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The alley-oop is an
The alley-oop is an American football
American football (referred to simply as football in the United States and Canada), also known as gridiron, is a team sport played by two teams of eleven players on a rectangular field with goalposts at each end. The offense, the team with ...
play in which the quarterback
The quarterback (commonly abbreviated "QB"), colloquially known as the "signal caller", is a position in gridiron football. Quarterbacks are members of the offensive platoon and mostly line up directly behind the offensive line. In modern Ame ...
throws the ball high into the air, and another player jumps up and catches it. The play was developed in 1957 by San Francisco 49ers
The San Francisco 49ers (also written as the San Francisco Forty-Niners) are a professional American football team based in the San Francisco Bay Area. The 49ers compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the league's National ...
players Y. A. Tittle and R. C. Owens. The play was named after V. T. Hamlin's comic strip
A comic strip is a sequence of drawings, often cartoons, arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often serialized, with text in balloons and captions. Traditionally, throughout the 20th and into the 21st ...
character Alley Oop
''Alley Oop'' is a syndicated comic strip created December 5, 1932, by American cartoonist V. T. Hamlin, who wrote and drew the strip through four decades for Newspaper Enterprise Association. Hamlin introduced a cast of colorful characters an ...
; Owens himself was also known as "Alley Oop". It was highly successful when utilized due to Owens' 6 ft 3 in height and ability to out-leap defenders.
Tittle said of the play: "With the Alley-Oop now considered to be a legitimate weapon, the only defense against it was a defensive back who could outleap R.C. – and at that time, no such animal existed in the NFL."
According to the ''Oxford English Dictionary
The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' (''OED'') is the first and foundational historical dictionary of the English language, published by Oxford University Press (OUP). It traces the historical development of the English language, providing a com ...
'', the usage of the term in football predates its usage in basketball by two years, with the football counterpart also inspiring the play in basketball.
See also
*Alley-oop (basketball)
An alley-oop in basketball is an offensive play in which one player throws the ball near the basket to a teammate who jumps, catches the ball in mid-air and dunks or lays it in before touching the ground.
The alley-oop combines elements of team ...
* Hail Mary pass
A Hail Mary pass is a very long forward pass in American football, typically made in desperation, with an exceptionally small chance of achieving a completion. Due to the difficulty of a completion with this pass, it makes reference to the Catho ...
References
American football plays {{Americanfootball-stub