When a sports fan hears the phrase “Alley Oop,” most automatically think of the game of basketball, visualizing the lob pass near the rim to the teammate rising up in an effort to emphatically dunk the ball. Alley Oop is most closely associated with basketball, but very few are aware that the term originated in the NFL.
R.C. Owens, former wide receiver for the San Francisco 49ers, determined the name of the play that he was most known for after someone suddenly blurted the phrase in the middle of a huddle in 1957. Many believe the inspiration to give the play such a name came from a comic strip and its main character with the same title name, created by the American cartoonist V.T. Hamlin in the 1930s. Even though the name was not necessarily inspired by the cartoon, the name stuck nonetheless and has since spread to other sports and many different plays.
The original Alley Oop was executed between Owens during his rookie campaign and legendary 49ers quarterback Y.A. Tittle. The play was simple, but the QB-WR combo made it their own. Essentially, Tittle would throw the football high in the air toward the end zone and create a jump ball that Owens would leap to catch. The duo would perfect the pass, successfully completing it on close to a dozen occasions, its debut coming against the Los Angeles Rams where they executed it twice, once before halftime and another in the final seconds of the game, which turned out to be the difference in the 49ers win. The ball could be headed for a swarm of defenders, sure to be intercepted, but at the last second, Owens would appear and snag the ball out of midair, just as the play was designed.
Tittle described the play from his point of view, explaining, “The defenders, sometimes two or three of them, would be down there and (Owens) would swoop in there like a hawk and pluck it out of the air.” In simpler terms, “I just Alley-Ooped it in the air, and he jumped up and got it.”
Whether it was Tittle or John Brodie, who took over at quarterback for San Francisco when Tittle was traded to the New York Giants in 1961, Owens had special instructions for whoever threw the Oop to him: make the pass wobbly. He justified this odd request by claiming the shaky descent of the ball made it easier for him to judge the timing of his jump. Quarterbacks are always striving for the perfect spiral, making the play designed with a wobbly pass a rarity for the NFL. If there was a player that had the credentials to receive such a pass though, R.C. Owens was a prime candidate, averaging 27.6 rebounds per game as a sophomore basketball standout at the College of Idaho while standing at only 6’3” tall. As the creator of the term, Owens himself, recently inducted into the San Francisco 49ers Hall of Fame, even came to be known simply as “Alley Oop.”
The movement of the Alley Oop phrase from football to other sports, specifically basketball, and the reason the term never truly caught on in the NFL, was largely due to the instant popularity of the term “Hail Mary,” which was adopted in 1975 after a game-winning touchdown was thrown by Dallas Cowboys quarterback Roger Staubach. Hail Mary has since been known as the play where the quarterback heaves the ball to the end zone in a desperate attempt to score in the waning moments of a game.
No matter where the Alley Oop is played out, no matter what sport, there is a common foundation on which the term is based: Jumping. By throwing up a football that a receiver must leap to catch, a lob pass near the rim for an emphatic dunk, or a baseball player rising against gravity as far as they can in an effort to catch a fly ball, the Alley Oop, in all its forms, involves the art of jumping.
Although basketball may hold the current claim to the term “Alley Oop,” the credit of its origination must always lay with football and the NFL.
