I don't want to sound like an asshole, but this whole luck conversation has sounded largely unintelligent. Firstly, in a discussion, the soundness of the subsequent arguments are based pretty much entirely on how the people arguing interpret and define what they're saying. It is almost never the case that people argue over conclusions, it's that they disagree on the premises that the conclusions are based on. That's exactly what's happened here with the definition of luck. With that being said, let's just use a scientific/statistical approach to be as objective as possible. Every event that ever takes place in the world is dictated by probability distributions. This is true on the level of quantum mechanics all the way to abstract macroscopic concepts like the stock market. I'd argue that few would disagree that luck can be defined as an event happening despite having a low probability of occurring. But low probability things happen plenty of times because of the large number of trials, in our case football plays. Therefore luck exists in football. Now with that being said, it is unlikely that despite Bud Dupree failing his assignment and being in the wrong position, the ball came right into his hands, he was able to catch it and run into the endzone without being tackled. So Bud Dupree was lucky. Bud Dupree was also skilled enough to adjust to his situation and make the play that he did.