College Football's 10 greatest Hail Mary's...

Terry O'Keefe · Sep 25, 2014

Well I guess you might call them the 10 greatest that we have video of as these are all after 1980...surely pre-1980 there were some really great ones as well.

Anyway all were great plays for sure.

10 Best Hail Mary's

I'm sure everybody knows that the modern Hail Mary was invented by Roger Staubach and Drew Pearson in 1975.

A Hail Mary pass is a very long forward pass in American football, made in desperation with only a small chance of success, especially at or near the end of a half. The term became widespread after a December 28, 1975 NFL playoff game between the Dallas Cowboys and the Minnesota Vikings, when Cowboys quarterback Roger Staubach (a Roman Catholic) said about his game-winning touchdown pass to wide receiver Drew Pearson, "I closed my eyes and said a Hail Mary."[1] Previous to this play, a last-second desperation pass had been called several names, most notably the "Alley-Oop".

The expression goes back at least to the 1930s, being used publicly in that decade by two former members of Notre Dame's Four Horsemen, Elmer Layden and Jim Crowley. Originally meaning any sort of desperation play, a "Hail Mary" gradually came to denote a long, low-probability pass attempted at the end of a half when a team is too far from the end zone to execute a more conventional play. For more than forty years use of the term was largely confined to Notre Dame and other Catholic universities.[2]
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College Football's 10 greatest Hail Mary's...

Terry O'Keefe Well-Known Member Administrator

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College Football's 10 greatest Hail Mary's...

Terry O'Keefe Well-Known Member Administrator

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