niver is on the team plane, after all) about an erroneous depiction of events.

Then Madden alluded to a forgotten event, one that made the danger of angering Steelers fans a very real issue in the days before the Immaculate Reception.

"We have faced adversities before and overcome them. I would be a jerk if I tried to use the late plane or the Moore incident as an excuse."

The late plane was exactly what it sounds like: a Raiders flight was delayed en route to the game. But what was the "the Moore incident?"

Early Playoff Lumps

"Raiders Moore Gets Early Playoff Lumps," read one headlineof a syndicated AP wirestory which, in many newspapers, ran on the same day as accounts of the Immaculate Reception: December 24, 1972.

"Beaten by cops, plans suit," ran the subheadline. So...a football player was beaten up by the police and newspaper editors cracked a "playoff lumps" joke in the headline? Merry Christmas, 1970s America!

Bob Moore, a Raiders tight end, and a teammate were returning to the team hotel on the evening before the Saturday playoff game only to find an unofficial Steelers pep rally taking place near the main entrance.

Moore and his friend tried to squeeze through the crowd. "We told them we were Raiders players, and then all hell broke loose," according to the story.

The Raiders ran to escape the crowd. Then, according to Moore, they encountered a half-dozen policemen. "They beat me with their clubs and their fists," he said. "It was completely unprovoked on our part."

The AP story quoted an official police spokesperson, addressing the incident: "All we know is that a man named Robert Moore of 7811 Oakport Road in Oakland California, 23 years old, was hit over the head in front of the Pittsburgh Hilton. Sure, charges might be filed if we find who hit the player. We have no idea how he was hurt."

Inanother version of events, Moore revealed he called the cop a "blank-blank" before all heck breaks loose. Ironically, the two Raiders had gone to the movies to seeAcross 110th Street, a movie about urban violence and police corruption.

At any rate, Moore needed five stitches in his head and could not play in the game.

You are welcome to believe what you want about what happened to Moore the night before that playoff game 44 years ago. But after the Moore incident, the Raiders themselves had reason to believe that Steelers fans were violent and that local police were, at best, less than helpful.

Maybe Swearingen and his crew felt the same way as Steelers fans spilled onto the field.

Logically, the Moore incident makes it evenlesslikely that Swearingen would suddenly call for security at the exact moment he needed it.

Tactical Referee Game Plans

Barry Mano was a basketball referee for decades. As president of the National Association of Sports Officials, he's now a leading expert and advocate of officiating safety at all levels of competition. According to Mano, referees in every sport at every level arrive at the game knowing that things could get ugly if they must make a critical ruling against the home team.

"Referees arrive with their antennae up, even at the high school levels," Mano said. "There are decisions made by officials at the lowest levels about where to park their cars."

The higher the level, the better the security. But officials who reach the NFL spend years moving through the Pop Warner, high school and small college ranks. Having worried about getting a smashed windshield from angry parents at the start of their careers, they don't blunder into the fourth quarter of an NFL playoff game without a plan: not now, and not in the 1970s, when security was less professionalized.

"Before the game starts, in the pregame conference, we're having a discussion. OK, if things get tough out there, what's the protocol?" Mano explained.

"Whatever security is there, we want to know where they are. As we get into a very tense situation at the end of a game, we already had a conversation, through the sideline officials, about where security is," he added. "It's a shame we have to think so critically about that area. But you have to have a tactical game plan: how do we safely, coherently and cohesively leave this area."

"All those things have already been talked about,especially if we are going into a game where there is historically bad blood."

If word got around the stadium that Raiders players were beaten up by Steelers fans (and possibly the police) the night before the game, Swearingen's staff would have been on high alert long before the Immaculate Reception.

If they didn't trust the Pittsburgh security protocols—reread that police statement about Moore—that likely would have led to even more preplanning by Swearingen's staff. "Back in the Wild West days, security wasn't there to the degree we have now," Mano said. "And sometimes we had biased security. But we talked through all of those things as referees."

So it's incredibly unlikely that a group of experienced referees were shocked to be in a late-game, close-call situation and felt the need to make emergency phone calls to plan their escape route.

"We might be crazy to be referees," Mano said, "but that doesn't mean we're dumb."

Tatum Deflects It

The best reason to disbelieve the "feared for their safety" legend is the fact that, well, Bradshaw's pass obviously bounced off Tatum. The referees were going to rule in favor of the Steelers no matter what.

Here'sCurt Gowdy’s call off the play on NBC:"Last chance for the Steelers. Bradshaw, trying to get away. And his pass...is...broken up by Tatum. PICKED UP! Franco Harris has it! And he's over!" Gowdy also narrates the replay moments later. "Jack Tatum deflects it right into the hands of Harris."

That replay shows the football crossing Fuqua's body. The ball ricochets backward in the opposite direction Tatum was running, which is what you would expect when a light, fast-moving object strikes a heavy fast-moving object. As Harris runs for the touchdown, a reverse angle shows back judge Adrian Burk signaling a touchdown; Burk was one of the officials who felt that the ball struck Tatum, according to Referee magazine.

Just about anyone who saw the play live and had no affiliation with the Raiders saw the play as either a Steelers touchdown or too close to call as anything but a Steelers touchdown, with one major exception: Fuqua himself.

Fuqua was coy from the very first interview about whether the ball hit him. "No comment," he said after the game, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. "I'll tell you after the Super Bowl. I'm not chopping down any cherry trees. But no comment."

Fuqua was also "dazed" and "dizzy" according to his postgame quotes. He may have had no idea what hit him. The ball might even have grazed him on the way to Tatum.

The fact remains that the two television broadcasts make it hard to figure out how the ball would fly 20 yards in the opposite direction of Tatum without contact with Tatum. In modern terms, the call on the field would have been a touchdown, and the replays would not be conclusive enough to overturn it.

Gowdy's play-by-play and the broadcast tape disappeared for 25 years. From the days after the initial broadcast to a mysterious unearthing of the footage before a 1997 rebroadcast before a Steelers playoff game, the only version of the Immaculate Reception anyone ever saw was the NFL Films footage. Iconic as it is, it is oddly spliced to get the best images from two imperfect camera angles. It always looked like there was a scene missing where the ball, Tatum and Fuqua met. In fact, there was a scene missing: Neither camera got an unobstructed look at the collision.

The NFL Films version of the Immaculate Reception was perfect for myth spinning. Like good urban legends, those myths have only grown as memories faded and the early '70s started to feel like ancient times. Maybe, somehow, that football really did bounce from Fuqua to Franco, and the referees got the whole thing wrong. But they made the best call they could make. Rowdy Steelers fans didn't scare them. Veteran referees have seen it all before.

Mike Tanier covers the NFL for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter@MikeTanier.