“I don’t believe it.”
That simple utterance, delivered by play-by-play man Brent Musburger, effectively summed into four short words the collective feeling of the hundreds of thousands of fans watching Doug Flutie‘s miraculous Hail Mary pass.
A full quarter-century later, it’s still hard to believe, yet Flutie sat down with Musburger on the 25th anniversary of the play to relive that legendary moment.
Flutie, in the ESPN interview, told Musburger that the coaches had “no idea” what plays Flutie would be calling in that game-winning drive and that the defense “probably thought I couldn’t throw it that far.”
“When I moved left to right, the [defenders] froze and [Gerard Phelan] went behind them. And when [Phelan] falls to the ground, I see an official’s arms coming in on the left, the arms go up, and I started laughing.”
While Flutie was laughing, the rest of the country was saying, “Oh my God.”
And even though it’s been 25 years, Flutie says that it’s a rare day when the Hail Mary is not brought up in conversation.
“I know the average is well over once a day,” he told Musburger. “There may be a day that goes by where it doesn’t come up, but they’re few and far between.”
