RIP: Steelers Legend Franco Harris Dies Just as the NFL is Celebrating His Most Iconic Moment

Harry Cabluck. Shutterstock Images.

NFL.com - Franco Harris, the Hall of Fame running back whose heads-up thinking authored "The Immaculate Reception," considered the most iconic play in NFL history, has died. He was 72.

Harris' son Dok told The Associated Press his father passed away overnight. No cause of death was given.

Anyone who saw  Harris play can say a lot of things about him. After all, almost 40 years after he retired, he's still 15th on the all time rushing list. And despite fewer teams making the playoffs in his day, is still 2nd all time in postseason rushing yards. A four-time champion. Nine-time Pro Bowler. Rookie of the Year. Super Bowl MVP. Member of the 1970s All Decade Team. 

But for all those accomplishments, if the man had one defining characteristic, it would be his flair for the dramatic. He died as he lived, with impeccable timing. Because this week the NFL has big plans for celebrating the aforementioned "Immaculate Reception":

Here's what I wrote when this anniversary celebration was announced:

You can't have grown up in the United States in the last 50 years and not be at least marginally familiar with The Immaculate Reception. Not even if you didn't see it get picked by the NFL as The Greatest Play of All Time or it appear on every, single pro football highlight countdown. In fact, you don't even have to be a sports fan to have heard about it. Over the last four years I've made repeated trips to the Pittsburgh airport because both my sons have gone to school within an hour of the place. And when you come down the escalator from the gates to baggage claim, you are greeted by two statues: George Washington and Franco Harris. So the leader of the revolution that gave birth to this country, and a running back grabbing a ball by the fingertips about an inch above the ground. So pretty much the story of America, summed up in two carved images.

It's that much a part of our pop culture. …

So to review, Harris retired in 1984, and until now the Steelers were perfectly content to let his number go unretired for 38 years. Their franchise is tied for the most Super Bowls in history, with six. They've sent more guys to the Hall of Fame than any team but the Bears and Packers, and to this day have only retired the numbers of two of them. But they're adding Harris as the third, just to mindfuck the Raiders. Because the catch has tortured them and their fans for about three generations. The failure of that play has haunted their steps through four moves to three different home cities. And the Steelers are choosing an otherwise joyous Christmas Eve to make sure they don't forget it. Absolutely diabolical. 

Back to my own understanding of the play. What I've always believed is that the catch was disputed because everyone in Oakland thought it hit the ground and Harris picked it up on the short hop. Shame on me. Thanks to the book "Badasses: John Madden's Oakland Raiders" by Peter Richmond (which I'm not getting paid to endorse by I'll give credit where it's due, football book author to football book author, cha-ching!), the anger and pain goes much, much deeper than merely a blown call. It rises to the level of conspiracy theory that lives on to this day like JFK's assassination. 

For starters, Bradshaw's pass was intended for Steeler's running back Frenchy Fuqua, who was having an already miserable day, with 16 carries for just 25 yards. It's common knowledge that the ball bounced off Fuqua's shoulder pad as he was hit by safety Jack Tatum (who deserves to be suffering eternal torment at the end of Satan's dick for a hit a few years later), backwards to Harris and into history. What's less known is that, according to the rules at the time, a ball that bounced off an offensive player can't be caught by another offensive player. By rule, that would blown dead as an incomplete pass, if any player but the guy who first touched it caught it. 

But on this one, the officials called it a touchdown. And then huddled. And huddled. Until their huddlers were sore. And were allegedly overheard to ask "Do we have security on the field? … If you do, I'm going to make this call in favor of the Raiders." Then one of the truly great-named referees, Fred Swearingen, 

… made his way into the Pirates' dugout at Three Rivers and was believed to have called upstairs to the NFL Director of Officiating, Art McNally, while John Madden ran onto the field, his jowls flapping and his spittle flying everywhere. After an eternity, Swearingen came back out and signaled touchdown. The only logical conclusion we can reach is that McNally was upstairs looking at every angle of every replay to see if there was one that so obviously showed the ball hitting Fuqua or bouncing off the turf that they'd have no choice but to reverse the call and give the game to Oakland. Finding none, he had cover to let the ruling stand and get his officiating crew out of Pittsburgh in one piece. 

All of which - you guessed it - was also completely against the rules at the time. You couldn't catch a deflected pass. You couldn't review replays. And you couldn't let the head of officials determine who won or lost a playoff game. Nor could you commit buggery against a franchise, a city and a fanbase. All of which they did. 

And the Raiders are still not over it, half a century later.

Imagine dying exactly 50 years after the moment you are most associated with. The one that defined your career. And just as the team that waited five decades to do so, finally decides to retire your number. Incredible. 

The only analogy I can think of is Thomas Jefferson and John Adams both dying within minutes of each other on July 4, 1826, 50 years to the day of their own Immaculate Reception. It's enough to make you wonder if there's more here than just mere random chance. That this is a synchronicity. Meaning too much of a coincidence to be an actual coincidence. That there are larger forces at play in the universe, guiding and controlling events. And those forces have a sense of irony. 

And once again those forces work in the NFL's favor. As always. Because what was going to be a nice tribute to a great player and a fun remembrance of one of the most notable plays in the history of the game, is now going to be a tsunami of emotion for the man at the center of it. Hell, Harris was finally getting his own episode of A Football Life, and it drops Friday. 

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The cynic in me wants to believe Roger Goodell orchestrated the whole thing. But that's for another time. Now is just about honoring one of the best there ever was in this game:

Godspeed, Franco. Maybe the next time a guy carries his team to four championships, they won't wait 50 years until he's dead to honor him. 

P.S. I hope this tortures Raider fans even more than it was going to.