Extra! Extra!

Sports fans have seen “special edition” pages pop out of the stands at the end of Super Bowls or World Series.

The headlines are big and bold and proclaim championships such as “Kansas City wins Super Bowl” or “Yankees reign.” Fans proudly display them for TV cameras as they celebrate, often leaving viewers at home wondering “How did those newspapers print them so quickly?”

But the ink on those pages had long since dried by the time they emerged at the start of those championship celebrations.

Plans for those pages go into action nearly from the moment those teams qualify for their respective title games.

By Rick Lubbers rlubbers@duluthnews.com

The News Tribune has produced several of these title pages in recent years — some of which have been displayed by cheering Northland sports fans. Others have not seen the light of day.

Just over 10 years ago, the News Tribune optimistically printed a bundle of championship pages prior to the 2011 NCAA Division I men’s hockey national title game and Jimmy Bellamy, at the time a web guru for the News Tribune, smuggled them into Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul while a spectator for the championship game against the Michigan Wolverines.

The headline simply read “National Champs!” and the page featured a large celebration picture taken earlier that season.

Bellamy’s instructions were simple: If the Bulldogs win, distribute the pages as quickly as you can. If the Bulldogs lose, keep them hidden and make sure to toss them into the recycling.

“Before the start of the final, I met (DNT sports reporter) Rick Weegman in the concourse at the X where he handed me the wrapped stacks of front pages,” Bellamy recounted recently. “I put them under my and my brother Josh’s third-row seats and refused to peek out of fear of jinxing it.”

The close game was deadlocked at 2-all after regulation. The outcome of the game — and the fate of those championship pages — was very much in doubt. But UMD’s Kyle Schmidt scored in overtime to boost the Bulldogs to a 3-2 OT victory and the wild celebration of the school’s first Division I men’s hockey championship was under way.

“When the OT-winning goal was scored on the opposite end, I turned around and hugged my brother,” Bellamy said. “He told me to start handing out the front pages. I hurriedly grabbed small stacks, ran up and down the stairs and gave them to the first person in each row while instructing them to take one and pass it down. In the fog of it all, News Tribune reporter and longtime UMD hockey season ticket holder John Myers and I spotted each other and embraced like we had been on the ice to set up the winning goal.”

Several Bulldog fans waved their new collector’s items around for ESPN’s cameras, and highlight reels of that thrilling victory still sport images of those title pages.

“Seeing images of the front pages in highlights of the postgame celebration on ESPN and photos on the Sunday sports page was a thrill,” Bellamy said. u