Detroit – Did you feel the ground shaking last Saturday afternoon between 1 and about 3-3:30 in the vicinity of Ford Field in downtown Detroit?

No, these weren’t after-shocks from the Lions’ miserable Thanksgiving Day performance.

These after-shocks reverberated all the way west to Novi where Detroit Catholic Central is situated.

CC is the home of a proud Shamrocks football tradition, the envy of all in the metropolitan area and beyond, dating back 75 years, to 1936 and the first of 26 Catholic League championships, to 1938 and the first of four City championships and the classic match-ups in the Goodfellows Games and Soup Bowls, to 1938 and the first state championship (and 10 more that followed between 1979 and 2009).

These same shocks rolled their way a few blocks, within walking distance of Ford Field, to the campus of Detroit Cass Tech High School, never before on the gridiron battling for a state championship.

The shocks rattled the core of each school’s football program. The Technicians, with a 14-year-old freshman at quarterback displaying the aplomb of a senior veteran, picked apart the Shamrocks secondary for five TD passes to lead Cass Tech to a 49-13 domination of Catholic Central and to the MHSAA Division 1 crown.

Cass Tech lost its season opener to powerful Farmington Hills Harrison, 43-8. Though the team recovered to go 10-2 the rest of the way and reached the finals by shutting out Warren DeLaSalle, 6-0, and holding off a very good Utica Eisenhower team, 6-3, they were considered an underdog against mighty Catholic Central, ranked No. 2 in the state.

The Shamrocks had never experienced a defeat as humiliating as this since a 40-0 shutout in 1971.

Adding insult to injury, Coach Tom Mach, for 36 years the persona of Catholic Central football and the designer of those 10 state championship teams from 1979-2009, suffered the ignominy of having his team play with a running clock – football’s version of the mercy rule, in effect when a team is 35 points or more behind in the second half. That occurred when there were 11 minutes and 13 seconds left in the game.

“Today, we just came unraveled,” said Mach. “We were great up to this point, but we met our match today. I was very proud of our team throughout the whole year.”

Jayru Campbell is a slender 6-foot-3, 170 pound kid who took over running Cass Tech’s offense when the starting QB was injured in the Harrison game.  “I kept telling him to keep his composure,” said Coach Tom Wilcher. “He matured as the season wore on.”

He also wore out Shamrocks’ defenders – the linemen who couldn’t reach him because of Cass Tech’s strong front, and the secondary who couldn’t keep track of the routes Campbell’s receivers were taking.

“I told the guys that there’s no way they are going to shut us down,” Wilcher said. “There are too many ways to pass the ball against this team.”

Campbell connected on TD passes of 46, 36, 16, 3 and 46 yards to five different receivers. He wound up with 240 yards on 13-of-20 passing.

Catholic Central’s first score came on a 47-yard pass to junior tailback Tony Darkangelo that made it a 14-7 game. The Shamrocks didn’t score again until there was 2:13 left of the running clock. Junior fullback Dave Houle plunged one yard to conclude an 11-play, 81-yard drive.

CC totaled 83 yards on the ground (led by Houle’s 57 in 11 carries) and 143 yards on 7-of-14 passing by senior Kyle Cooper. Darkangelo was his favorite target coming out of the backfield, snagging four for 97 yards.

“We are a pound-it-out type team,” Mach said. “We just weren’t able to do that today.”

You can bet there’s a lot of pounding going on at CC, getting its football program back to the level of excellence for which it has always been known.

And, maybe, for a shot at another state title next year? Against Cass Tech again?