As the hype surrounding the playoff game between Dallas and Minnesota heats up much of the talk has centered on 1975.

That’s the year the 10-4 Cowboys came to Metropolitan Stadium to face the 12-2 Vikings in the NFC Divisional playoffs. The Cowboys won the game when Drew Pearson caught Roger Staubach’s “Hail Mary” pass with less than a minute remaining.

The controversy stems from whether or not Pearson pushed off on Minnesota defensive back Nate Wright. As a born and bred Minnesotan I was brought up to believe Pearson did interfere, though in truth I was only about 10 months old at the time.

I have little emotional attachment to the event outside of it involving the team I grew up cheering for and a team I grew up … not cheering for. But that’s not the case for many fans who were a few years older than I was at the time.

The controversy remains entertaining even nearly 35 years later and the Minneapolis Star Tribune’s Jim Souhan wrote an interesting account of Pearson’s point of view on the play. Even more entertaining was an interview Pearson did with KFAN-AM’s Dan Barreiro Thursday afternoon. Pearson maintains there was incidental contact but no blatant push.

Former Viking running back Chuck Foreman, who called into the radio station while Barreiro was talking with Pearson, of course believes there was interference on the play.

The resulting conversation was one of the most entertaining interviews I have heard on the radio in quite awhile. Kudos to Barreiro, who knew enough to allow himself to be little more than a side player in the discussion, as Foreman and Pearson tweak each other and banter through a 20-minute or so segment.

And kudos to both players, both of whom obviously still feel very strongly about their team’s points of view from that game but who discussed the issue on the air with a great deal of humor and respect.

Whether the penalty should have been called or not to me is questionable (though Sid Hartman, the Star Tribune’s octogenarian sports reporter who attended the game, leaves no doubt where he stands on the call). I’ve looked at a couple angles on different YouTube videos and I can’t tell if Pearson pushes or if Wright just gets tangled up. And in truth, the Vikings had home field advantage and supposedly their best team ever. At the end of the day, they should have taken care of business earlier and not allowed the game to come down to an official’s call (or non-call).

But the Hail Mary play certainly remains one of the all-time dramatic plays in NFL playoff history. From there the Cowboys went on a terrific run of seasons. The Vikings went to one more Super Bowl a couple years later but then started sliding as their stars aged.

Save for the 1998 NFC Championship game loss to Atlanta, I can’t think of any Vikings game that gets discussed more often. And it certainly does set the stage for an interesting rematch some 35 years later.