Is the Blessed Mother a sport’s fan? Love or Hate Catholics when the going is grim, and the odds are against you, and you’ve run out of time every team has one play that may save the day. It’s called the Hail Mary pass!
I have talked to numerous people who are skeptical about all this devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary, or who are even less enthusiastic about the “corrupt and fallen” Catholic Church. Then there are all the various bystanders with no faith or anti-faith, the atheists and agnostics. Little else fails to shock and dismay them as much as the Blessed Mother being used in football for the famous Hail Mary pass!
They need immediate proof and search the Internet to try to verify such wild claims. Jaws drop as they see our American culture dependent on the Blessed Mother to work a miracle for whatever team prays to her intercession for victory in the last seconds of game time with the famous Hail Mary pass.
The Hail Mary pass is most often used as a last hope play and a last resort against all odds when there are a couple of seconds left on the game clock, the team is far away from making a touchdown, they are in the fourth down and they face sudden death if the play fails. Game over, game lost.
The play typically involves lining up all the possible receivers on one side of the field and sending them into the end zone for one last long pass. The defending team then has to match up all its pass defenders for every receiver. What happens is a lot of people end up in the end zone with the game football sailing through the air. There are so many players in a small confined area that nobody knows what is going to happen.
It is a tense moment of excitement while the crowds hold their breath waiting for the winner. Often times the football isn’t just caught but it bounces off of player’s hands in the end zone. Someone may eventually grab it but often within a “dog pile” of players who are then pulled off the pile in a last moment of suspense to see which team has the ball.
The offense uses the Hail Mary with the hope that one of two things will happen. First, one of the receivers will luckily catch the football for a touchdown, or second, that one of the defenders will foul a receiver and the ball will be spotted on the one yard line. If a receiver is fouled and there is no more time on the game clock the game cannot end on a penalty which would give the offense one more play to go one yard into the end zone for a touch down or sometimes even put them in field goal range for a winning kick.
The term Hail Mary Pass was instantly iconized by the Dallas Cowboy’s quarterback Roger Staubach in 1975 in an NFL playoff game against the Minnesota Vikings. Staubach, a Catholic, credited his Hail Mary prayer to the successful play on National TV and the Blessed Mother’s Hail Mary Pass has been in football ever since. Catholic or not everyone who knows football knows the Hail Mary play. It is the last hope for victory for the offense and it is a panic of threatening doom by the defense.
Football players may not have Rosary beads to pray the Rosary but when they are on the field they practice the Hail Mary pass!
Before the famous Hail Mary pass praying for the Blessed Mother’s intercession was also popularize by Notre Dame’s coach, Vince Lombardi. His prayer with his team before a game was: “Our Lady of Victory, Pray for Us!”
Mary answers all our prayers and all our needs, even in sports and football!
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