Flutie’s Miracle Pass Still Amazing to Phelan After All These Years

Doug Flutie’s touchdown toss to Gerard Phelan against powerful Miami was much more than just a Hail Mary.

The ball sailed through the lights. It kept floating and floating until there almost was no room left. Gerard Phelan moved a few steps back, reached out and grabbed it, avoiding contact and pulling it into his stomach. The place erupted. Doug Flutie raised his arms in triumph.

The miracle pass. Flutie to Phelan. Boston College against Miami, November 23, 1984, in the Orange Bowl. The end to one of the most thrilling games in college history, a 47-45 triumph for B.C. over a more talented opponent.

Wrong.

This pass came two winters ago, in a Boston ballroom. At a dinner honoring Flutie, the organizers decided Phelan and he should re-create The Pass. So the former roommates, who remain close friends, went into the room. It already was filled with tables set for that night’s festivities, but the two spread apart anyway. They put about 50 yards between them, and Flutie began throwing. A pass went off Phelan’s hands and broke some glassware. The waiters glared. Flutie laughed. Let’s try it, they decided.

Later, with 1,000 onlookers in their seats, Flutie went way back, almost out a door. Phelan stood as far from him as he could. The pass soared over the top of low-hanging chandeliers. Phelan couldn’t see the ball, lost in the lights. Suddenly it appeared, and he grabbed it before a patron could get hurt. Or another glass shattered.

“He had to put the ball within a 5-yard area from 50 yards, and he did it,” Phelan says. “I was more nervous than I was in the Miami game, but it was an incredible throw, between tables, just away from the dishes. The best part, though, was I got to spike the ball afterward. Didn’t have much of an opportunity to do that in my career.”

Phelan really never doubted that the re-created pass would work. After all, he witnessed too many Flutie miracles in their days at B.C. to believe Doug had lost his touch. Even 11 years after The Pass that beat Miami and cemented Flutie’s place among college football legends, Phelan says people won’t let him forget about the play, even if he wanted to.

“I bet it is brought up to me at least twice every week,” says Phelan, who is vice president of Bowne of Boston, an international conglomerate of companies. When late November comes around, the interviews mount. He remembers once when he was sitting in a hot tub at a Colorado ski resort when a guy three stories up yelled down, “Hey, Phelan, I had a lot of money on that game, and you cost me.”

Strangers approach him all the time, just to talk about The Pass. “I’d expect it in Boston,” he says, “but, like, in New Jersey? No way. But it happens.”

Six seconds were left in the game. The teams already had combined for more than 1,200 total yards. Throwing into gusting wind and heavy rain, Flutie’s 48-yard desperation pass floated over the hands of three Miami defenders and two Boston College receivers. Flood Tip, the pattern was called.

Flutie says it was designed for him to throw to Phelan at the goal line, and that if Phelan was unable to catch the ball, he would try to tip it to two other receivers. But no one tipped it. Phelan stood alone in the end zone, and the ball came into his arms.

“I held that thing against my shoulders pads like it was my first-born,” he would say afterward. It was his 11th reception of the game, but none in his career was bigger. During the contest, Flutie had become the first college quarterback to throw for 10,000 yards.

Phelan, who played briefly for the New England Patriots before knee problems forced his retirement, on why people still remember The Pass so vividly: “It was the time of the year (Thanksgiving weekend) and the buildup over the game and the fact it was the climax of a Cinderella story,” he says. “We were the overachievers; no one gave us a chance to have the season we had, but here was this northern school against this southern football powerhouse and winning it on a play like that. Everyone roots for the underdog, and we were the all-time underdogs.”

He chuckles again. “The hooker is, it never happened in practice, not like that. It would never come clean. You’ve got all those bodies jumping up, and somebody’s got to tip it. That was the biggest surprise to me. It came clean.”