John U. Bacon

Most sports fans are happy just to see their team make the playoffs. But Detroit Red Wings fans have been able to take that for granted for a record 22 straight seasons. The last time the Red Wings didn’t make the playoffs, not one current NHL player was in the league. Some of the current Red Wings weren’t born. Nine current franchises weren’t yet created.

But the record seemed doomed to be broken this season.

To start, there almost wasn’t a season at all, thanks to the contract dispute between the players and the owners, who both thought the other side was making too much money.  And, of course, both sides were right – setting up a game of chicken between self-destructive lunatics.

When a federal mediator finally brought them to their senses in January, they had just enough time left to play a 48-game schedule – which actually seemed about right. But the Red Wings came out flat-footed, falling so far behind they had to win their last four games just to sneak into the seventh of eight playoff spots.

In the first round, they faced the Ducks of Anaheim – formerly the Mighty Ducks – which is already an affront to everything that is holy about hockey.

Amazingly, the Red Wings beat them in seven games – quite an upset. Their reward: an even tougher opponent, the top-seeded Chicago Blackhawks, who earned at least one point in their first 24 games, which is a record.

But for hardcore hockey fans – and really, are there any other kind? – this series was a reward.

The Red Wings and Blackhawks are two of the NHL’s Original Six teams. What are those? Until 1967, the NHL consisted only of Boston and New York, Montreal and Toronto, and Detroit and Chicago. All six have great fans who understand how offsides works, and classic uniforms designed not by Disney focus groups working with computer graphics, but actual human beings working with sewing machines.

Whatever happened between Detroit and Chicago, it was going to be a playoff series to savor. But probably nobody expected the Red Wings to go up three games to one, with three chances to topple the top team in hockey.

And after that start, probably nobody expected the Red Wings to drop games five and six, either, to set up a winner-take-all game seven Wednesday night.

With the score tied, 1-1, the two teams went into a frenzy like no other sport can create. When two baseball teams head to the ninth inning, the game stalls with a parade of relief pitchers and pinch hitters. In football, the players start running out of bounds and intentionally throwing passes into the stands. And in basketball – please don’t get me started here – we get time-outs, intentional fouls, and a free throw contest. The last two minutes can take 20.

But hockey is the only sport that speeds up as the game winds down. And that’s what happened Wednesday night, with the teams battling for their lives. As Willy Wonka said, “The suspense is terrible. I hope it lasts.”

When the seventh game of a hockey playoff series goes into overtime, it’s as close to actual “sudden death” as sports can get. When you’re losing by a few goals, you might not like it, but you know what’s coming. But in overtime, there’s no preparing for the sudden ecstasy – or agony.

And that’s why, when Chicago’s Brent Seabrook fired a lucky wrist shot off a Red Wings’ skate and into the net, it unleashed a torrent of endorphins in the heads of a few million Chicago fans – and a flood of equally powerful chemicals, going the other direction, in the brains of Red Wing backers.

But the worst part wasn’t losing. It’s that one of the best series in recent memory was over – and now we have to watch the NBA playoffs.

Or mow our lawns – which is more exciting.

About the writer: Ann Arbor resident John U. Bacon is the author of “Bo’s Lasting Lessons” and “Three and Out: Rich Rodriguez and the Michigan Wolverines in the Crucible of College Football” – both national bestsellers. His upcoming book, “Fourth and Long: The Future of College Football,” will be published by Simon & Schuster in September 2013. You can follow him on Twitter (@Johnubacon), and at johnubacon.com.

The Chronicle relies in part on regular voluntary subscriptions to support our publication of columnists like John U. Bacon. Click this link for details: Subscribe to The Chronicle. And if you’re already supporting us, please encourage your friends, neighbors and colleagues to help support The Chronicle, too!

John U. Bacon

Well, it’s finally upon us. No, not the apocalypse – the Mayan calendar be damned – but a bona fide, Division I, college football playoff.  A committee of 12 university presidents – not coaches, or even athletic directors, but presidents – recently approved a plan to create a four-team college football playoff, the last major sport to have one.

So what if college football somehow survived without a playoff since its inception in 1869?  That’s 22 years before James B. Naismith invented the game of basketball, 34 years before the first World Series, and 51 years before the National Football League was even formed.

But yes, we need a playoff now.  Because clearly, the first 143 years of college football were pointless, meaningless and worthless – because they didn’t have a playoff.

It’s true that college football’s popularity – in attendance, TV ratings, merchandise sales, and just about any other way you want to measure it – has never been greater.  But yes, we need a playoff now.

It’s also true that in the past 40 years the game’s leaders have tacked on a bowl game for virtually every team still standing, more than tripling the number of bowl teams from 22 to 70 – which is more than half of the Division I schools currently fielding football teams.

But that wasn’t enough, so they added a 12th game, which schools use to play tomato cans like Southwest Missouri State, solely to grab another payday on the backs of unpaid players. Then they piled on conference title games, too – increasing the total games a good team could play from 11 to 14 – just two shy of the NFL’s regular season.

But we need a playoff now. Why? To take the competition out of the hands of computers and pollsters, we’re told, and settle it on the field.

So how are they going to fix that? Instead of picking two teams based on polls, strength of schedule and computerized rankings, they are going to have a selection committee pick four teams – based on polls, strength of schedule and computerized rankings. Problem solved!

So, instead of the third-ranked team complaining that it got screwed out of a title shot, the fifth-placed team will do all the whining. Another problem solved!

A four-team playoff won’t end arguments, just expand them. It won’t heighten the regular season, it will diminish it. It won’t shrink the schedule, but extend it. It won’t reduce injuries – especially concussions – but increase them.

Here are a few other sure bets: the playoff will result in more insane incentives in coaches’ already insane contracts.  Last year, LSU’s head coach Les Miles would get a $5 million bonus if his Tigers beat Alabama in the title game – which would have doubled his salary for coaching 60 minutes of football.

But LSU lost, and maybe that’s not bad thing. How many coaches, faced with a star receiver who got caught plagiarizing a paper, or a quarterback with a concussion, would have the integrity to do the right thing and bench those players – and forfeit a $5 million payday? Save your breath. We already know the answer. (And if you think football coaches already have too much power – you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.)

I’m still dumb enough to believe in amateur athletics, and yes, even the ideal of the student-athlete. I’ve met too many to dismiss the idea that it can be done, and done well. But the argument against paying players is getting pretty hard to make given the millions and millions everyone else is making on their labor. And who wants to bet these same leaders will be able to stop at a four-team playoff?

College football decided to do at least one thing with transparent honesty: sell the rights to the title game to the highest bidder. It’s that obvious, it’s that crass.

Enter NFL Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, one of the more shameless people in sports – which is saying something. He somehow got Texas taxpayers to chip in $325 million for his Jerry-World Domed Stadium. Now he’s boasting he’ll happily outbid everybody else to host the college football title game to fill his stadium – if not his insatiable ego.

After this year’s title game, I wrote, “Do not ask for whom the buck tolls. It tolls for the adults, not the kids.” I’d love to tell you I was wrong then – or I’m wrong now.

Years ago, Notre Dame athletic director Father Edmund Joyce said that sometimes college football gets so overheated, we need to throw a bucket of cold water on it.

If only.

After this playoff comes to pass, we’ll need a fire hose – but the fire will be out of control by then, and we’ll be too late.

Problem solved.

About the author: John U. Bacon is the author of the New York Times bestseller “Three and Out: Rich Rodriguez and the Michigan Wolverines in the Crucible of College Football.” He also co-authored “A Legacy of Champions,” and provided commentary for “Black and Blue: The Story of Gerald Ford, Willis Ward, and the 1934 Michigan-Georgia Tech Football Game,” which has been airing on various stations in Michigan and nationally.

The Chronicle relies in part on regular voluntary subscriptions to support our publication of columnists like John U. Bacon. Click this link for details: Subscribe to The Chronicle. And if you’re already supporting us, please encourage your friends, neighbors and colleagues to help support The Chronicle, too!