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#HAIL MARY FOOTBALL ESPN PRO#
Musburger even played the video clip two days later on NFL Today, the pro football pregame show he anchored for CBS. "Certainly a watershed moment," says ABC-ESPN football announcer Brent Musburger, who was at the microphone for CBS that day. Not only did a national audience get an entertaining game, with both QBs throwing for over 400 yards in a back-and-forth thriller, it got knocked off of its collective sofa by the sight of Phelan cradling the ball in his gut as he fell backward into the end zone with the game clock at zero.
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And the biggest difference from today: BC-Miami was the only game on the tube that day.
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23, 1984, was perfect: Two nationally ranked teams, two star quarterbacks (Flutie and Miami's Bernie Kosar) poised for an offensive shootout on No one could have foreseen it at the time, but Hail Flutie helped usher in a whole new era of growth for the sport, helping to drive the marriage of a newfound East Coast audience, drawn to the college game by an unlikely star, to a burgeoning television presence led by upstart ESPN. And it's clear enough by now that the play stands as more than just the most memorable in college football history.