Somewhere in the melee Alan Ameche, Baltimore's powerhouse running back, has just slammed across the goal-line to put a dramatic punctuation point on the NFL Championship game, a watershed in American football history.
Ameche bulldozes in with the winning score 8:15 into the NFL's first overtime and the Baltimore Colts capture their first championship, beating the New York Giants 23-17. Within days of the final touchdown Sports Illustrated is branding it 'The Greatest Football Game Ever Played'. And some 42 years later, most end-of-the century polls in US media echo that assessment. Not only does it mark the first use of overtime but it is also the first nationally televised broadcast. The game is played before 65,185 fans at storied Yankee Stadium, a fittingly grand setting for an event that breaks ground in so many ways.
Before this game professional football is still a niche sport in the US national consciousness, trailing baseball and college football in popularity among the team sports. It has gradually been growing its fanbase, however, and emerging from the shadows of college football.
No single game before or since this 1958 classic has created such an impact on the sport. It stirs emotions in living rooms across America, with an estimated audience of 40 million tuning in. For many viewers it is the first helping of what would become a national pastime - televised pro football on Sundays and Mondays.
'The way everything blended together - the television, where the game was played and the fact that pro football was ripe for expansion ... I consider it to be the greatest game because of its impact,' says future Dallas Cowboys head coach Tom Landry who is defensive coach for the losing Giants on this day.
Yet it could all have been lost in the ether if not for the antics of one drunken fan. The overtime is almost lost to the television audience as, with the Colts moving downfield on what would prove to be the decisive drive, exuberant fans accidentally dislodge a television power cable blanking out the broadcast to millions of viewers. Just seconds later a fan barges on to the field causing an official timeout. This gives time for the glitch to be corrected.
