I did not know Franco Harris, the Pittsburgh Steeler icon who passed away on December 20. I had the privilege of meeting him briefly at an event in Pittsburgh about seven years ago. To a kid like me growing up in the 1970s, Harris was a larger-than-life figure and, in person, a most engaging and kind person who was far more than the single football play that he was best known for.
A first-round NFL draft pick in 1972, Harris went from Penn State to becoming a Pro Bowl running back in each of his first nine seasons with the Pittsburgh Steelers. He surpassed 1000 yards in eight of his 13 professional seasons, and his performances were a driving force in the Steelers becoming the premier team of the 1970s. He was inducted into the NFL Hall of Fame in 1990.
Many football fans, however, would quickly associate Harris with one play in his career. On December 23, 1972, Harris scored a game-winning touchdown with seconds left in regulation of a playoff game, a play subsequently known as “The Immaculate Reception.”
The unusual play—one of the most iconic in NFL history—featured Harris grabbing a deflected pass just inches from the turf and outrunning the stunned Oakland Raider defense to the Steeler endzone. In mere seconds Pittsburgh fans went from despondence to pandemonium. The television announcers and viewers throughout the country were in disbelief. The officiating crew was likely in confusion, and the scoreboard operator at Three Rivers Stadium changed the final tally to 13-7 after the extra point was made.
I write about creative thinking and innovation. How, you may wonder, does “The Immaculate Reception” relate to anything of the sort?
Four words: Go to the ball.
Harris’ obituary in The New York Times included a description of “The Immaculate Reception” shared with nfl.com in 2019. After seeing quarterback Terry Bradshaw throw the pass downfield, Harris explained that he thought, “Go to the ball.” It was a phrase instilled from his college coach. “That’s what he always told us in college, but in college I never listened,” Harris said.
This time, however, his instincts followed. Go to the ball. The phrase is reminiscent of National Hockey League great Wayne Gretzky, who credited his father in saying, “Skate to where the puck is going, not where it has been.”
None of the players on the field could have predicted the flight of the pass to Steeler receiver French Fuqua or whether it was going to land or amazingly be caught by Harris. Neither Pittsburgh coach Chuck Noll nor his staff scripted the outcome or possibly could have. Yet, however it is dissected, Harris and his “go-to-the-ball” mindset in the microseconds of the play were an improvisational brilliance resulting in a shoestring catch while never breaking stride in the roughly 45-yard sprint to the endzone.
General Michael Hayden, the former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency who is a Pittsburgh native and avid Steeler fan, weighed in on the play in an NFL Films documentary. “Just think of everything that had to happen just so and almost every one of those ‘just so’s’ had to be unplanned,” he said.
Those “just-so’s” of the 15-second play amounted to a gift of improv magic from Harris to football fans past, present, and future.
“To improvise,” Madson (2005) wrote in Improv Wisdom, “it is essential that we use the present moment efficiently. An instant of distraction…robs us of our investment of what is actually happening” (p. 36).
Harris used the moment flawlessly without a speck of distraction. Perhaps the quote would have made him smile…with rule #1 coming first. Go to the Ball.
References:
Kirby, J. (2014, September 24). Why businesspeople won’t stop using that Gretzky quote. Maclean’s. https://www.macleans.ca/economy/business/why-business-people-wont-stop-using-that-gretzky-quote/
Madson, P. R. (2005). Improv wisdom: Don’t prepare, just show up. Bell Tower.
NFL Films. (2022, December 23). How “The Immaculate Reception” name came to be: A football life. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOlPZ39HnJU