Alley-oop (basketball) - Origin of The Term

Origin of The Term

The term "alley-oop" is derived from the French term allez hop!, the cry of a circus acrobat about to leap. The term "Alley Oop" was first used in the 1950s by the San Francisco 49ers of the NFL to describe a high arcing pass to wide receiver R.C. Owens, who would outleap smaller cornerbacks for touchdown receptions ("The Catch", the famous Dwight Clark touchdown reception from Joe Montana by which the 49ers gained entry into their first Super Bowl, was also an "Alley Oop" pass) and later became more well-known from its use in basketball.

Read more about this topic:  Alley-oop (basketball)

Famous quotes containing the words origin of the, origin of, origin and/or term:

    The essence of morality is a questioning about morality; and the decisive move of human life is to use ceaselessly all light to look for the origin of the opposition between good and evil.
    Georges Bataille (1897–1962)

    The real, then, is that which, sooner or later, information and reasoning would finally result in, and which is therefore independent of the vagaries of me and you. Thus, the very origin of the conception of reality shows that this conception essentially involves the notion of a COMMUNITY, without definite limits, and capable of a definite increase of knowledge.
    Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914)

    Though I do not believe that a plant will spring up where no seed has been, I have great faith in a seed,—a, to me, equally mysterious origin for it.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    Dead drunk
    is the term I think of,
    insensible,
    neither cool nor warm,
    without a head or a foot.
    To be drunk is to be intimate with a fool.
    Anne Sexton (1928–1974)