Jackson — The 1975 Lumen Christi High School team may be the most-talked about squad in school history, but not for its play on the field. They didn’t even make the playoffs.
On Sept. 5, Lumen Christi High School’s football program will celebrate the 50-year reunion of its 1975 team.
In the five decades since that team last took the field, Lumen Christi has won 14 state championships in football, the most of any high school in the state.
But this 50-year-old scar will never completely heal.
That 1975 Lumen Christi Titan football team finished the season 9-0 but didn’t qualify to make the playoffs due to an enormous oversight by the Michigan High School Athletic Association, which had implemented a playoff system that year.
For years, the state had a biased system for the football state championship that was determined on paper by the whim of coaches and newspapers.
In 1975, the Michigan High School Athletic Association decided to implement a playoffs for football and used a system it adopted from Ohio.
Here’s how it worked: The four classes (A, B, C, D) were be broken up into four geographical regions and each of those regions would advance a single team to the playoffs, creating a Final Four playoff format.
But what escaped the Michigan High School Athletic Association at the time was the simple notion that not all regions are created equal.
When the final regular season games were played and the MHSAA cranked out its playoff teams, 15 undefeated football teams were left out.
It was a public relations disaster.
“Why pass the playoffs off as ‘state championship’ games if they are actually a sham?” asked UPI sportswriter Rich Shook in 1975.
Akron Beacon Journal sports columnist Jack Patterson picked up on the playoff debacle in Michigan. The Ohio sportswriter’s Nov. 13, 1975 column had the headline, “Playoffs need reprogramming.”
Patterson wrote: “Michigan decided to stage a state football tournament for the first time this season and used Ohio’s computerized formula for determining playoff opponents. Well, the results are in and the state is in an uproar.”
Lumen Christi had good cause to feel the most aggrieved among the snubbed unbeaten teams. The teams were ranked by a point system that was determined by how many wins a team had and how many wins their opponents had. It was an unsophisticated way to measure strength of schedule.
Dearborn Divine Child, Lumen Christi and Chelsea were all undefeated at 9-0, but were all in the same region, meaning only one undefeated team could advance to the playoffs.
The playoff system didn’t just take the four teams with the most playoff points. Dearborn Divine Child had 106.22 playoff points, the highest of any Class B team. Lumen Christi had the second-most of any Class B team with 104 points. Nobody else reached 100 points in the four Class B regions.
In terms of total points, four teams in Lumen Christi’s region finished ahead of Flint Ainsworth, which had 85.33 points. Undefeated Lumen Christi and Chelsea were sidelined.
“We didn’t get beat on the field, but we did by the computer,” Lumen Christi football coach Jim Crowley told reporters after the playoff matchups were determined.
Now, 50 years later, the debate will surely be picked up again with the reunion.
Pat Dillon played on the 1975 Lumen Christi team. Today, he talks about camaraderie and brotherhood among those teammates. He put the reunion together and estimates that as many as 28 of the 35 players will come back for the reunion, some as far as Texas, Washington and California.
In the final week of that 1975 season, many Lumen Christi players and fans travelled to Eastern Michigan’s Rynearson Stadium. That’s where Dearborn Divine Child, ranked No. 1 in Class B, was playing Birmingham Brother Rice, which was ranked No. 1 in Class A, in their final regular season game. Both teams were undefeated. Birmingham Brother Rice had a 22-game winning streak, and a victory over Dearborn Divine Child would have catapulted Lumen Christi into the playoffs.
But when Dearborn Divine Child’s Jim Kempinski picked up a fumble and returned in seven yards for the game’s only touchdown, the Titans’ fate was sealed.
Dillon remembers leaving that game numb as reality hit.
“We are not going to practice again,” Dillon realized. Over the next decades, Dillon’s life of coaching youth sports teams led him back to EMU’s football stadium more than 20 times. That numb feeling returned every time.
The Jackson Citizen Patriot claimed in 1975 that Lumen Christi was a state champion, citing its No. 1 ranking in the final United Press International poll. That poll was released before the playoffs began.
“Christi was voted the state Class B champs in the United Press International coaches poll,” the newspaper wrote. But Titan fans knew it was an empty consolation prize and that the real state championship would be determined on the field and their team was not invited.
A.J. Duffy was a Lumen Christi student trainer with the 1975 team. He traveled with the team and was at practices and games.
“Yes, the sting is still there but upon reflection, I see the 1975 season as a lesson on life,” Duffy says now. “There will be times in your life when you give it your best, this has happened to me many times, and for whatever reason things do not go your way.”
The Lumen Christi football program is like a time capsule.
The school has only had two head football coaches since it started in 1968. Crowley was a Hall of Fame coach who was shot to death in a botched robbery outside his home in January 1980, less than two months after winning his second championship.
Current Titan head coach Herb Brogan, who has won 12 state championships, was an assistant coach on the 1975 team. Now, as head coach, he has Crowley’s son Jamie as an assistant coach.
Dillon acknowledges that the 1975 team doesn’t have a banner hanging in the school gymnasium like the other 14 championship teams that have followed.
“What we didn’t have is that banner from the rafters,” Dillon said. “That 1975 team was a catalyst, it propelled the future of Lumen Christi football. We lost the battle, we might have won the war to elevate the Lumen Christi football program. There was not anyone who doubted we could have been the best team in the state.”
The Michigan High School Athletic Association voted in 1977 to expand the football playoffs from 16 to 32 teams.
That year, Lumen Christi won its first state championship.
Tom Gantert is a contributing writer for Michigan Enjoyer.
