Stories get old, but legends grow, and sometime around the turn of the century, The Play passed from the former to the latter.

The mere fact that any self-respecting sports addict knows that such a mundane term as The Play refers to the five-lateral craziness that resulted in the winning touchdown in California’s 25-20 victory over Stanford on Nov. 20, 1982 demonstrates its place in sports history.

The weird thing, though, is that 15 or 20 years ago, many pseudo-sports-junkies might have guessed The Play referred to a work by Shakespeare.

Joe Starkey, whose broadcast description of The Play has brought him as close to immortality as a sportscaster can get, and Kevin Moen, the Cal player who punctuated his winning touchdown by splattering a Stanford trombone player with the ball, both say The Play and their part in it are far more famous now than they were in the years immediately after it happened.

We can thank the Internet and the proliferation of non-competition sports programs (the scientific-sounding name I have arbitrarily assigned to those programs that have a bunch of people talking about sports with no actual competition taking place) for the increasing fame of The Play.

The non-competition sports programs’ fascination with lists of the weirdest plays or most fantastic finishes has caused The Play to be shown over and over, accompanied by consensus opinion that it is, in fact, the weirdest or silliest or funniest of most fantastic or whatever the category happens to be that day. And a video clip of The Play is all over the Internet anytime anyone wants to see it, and sometimes even when they don’t. The current generation, which learns nearly everything it knows from the Internet, is probably as familiar with The Play as those who were adults in 1982.

Starkey said he was recognized in Hong Kong this summer as the voice of The Play, and San Francisco International Airport has a shop that sells Cal and Stanford clothing, including a tall stack of T-shirts bearing Starkey’s entire description of The Play.

Moen and Gary Tyrrell, the trombone player wiped out by Moen’s celebratory spike at the end of The Play, have done hundreds of interviews on the subject since 1982, and the requests are increasing. Tyrrell now does his own interviews, though. In the days after The Play, calls that came to his Stanford dorm room were sometimes answered by his roommate, who did the entire interview pretending to be Tyrrell, with no one being disappointed.

The Play also enjoyed the perpetual self-promotion of its association with John Elway, who was denied his only chance for a bowl berth by that play, which was the final play of his college career. Elway’s refusal to talk about The Play until very recently, even while winning Super Bowls in his final two NFL seasons and then being elected to the Hall of Fame, added to its mystique.

For a long while The Play was more of an urban myth, with those who had seen it passing on the story to others, the description growing in absurdity as memory tended to glorify each moment. Errors cropped up, with most people believing that it was a tuba player who got taken out by Moen’s two-handed spike after he scored.

INTERACTIVE 25 years after The Play Where are the main players now? msnbc.com takes an in-depth look

With The Play’s renewed exposure, most have come to know that it was a trombone, not a tuba, that bore the brunt of Moen’s glee. Many know the trombonist was Tyrrell, and an indication of The Play’s rise in fame is that people have learned to spell his last name correctly in recent years.

It is that memorable crashing moment that helps plant The Play in people’s minds. Sure, the five laterals were amazing and controversial and unique, but when you ask people about their recollections of the play, many will respond with some variation of "Oh yeah, that’s when that trombone player got clobbered." When watching The Play, the informed viewers will announce as Moen lifts the ball over head after scoring, "Now watch this."

Memory is hooked to incongruent moments, and having the band involved in a football play is the height of incongruity. Having an inebriated trombone player who was not even watching the play be one of the chief characters is an inexplicable shot to the brain that cannot be washed away by time.

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