Take a look at the newspaper page atop of this piece, the one that says the Ohio State Buckeyes are CHAMPS in January 2007. You haven’t seen it previously because the Buckeyes weren’t the champs. Despite them being heavy favorites for the BCS National Championship, Urban Meyer’s Florida Gators shellacked them. The Plain Dealer “CHAMPS” commemorative stadium section never saw the light of day. Nearly every copy of the page was trashed. How a stack of them came to be printed in the first place, and stored in a bag under a seat in the University of Phoenix stadium as the game was played on Jan. 8, 2007, is a story we’ve not told. I'm telling it today for two reasons: one, it's fun, and two, it helps illustrate how much things have changed for newspapers in the 18 years since. Ted Diadiun, columnist, Editorial Board member and retired longtime Plain Dealer staffer, is the central character of this story. Ted was the Plain Dealer reader representative at the time, writing a weekly column to explain various aspects of the newsroom, and he attended the morning news meetings where editors discussed stories they expected. Usually, some banter preceded or followed the main business of the meeting, and on a day not long before the big game, Ted launched the banter. He had been visiting his brother-in-law and noticed a framed picture of someone holding a Columbus Dispatch commemorative stadium edition trumpeting the January 2003 championship. Ted wondered if The Plain Dealer could do something similar for the January 2007 championship game, even volunteering to be the guy to circulate the editions in the stadium if Ohio State won. Ted was attending the game with his brother. Doug Clifton was editor at the time and signed off, but he warned that the editions had to disappear if the Buckeyes lost. Having them circulate if Florida won would have been terribly embarrassing. Ted said he’d protect them, and Ted’s a guy who, even 18 years later, you wouldn’t want to mess with. We knew the editions would be safe. Ted remembers 100, maybe 150 being printed. The four-page section was filled with photos from the season. I got one by charming whoever had them – maybe it was Ted – but was warned to destroy it if the team lost. Ted took them to Arizona in a plastic bag that he put under his seat. Our photographers knew to find Ted at game’s end to make sure they got pictures of smiling players with the edition. Ted’s dream was that quarterback Troy Smith, the former Glenville High standout, would be featured in the photo, centering it on Cleveland. Ted said OSU fans at the stadium were euphoric before the game, expecting the big win, and even the Florida fans who approached him said they just hoped the Gators made the game interesting. When Ted Ginn Jr., another Cleveland standout, returned the opening kickoff for a touchdown, OSU fans thought the game was in the bag, and Ted Diadiun scouted how he would get to the field to distribute the papers after the game. Then, of course, Florida took over, destroying the Buckeyes, 41-14. Ted and his brother had flown into Tucson. On the drive back, they stopped for gas, and Ted stuffed the bag of papers into a trash can by the gas pumps, figuring no one would be sifting through oil cans and other detritus for treasures. “I wasn’t going to put it anywhere where anybody could find it,” he told me. “I didn’t even save one for myself” I bore witness to a lot of this, as I had become Plain Dealer metro editor two months earlier. Ted’s memory matches mine. And I knew I was supposed to destroy my copy of the edition after the team lost, but how could I? It’s a fascinating piece of history, one that I figured might come in useful someday. That day is today. I tell you this story because the Buckeyes and Cavs have been excellent teams this season with bona fide chances at championships, leading us to discuss souvenir pages. In years past, when teams won it all, many people wanted copies of the next day’s Plain Dealer to frame or preserve. People lined up for days in 2016 to buy copies of editions with the front page treatment of the Cavs championship. These days, though, our deadlines are so early that the next day’s print edition will not reflect who won the big games. The news will be in the Extra section of the digital newspaper but not in the printed paper. With the Buckeyes, that might be a good thing. Here’s why: The Buckeyes will play for the national championship the night of Monday, Jan. 20. That’s also the date Donald Trump is inaugurated for his second term. If the Buckeyes won it all and we had the capacity to put both stories on the front page, we could not have a giant headline saying CHAMPS that you could frame and celebrated for decades. We’d have to play both stories big, dividing the attention. Because of our early deadlines, though, Trump will play big on Tuesday’s edition, and our big front page treatment of an OSU championship would come Wednesday. I talked to Skip Hall, who oversees design of the paper, and we’ve agreed to make sure that the Wednesday front page would be worthy of framing. Whether it would say champs, champions, the best or something else, it would convey the big moment and be a keeper. (It would have been fun to say Ohio State dethrones Michigan as national champion, but that’s too many words.) We might even make the front section a four-page commemorative edition, like those Ted had under his seat all those years ago, filled with photos from the game. We will have a similar approach if the red-hot Cavaliers win the championship later this year. I’m at cquinn@cleveland.com Thanks for reading. | 