Hail Mary, It Was Flood Tip : College football: Ten years ago, Doug Flutie led Boston College to 47-45 victory against Miami with an unbelievable last play of an unforgetable game.

Gerard Phelan was soaking in a hot tub on a ski trip to Colorado five years ago when the voice of an unforgiving bettor descended from the walkway above.

“He yelled out to me, ‘Hey, Phelan.’ I looked up. I had no idea who the guy was. And he said, ‘Hey, Phelan, you cost me a lot of money in Miami,’ ” Phelan recalls. “I said, ‘what are you talking about?’ He said, ‘You know what I mean.”’

Ten years ago last week, in misty Miami, Phelan looked up at the night sky as he was falling into the end zone and caressed one of the most famous passes ever thrown. It sailed 64 yards on a spiral from Doug Flutie’s right hand into history, the last unbelievable play of an unforgettable game.

Boston College 47, Miami 45.

Flutie threw for 472 yards, Miami’s Bernie Kosar for 447.

The teams combined for 1,282 yards of offense.

The lead changed hands five times in a wild fourth quarter, the last time on Flutie’s 48-yard Hail Mary pass on a play that began with six seconds left.

“I go to Barcelona, Spain, and they know about that play,” says Jack Bicknell, the Boston College coach that day who later coached Barcelona in the World League of American Football. “You wonder what makes something like this last.”

The moment was relived with Boston College visiting that same Orange Bowl--where Miami has lost just twice since Phelan’s catch--tand lost to the Hurricanes last weekend.

Ten years ago, on a day when football fans flop on the couch, the remnants of their holiday turkey still rumbling in their stomach, the game had a huge national television audience all to itself.

And what a matchup.

Flutie, the 5-foot-9 3/4-inch senior quarterback who would win the Heisman Trophy eight days later, against Goliath-like Miami, the defending national champion, led by 6-5 sophomore Kosar.

“The setting was so perfect,” says Paul Schmitt, a key part of the spectacle. “I watched the TV replay. They did not give the score of any other game in the country. There were no other games going on. That was it. And, in 10 years, I have not spoken to a person who saw that game who doesn’t remember where they were at the time.”

At the time, Schmitt was rolling to his right on the wet grass just as Flutie was doing a few feet in front of him. As the referee, it would be Schmitt’s responsibility to scan the field for penalty flags and officially declare the game over.

Jerome Brown chased Flutie out of the pocket. Willie Lee Broughton ran at him as he threw. Defensive back Darrell Fullington, in a mass of players at the 3-yard line, leaped and looked like he was going to intercept.

Then his teammate, Reggie Sutton, bumped him at the last moment. Somehow, the ball slipped through untouched. Phelan had made sure he was in the end zone. He was surprised no one was next to him. He never left his feet as he made the catch.

“The play is called Flood Tip,” Bicknell says. “We flooded the area, but nobody tipped it.”

Schmitt saw field judge Bill Lange, a few feet away from Phelan, signal a touchdown as the ball dropped into the receiver’s stomach. Running upfield, Schmitt spied an excited Bicknell.

“He’s caught there in his headsets. He’s ready to run,” Schmitt says. “He looks at me and says, ‘is it over?’ I say, ‘do you want it to be?’ He says, ‘Hell, yes.’ I say, ‘then it’s over.’ ”

With ecstatic Boston College players leaping into teammates’ arms, Schmitt calmly raised his arms.

Touchdown.

Kosar had thought Miami had won after Melvin Bratton’s 1-yard run made the score 45-41 with 28 seconds left and Boston College started from its own 20. So he was talking with friends in the stands just as Flutie was rearing back to throw.

“It was the only time in my career I kind of canceled the game before it was over,” Kosar says.

Bicknell had the same thoughts when his son, center Jack Bicknell Jr., snapped the ball. Phelan, Kelvin Martin and Troy Stradford were lined up on the right, ready to race downfield.

“I assumed at that point we had lost,” the coach said. “I’m thinking, ‘what am I going to tell these guys?’ They had just played a great game.”

Dave Heffernan knew what was happening. Caked in mud, the offensive tackle was sitting on the Miami bench, the team’s strength coach next to him.

“He turns to me and says, ‘Oh, my God, they scored.’ And I just sat there and said, ‘OK, what do I do now?’ ” Heffernan recalls. “You just heard a silence you never want to hear in your home stadium.”

In one interview, Flutie voiced bittersweet memories.

“I started smiling and laughing to myself a little bit and then started running and jumping,” he said of his immediate reaction. “I think it’s the one signature play and the thing that people most remember me by and all that. Also, in a negative aspect, it’s the only thing people remember about me. We had so many great games. From my standpoint, I’d like people to remember those things.”

How about becoming the first major college passer to throw for 10,000 yards, a milestone reached in the Miami game? Or the six games he led the Eagles to victory on the final possession? Or the linemen he drove nuts?

“Cornelius Bennett (of Alabama) was so frustrated because he just couldn’t catch him,” says Reid Oslin, Boston College’s assistant athletic director for sports publicity. “I remember (Clemson’s) William Perry, the Refrigerator, playing against Doug. They were giving him oxygen. It was like chasing a butterfly.”

Boston College won its two games after the Miami victory, including the Cotton Bowl, its first major bowl in 42 years. It finished fourth in the nation with a 10-2 record. The loss to the Eagles was the second of three in a row for Miami, which ended ranked 18th at 8-5.

“I get a headache every time I think about it,” Heffernan says. “It’s the play that never seems to go away.”

It came up again this year when Kordell Stewart’s desperation 64-yard pass to Michael Westbrook gave fifth-ranked Colorado a 27-26, last-play win at seventh-ranked Michigan on Sept. 24. It was compared to Flutie’s pass that has become the standard for such plays.

The key figures have gone many different ways in the past decade.

Miami Coach Jimmy Johnson won two Super Bowls with Dallas. Fullington played with Minnesota and Tampa Bay. Sutton spent time with New Orleans, then the Miami Hooters arena football team. Broughton is with the Los Angeles Raiders. Brown, a Pro Bowl starter in two of his six years with Philadelphia, died in a 1992 auto accident.

Bicknell, fired after the 1990 season, returns to coach Barcelona next year. Phelan was drafted by New England but suffered a knee injury and never played in the NFL. He’s a vice president with a Boston printing firm. Oslin is still the school’s sports publicist.

“I’ll tell you how crazy it is,” Oslin said this week. “I’ve gotten more calls about the 1984 game than the 1994 Miami game and that’s two nationally ranked teams on ESPN. I don’t even get as many calls about the David Gordon field goal” that beat Notre Dame on the last play in 1993.

“I consider myself very lucky to have been in a position to be part of a slice of sports history,” Phelan says. “It’s something that seems to live on and create a tremendous amount of enthusiasm.”

Bicknell thinks he knows why--a short quarterback, a receiver that couldn’t jump very high, a team that couldn’t match its opponent’s athleticism or football tradition.

“People that are not gifted physically and yet achieve great feats, I think that interests people,” Bicknell says. “I really think Miami didn’t realize how far the kid can throw the ball.”