Alley-oop (American Football) on:
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The alley-oop is an 
According to the ''
American football
American football, referred to simply as football in the United States and Canada and also known as gridiron football, is a team sport played by two teams of eleven players on a rectangular American football field, field with goalposts at e ...
play in which the quarterback
The quarterback (QB) is a position in gridiron football who are members of the offensive side of the ball and mostly line up directly behind the Lineman (football), offensive line. In modern American football, the quarterback is usually consider ...
throws the ball high into the air, and another player jumps up and catches it. Named after V. T. Hamlin's comic strip
A comic strip is a Comics, sequence of cartoons, arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often Serial (literature), serialized, with text in Speech balloon, balloons and Glossary of comics terminology#Captio ...
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 and ...
, the play was developed in 1957 by San Francisco 49ers
The San Francisco 49ers (also written as the San Francisco Forty-Niners and nicknamed the 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 ...
players R. C. Owens and Y. A. Tittle
Yelberton Abraham Tittle Jr. (October 24, 1926 – October 8, 2017) was an American professional American football, football quarterback who played in the National Football League (NFL) for the San Francisco 49ers and New York Giants; he also ...
. The play was highly successful due to Owens' 6'3" frame 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 principal historical dictionary of the English language, published by Oxford University Press (OUP), a University of Oxford publishing house. The dictionary, which published its first editio ...
'', 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) *Hail Mary pass
A Hail Mary pass is a very long forward pass in American football, typically made in desperation, with a very small chance of achieving a completion (American football), completion. Due to the difficulty of a completion with this pass, it makes r ...
References
{{Gridiron football plays American football plays