…and I saw something really cool on YouTube recently. The Immaculate reception from a completely different angle. It was the coach’s film of the play and puts the viewer on top of the play that unfolded that afternoon back in 1972. The angle clearly shows the ball landing in Franco Harris’s hands at about the knee instead of what I’ve always seen in which he is reaching down for the ball and his hands go out of view and then you see his hands come back into view with the ball. It doesn’t look like the ball hits the ground in the cropped off view but now you can see without a doubt in the coach’s video that the ball definitely never hits the ground. When the play starts you see Franco ready to block but once he looks back and see’s Terry Bradshaw scrambling, Franco drifts down field in hopes of being a receiver but is sort of covered by a Raider. Who knew Harris would be a receiver in more ways than one. Just like in previous views you see Bradshaw throwing the ball toward Frenchy Fuqua who’s covered by Oakland’s Jack Tatum but you can really see the ball ricochet back toward Franco’s knees that he grabs and the rest they say is history. But here’s something I didn’t realize is that play not only kept the Steelers playoff hopes alive but may have been responsible for keeping Pirates and Steelers photographer Les Banos alive. Because the Steelers by beating the Raiders meant they would play Miami the following Sunday which was New Years Eve 1972. The year Roberto was killed in the plane crash while delivering relief aid to earth quake victims in Nicaragua. Les was supposed to join him in delivering the aid and most likely would have been on that flight that went down. Pretty incredible but you can see the black and white video on YouTube just search “have you ever seen this angle of the immaculate reception? It’s pretty cool.