Since the Bay Area does not otherwise acknowledge college football as a national industry, it stands foursquare behind the notion that The Play is the sport's single greatest moment.

And hey, we invented the Internet, so you have to trust us on this.

But the story of The Play, from the John Elway pass of fourth-and-17 that made Mark Harmon's seemingly game-winning field goal possible, to Kevin Moen's end zone collision with Gary Tyrrell, has been told down to the last detail so many times that to find a relatively untrampled piece of Berkeley's Memorial Stadium is nearly impossible.

Well, here it is. The officials' dressing room, where Stanford coach Paul Wiggin had the moment of a coach's lifetime, but was too flummoxed by events to close the deal.

Like everyone else, Wiggin watched victory evaporate in the dust of the five-lateral kickoff return that Cal coach Joe Kapp called "Grabass'' when the team practiced it during the season as an end-of-workout hoot.

But unlike everyone else, Wiggin had the presence of mind to run after referee Charles Moffitt, and stay so close to him that the door to the officials' room couldn't close until after Wiggin had gotten in.

And as a personal aside, I followed Wiggin closely enough to get in right on his heels. I was young and spry then.

Wiggin had a hundred questions he could have asked ... the legality of each of the laterals ... the fact that the Stanford players were on the field during the play ... the fact that they claimed they heard a whistle ... the fact that the Stanford Band had taken over the southwest corner of the field as Moen steamed to glory ... the fact that, well, how could this be, damn it?

But when the moment came, he managed only a quick, "What the hell was that?'' and the stammered start to a second question before he stopped, trying to collect his stampeding thoughts.

And in that moment, Moffitt gently eased him out the door with the help of Stanford athletics director Andy Geiger. He never got the explanations he thought Moffitt would provide, let alone an overturned decision that would have given the game to Stanford and caused the stadium to be burned to the ground.

And if you've ever seen concrete burn, you know how serious that can be.

It took Wiggin years to get over that loss; he said at the time, "This will have ramifications far beyond today,'' and he was right. He was fired the next year. Kapp lasted three years after that despite having no more winning seasons. Elway said the play "ruined'' his college career, and didn't back off that remark for years afterward.

Even a decade later, Wiggin admitted there were so many questions he wanted Moffitt to answer he couldn't get them out.

"I was flabbergasted," he said. "I wanted to know how they could be sure of anything that happened. I wanted to know about the whistle my players said they heard. But it was all going so fast, and then I was out of there. I mean, what could you do?"

In a more global sense, it was the Bay Area's single most noteworthy contribution to the fabric of college football. It is the single most bizarre moment in the game's history, even more electrifying than Flutie-Phelan, any of the Florida State missed field goals of the past decade or so, or even SMU's program being stripped down for the parts and rendered all but inert by years of earnest cheating.

And Paul Wiggin had a chance to get his two cents in, in ways that even Joe Paterno never could, and missed his chance. It took him years to forget that, too.

Ray Ratto is a columnist with the San Francisco Chronicle and a regular contributor to ESPN.com