Today is the commemoration of the greatest end to a football game EVER which happened 40 years ago – on Nov. 23, 1984.

It wasn’t the kick in the Cal-Stanford game – that was in 1982. It wasn’t Boston College’s Flutie to Phelan – even though it occurred on the same day.

I’m talking about the 1984 Valley of the Sun Bowl – a junior college bowl game in Phoenix, Ariz., between Phoenix College and Ricks College of Idaho.

I know because I was there as Phoenix College’s 25-year-old sports information director.

The situation was such that 999,999,999 times out of a billion, Phoenix College loses the game. It was the one freaky time where PC won.

I won’t bore you with the whole game, just the final few minutes and in particular the last 21 seconds.

Ricks College came in the No. 2-ranked and had aspirations for a national junior college championship. Phoenix was looking for the upset.

With Ricks ahead 16-15, Phoenix made a stop on fourth-and-short and quickly moved into field goal range. However, the field goal was unsuccessful and Ricks took over with 21 seconds to play.

An unsportsmanlike conduct penalty on the celebration moved Ricks back to its own 14. And to make thinks look more bleak, Phoenix had only two time outs remaining.

So on first down, Ricks takes a knee and PC calls its second time out, bringing about second and 14 from the Ricks 10 with 15 seconds left.

On second down, Ricks takes another knee and Phoenix burns its final time out for a third and 17 from the Ricks 7 with 10 seconds left.

Then on third down, it looked as though Rick had won the game as it downed the ball again. But a Ricks player was called for a personal foul face mask penalty after the play which stopped the clock.

It was now fourth and 20 from the Ricks 2 with four seconds left.

Ricks then put its punt team into the game.

But Phoenix College’s Mike Crouch broke through the line and blocked the punt out of the end zone for a safety giving Phoenix a 17-16 lead with two seconds to play.

Then came a massive celebration in which Phoenix was assessed an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty. Ricks then recovered the onside kick and had one last chance to win. But Jim Brady intercepted Todd Van Brocklin’s pass to end the game.

If you weren’t in attendance at the game or watched it on the Church of Jesus Christ for Latter Day Saints satellite network (Ricks was an LDS school), you wouldn’t have known about it until now.

Unfortunately, neither school no longer fields a football team. Ricks became a four-year school in 1994 and changed its name to BYU-Idaho. It then canceled its entire athletic program.

Phoenix and all of the other Arizona schools that had a football program ended their teams in 2018.

But the memory of that that game will never leave me. Especially when I hear what was playing on the radio as I left the stadium that night.

“Magic” by the Cars. Oh-oh, it was magic.