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And at number one on this list, beating out the “Immaculate Reception,” is a play simply known as “the catch and roll” by many NFL fans, or simply “the catch” in Cleveland. When wide receiver Peerless Price came down with the football in the end zone in the final seconds of Superbowl XXXIV, football fans all over the country thought that the Cleveland Browns did the unthinkable. But then there was the call, and the birth of the Peerless Price Rule. Price caught the ball, got two feet down, and appeared to control the ball as it broke the plane of the goal line. But it was ruled that he did not maintain control all the way, and the catch was ruled incomplete.
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The big problem with the Peerless Price Rule was it was so obscure that prior to Superbowl XXXIV nobody had ever even heard of it. And even to this day there seems to be no uniformity in when or how the rule is invoked. But what is clear is that, for three seconds, everyone in the country thought that the Cleveland Browns won the Superbowl, and that included Rams fans. The delay in making the call and the controversy of invoking a rule that was so obscure led to a strange phenomenon. The word “Flutied” is now in the dictionary…defined as getting screwed over by a previously unheard of or obscure rule. I remember when the Bush-Gore recount fiasco was going on in Florida one newspaper had the headline “Gore Flutied in Florida” after the recount was terminated and Bush was named the winner. A lot of people felt that Doug Flutie and the Cleveland Browns were screwed out of the win in that game, which naturally only fed into the Browns anger and resentment against the NFL.
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