Talk:The Play (American football)

message: Just a question about the use of plurals in this article: because some of the laterals should have been ruled as illegal forward passes. Another dispute is whether Cal ball carriers were tackled before they threw those passes. 
It is my understanding that the Stanford players only argued one instance of a tackle before a pass. Moreover, i think only one of the lateral passes was argued as being a possible illegal forward pass. See RoguePat 08:57, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Use of plurals? 

message: In the absence of any evidence of "The Play" referring to anything other than the subject of this article in national media, I am reverting 129.15.76.123's changes. Melchoir 23:42, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Oklahoma-Texas?? 

message: I think that the word that was censored in the paragraph should be not censored.  I just need to know the word. Baseracer 00:26, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree, however the source we have is censored. But please, do remove the (word removed) part! :) --Falcorian (talk) 03:33, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Language 

message: Calling other similar plays as "inspired" by The Play sounds a bit off to me. The Play is not something anyone can hope to purposefully duplicate. "Similar Plays" or something like that would be more appropriate? 131.107.0.73 19:51, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Inspiration? 

message: Just a little thing. The article saying that Cal "presumably" declined should just say they declined, because accepting would have led to the kickoff being replayed with something like a 10 yard penalty, so the penalty was obviously declined--Puckeater8 00:54, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Too many men 

message: The copy and paste of the play by play call is a copyvio and has been removed. Radio and TV sports telecasts are copyrighted, use a short key quotation and self written prose to make the point instead. --Dual Freq 19:42, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Play by Play removed 

message: Controversy section is partisan, especially paragraph reading, "The video evidence is somewhat more definitive . . . . may have gone straight sideways."  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.188.92.37 (talk) 02:50, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  POV + need source  

message: In the last revision I edited, I found duplicate named references, i.e. references sharing the same name, but not having the same content. Please check them, as I am not able to fix them automatically :) 
* "SIstory" :
**   
**   
DumZiBoT (talk) 12:35, 10 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bot report : Found duplicate references ! 

message: I have removed the bolded text below:
: With Cal leading 19-17 late in the fourth quarter, quarterback John Elway and the Cardinal overcame a 4th-and-17 on their own 13-yard line with a 29-yard completion, then managed to get the ball within field goal range for placekicker Mark Harmon. Elway called a timeout with 8 seconds left on the clock. (As discussed below, Elway continues to complain about the officiating on The Play. He has failed, however, to acknowledge what the Stanford television broadcasters noted immediately upon the alleged 4th-and-17 completion: Stanford's receiver had run out of bounds before reentering the field and catching Elway's desperation pass. The pass thus should have been ruled incomplete and the ball awarded to Cal on the change of possession, and Cal would have run out the clock.) Had Elway realized there was plenty of time to let the clock run down to about 3-5 seconds then call a timeout and, a kickoff following a successful field goal may have never been necessary (the field-goal play would have used up the remaining time).
It was removed for the following reasons: POV/charged, way too long for parentheses, makes the rest of the paragraph harder to understand, and is unreferenced (not even mentioning the receiver's name).  If you can find a reference to this, it would be better to be rewritten and added to the Controversy section.  --Fo0bar (talk) 04:04, 19 October 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I think that sentence or two can be rephrased, it is an important side light to the situation.  --Rocksanddirt (talk) 18:05, 28 October 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Previous play text removal 

message: Two different names are given for the Trombonist who gets run over at the end:
"unaware trombone player Donovan Wackman"
and
"Gary Tyrrell, the Stanford trombonist who was run over by Moen"
So, Which was it?
65.122.250.18 (talk) 23:24, 8 July 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Who was it? 

message: The entry says: "A few days later, blue and gold t-shirts depicting the play with Xs and Os (much like a coach's diagram) complete with squiggly lines for the laterals, appeared in the Cal bookstore and throughout the Bay Area."  That is incorrect.  Blue versions of the shirt appeared in the bookstore years later.  The original shirts were goldenrod and sold by Alpha Sigma Phi fraternity in Berkeley.  I still have mine.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.191.72.138 (talk) 05:29, 24 November 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Aftermath 

message: Should something be added to the effect that if, after the last Stanford offensive play before the FG, while John Elway watched the clock tick down before calling time out, he had been a bit smarter and waited until 0:04 instead of calling the timeout at 0:08, this page wouldn't even be here? 68.5.176.101 (talk) 05:00, 18 February 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  John Elway 

message: The Situation section states: "the Stanford band, all 144 members, had run out past the south end zone". This seems needlessly specific, and probably inaccurate. From the videos, it looks like a lot of them were still in the end zone, most famously the trombonist. And they don't appear to be running.  Spiel496 (talk) 20:27, 15 June 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Entire Band ran past endzone? 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just added archive links to  on The Play (Stanford vs. California). Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add  after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add  to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/20080213162117/http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com:80/football/college/news/2002/11/21/the_play/ to http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/football/college/news/2002/11/21/the_play/
When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true to let others know.
Cheers.—cyberbot IITalk to my owner:Online 15:41, 10 January 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links modified 

message: I find "California was denied the opportunity to kick the extra point."  This isn't the NFL,  where the option to try that extra point had to be provided even when the game outcome wouldn't be affected. (Some NFL tiebreakers use points for and points against.) Carlm0404 (talk) 08:13, 18 December 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  What's the meaning of this? 

message: Gilbert was signed to the Buffalo Bills the four straight years they went to the Super Bowl (the 1990-93 seasons; 1991-94 Super Bowls). But he didn't play AT ALL in the 1991 and 1992 seasons, and seems to have made only one brief appearance in one game in 1993. (Not sure how many snaps he took in that game, but he neither threw nor ran the ball.) Most of those three years he was listed as "inactive" - didn't suit up for the game. He didn't play AT ALL in any of their postseasons - listed as inactive for most of those, too. He did, in fact, play for the 1994 San Diego Chargers, including in the postseason. 96.242.164.80 (talk) 21:19, 15 February 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Misleading to say Gale Gilbert was a member of 5 straight Super Bowl teams