John Madden still maintains to anyone who'll listen that on the Immaculate Reception, the ball hit Steeler Frenchy Fuqua before Franco Harris caught it. The officials (not to mention a detailed study by a physicist) determined that the ball hit Raider Jack Tatum. The difference? In the rules of the day, the ball hitting Fuqua would have rendered illegal the most famous play in football lore. Madden and other Raiders cling to the Fuqua myth with the same irrational ferocity that W. clings to his appointed cronies and that Michigan alums cling to their "elite school" fantasy.
The first time I saw Madden was on Football Weekend VII in Miami. We staked out the Maddencruiser after the game, and we watched from 10 feet away as the big lummox boarded his bus. "THE BALL HIT TATUM!" I yelled.
I next staked out the Maddencruiser in San Francisco a year later. "THE BALL HIT TATUM!" I yelled.
Later that year in Pittsburgh: "THE BALL HIT TATUM!"
The next year in Kansas City: "THE BALL HIT TATUM!" Only this time, Madden stopped his ascent into the bus, turned around, and squinted into the crowd to look for the face of his cross-continental, cross-annum heckler. "YEAH, YOU HEARD ME! TATUM, MOTHERFUCKER! YEAH!"
Duly cowed by the magnitude of my evidence and the sagacity of my argument, Madden shook his head and retreated into his bus.
And with that, I note the passing of ABC's Monday Night Football. Some of the best moments of my life have been on Monday nights at the only game being played in the world, and I will miss it. Oh sure, there will be some bush league variation on ESPN next year with, God help us all, Joe "Nobody in the game of football should
be called a genius. A genius is somebody like Norman Einstein." Theisman in the booth. All the more reason to mourn.
"Yeah, Johnny, Daddy's dead, but look! Mommy remarried! Your new daddy is Joe Theisman! See, everything's fine. Here, listen while he prattles on about himself. You'll feel better."
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