September 2015 – The River City Renegade

So, who gets the sports columnist gig at the Winnipeg Free Press?

I cannot survive in a 140-character world, so here are more tweets that grew up to be too big for Twitter…

Okay, who’s next at the Freep? Paul Wiecek? Ed Tait? Paul Friesen? Some new kid on the block? Some recycled old coot on the block?

If it were up to me, I’d anoint Wiecek to replace the departing Gary Lawless as sports columnist at the Winnipeg Free Press. He’s got the stones for the job. He’s cheeky, irreverent, a top-drawer scribe and not afraid to get in your face. Question is: Is he content where he is, covering curling, horse racing and the Winnipeg Blue Bombers?

The Freep wouldn’t go wrong with Tait. I’m a huge fan. Terrific reporter, solid writer. I’m not convinced he has the right temperment for that full-time gig, though. Eddie is such a nice guy. He’s Mike Riley and Brian Dobie nice. A columnist has to have a bit of bad-ass in him, and that ain’t my boy Eddie. But he’d still do a boffo job.

Poaching Paul Friesen from the Winnipeg Sun would be an interesting gambit. He’s got some bad-ass. Trouble is, given that the Freep is in bed with the Winnipeg Jets, it wouldn’t be a good fit. Paul is no True North toady.

Another option would be to bring in a fresh face. Seems to me the Freep—and the Sun, for that matter—could use some new blood. It’s been too much same old, same old for too long.

Whomever, I just hope the newbe spends more time writing than talking on TV/radio.

As much as I used him as a whipping boy, I hope the TSN gig works out for Gary Lawless. He joins a long list of newspaper jock sniffers—Dave Naylor, Stephen Brunt, Damien Cox, Jeff Blair, etc.—who’ve gone over the wall to the other side, and it brings to mind something that longtime jock columnist Tony Kornheiser once wrote about sports scribes appearing on TV: “There’s a reason print journalists work in print. It’s because they look like bridge trolls. They have bags under their eyes the size of hero sandwiches. They wear lounge-lizard suits and shiny ties spotted with marinara stains. They have $8 haircuts and foam flecks form at the corners of their mouths as they stare creepily into the camera. Their pallor suggests they’ve just climbed out of a sarcophagus. And these are the women! The men are unspeakable.”

That’s big of the Canadian Football League to admit one of its skunk shirts screwed up royally on Friday night, perhaps costing the Winnipeg Blue Bombers a victory over the Calgary Stampeders. In offering a mea culpa, the league assures us that the official in question will be “disciplined in accordance with the gravity of the situation.” Given that the guy’s basically a volunteer, that likely means he’ll be sent to his room without dinner.

I see where the disgraced Pete Rose got together with Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred for a chin-wag last week. Rose, the all-time hits leader, met with the commish to plead his case for the lifting of his lifetime ban for gambling while skipper of the Cincinnati Reds. Apparently, Manfred will make a decision before the year’s out. Good grief, why does it take four months to say no?

I enjoy watching the Toronto Blue Jays. Exciting team. High likeability quotient. But if I don’t root, root, root for the home team once the Major League Baseball post-season commences, that doesn’t make me unCanadian. I’m a St. Louis Cardinals fan. If my Redbirds were to meet the Toronto Nine in the World Series, color me Cardinals red.

Anyone looking for proof that Michael Sam is all messed up between the ears? Give a listen to his recent gum-flap with host Dan Patrick on the aptly named Dan Patrick Show. Among other things, the first openly gay man to play professional football tells Patrick that he “never really wanted to go to the CFL” and that those inconsiderate Montreal Alouettes had the bad manners to employ a defensive system unlike anything he’d seen. The Als didn’t do it the St. Louis Rams way, don’t you know. Or the Dallas Cowboys way. Yo, Mikey! That might have something to do with the fact there are 12 men on the field, not 11. Whatever, rather than learn and adapt, Sam quit the Als. Not once, but twice. And now he’s delusional enough to believe an NFL outfit will make room for him on its roster next year. Ya, and I’ll be the Dallas Cowboys head cheerleader. Time to go, Mikey. Your 15 minutes have expired.

Actually, I’m not sure which is stronger evidence that Michael Sam is living in a fantasy world, the fact he’s convinced he can still play in the National Football League or his stated goal of getting into broadcasting. A times during his tete-a-tete with Dan Patrick, I wasn’t convinced that English is his first language.

Have they already presented the Calder Trophy to Connor McDavid, or will they actually make him play some games before handing him the silverware as top freshman in the National Hockey League? I can’t recall the hype being this frenzied for Sidney Crosby, perhaps because Sid the Kid went to Pittsburgh whereas McDavid is in hockey’s heartland, Canada.

I’m old enough to remember Yogi Berra, the Hall of Fame baseball player who died last week. Yogi, of course, is known as much, if not more, for what he said as for what he did on the ball field with the New York Yankees. Among the many classic Yogi quotes, my favorite is this gem: “Home openers are always exciting, whether they’re at home or on the road.”

Patti Dawn Swansson has been writing about Winnipeg sports for more than 40 years, longer than any living being. Do not, however, assume that to mean she harbors a wealth of sports knowledge or that she’s a jock journalist of award-winning loft. It simply means she is old and comfortable at a keyboard (although arthritic fingers sometimes make typing a bit of a chore) and she apparently doesn’t know when to quit. Or she can’t quit.
She is most proud of her Q Award, presented to her in 2012 for her scribblings about the LGBT community in Victoria, B.C., and her induction into the Manitoba Sportswriters & Sportscasters Association Media Roll of Honour.

Winnipeg Blue Bombers: It’s maddening that these guys don’t seem to get mad

I’m pretty sure the Irish in Mike O’Shea wanted to kick something on Friday night. Maybe even kick a some one. Like a guy wearing a black-and-white striped shirt.

I mean, if not for an official with an itchy flag finger, O’Shea’s Winnipeg Blue Bombers actually might have beaten no less a formidable foe than the Calgary Stampeders at Football Follies Field in Fort Garry. Alas, thoughts of victory were vanquished and a 25-23 loss means the local lads continue to swim against the stream, only now the current is much stronger and considerably faster.

So there stood O’Shea after the fact on Friday, facing the Fourth Estate chorus, and I fully expected his gab session with news scavengers to go something like this: Tick…tick…tick…KABOOM!

No way this guy was going to hold it together. Not Mike O’Shea. Not the guy who, as a menacing and marauding middle linebacker and special teams operative, opened a big, ol’ can of whup-ass on every play and in every game of his 16-season Canadian Football League career with the Toronto Argonauts and Hamilton Tiger-Cats. His Bombers had just been beaten, in part due to a curious illegal procedure call by a line judge, and everyone from River City to the CFL ivory tower in the Republic of Tranna was going to hear about it.

Seriously. The Bombers, trailing by three, were positioned to put the go-ahead, winning points on the scoreboard or, at the very least, hoof a tying field goal. Snapping the ball on the Calgary 37-yard stripe with 55 ticks remaining on the clock, quarterback Matt Nichols lunged for what looked to be a first down. But wait. Flag on the play. The side judge determined that wideout Darvin Adams wasn’t where he was supposed to be, which is to say on the line of scrimmage, even though, according to the home side’s version of events, he had the zebra’s assurance that he was, indeed, where he was supposed to be. The result: The ball was moved back five yards, Lirim Hajrullahu missed wide right on a 49-yard field goal attempt and the Bombers were saddled with their ninth loss in 13 assignments.

Surely, there would be hell to pay. Somehow, though, the ginger-haired head coach of the Bombers kept his red-hot holstered.

“I can tell you exactly what happened,” O’Shea began in a matter-of-fact, calm cadence. “Darvin Adams is walking to the far sideline official, the usual routine is the on-the-line receiver points to the official to ask him if he’s on the line. The video shows the official points back, which means, yes, he’s on the line. Darvin Adams confirms that when he asks, ‘Am I on the line?’ He says, ‘Yes, sir.’ The video shows he checked with the official and the official pointed back, meaning ‘Ya.’

“The simple answer (from the CFL) is going to be ‘We’re sorry.’ That’s OK. We made enough mistakes in other parts of that game that contribute to (the loss), too.”

This is where a sympathizer chimed in.

“Mike, that’s gotta stink, though…that’s happened before and…critical game,” he suggested

“Yup, critical game, ya,” O’Shea agreed, with a quick, resigned shrug of his broad shoulders.

I could be wrong, but I swear that’s when I saw steaming streams of volcanic lava belching from the coach’s nostrils and ear holes. Then again, perhaps I was seeing things that weren’t really there. You know, like a line judge saying something and seeing something else.

“You cannot rely on the officials,” emphasized O’Shea, resisting any urge to go all Mount St. Helens. “You have to win games in spite of that. You really can’t, you can’t make an excuse like this. This type of outcome has been happening since officials were involved in any sport, from the beginning of history of sport with officials. It just happens. Human error. Whatever.”

So pragmatic of O’Shea. So problematic for the Bombers.

I mean, don’t these guys ever get angry? Not even when they believe they’ve been screwed?

I suppose it’s likely too late to get a good mad-on going now, though, because this defeat leaves the locals with five skirmishes remaining in their 2015 crusade and, although just two points in arrears of the Montreal Alouettes, chasing down that final playoff spot in the West Division will take a Herculean effort.

All the same, I’d like to hear more growl from the Bombers and less aw shucks.

Winnipeg Sports Media: There are dumb questions, dumber questions, and Gary Lawless questions

Okay, right off the hop I’ll concede that I asked some dumb questions during my 30 years as a jock-sniffer.

I suppose it goes with the territory. You’re fighting deadline and you’re anxious to join the boys and girls on the beat for some brown pops once everyone’s copy has been filed. Maybe you have a plane to catch. So you need a quickie sound bite, no matter how hackneyed it might be. You spit out the first question that comes to mind and, well, next thing you know there’s a coach or player with hot, burning coals for eyeballs and he’s looking at you as if he just discovered that you’re his wife’s lesbian lover.

What can I tell you? Dumb happens.

There are, however, different degrees of dumb. I mean, just plain dumb is a post-game query like: “Guess you’re not too happy with that 50-point loss, eh coach?” (Well, duh. What was your first clue, Sherlock?) Dumber is: “If you were a rodent, coach, what kind of rodent would you be?” (Couldn’t be a rat because all the rats are in journalism digging up dirt and asking dumb questions.) Dumbest is: “Your team just got taken to the woodshed, coach, but you’re only two points out of the playoffs and you have six games left, so are you going to give up?” (Pardon me?)

And so it was Sunday afternoon, scant seconds after the Winnipeg Blue Bombers were given yet another wedgie, their eighth this Canadian Football League crusade against four victories. Dumb and Dumber didn’t show up to the apres-match interrogation of Bombers head coach Mike O’Shea, but Dumbest sure did and his name is Gary Lawless, lead sports columnist at the Winnipeg Free Press.

Oh, yes, there he was, asking O’Shea if he and his players, fresh off a 35-14 beatdown by the Montreal Alouettes, were going to wave the white flag. Surrender. Cash in their chips. Write off the season.

Lawless: “Mike, I know the answer, but I have to ask this…you haven’t given up on this season?”

O’Shea (gobsmacked): “Pardon me?”

Lawless: “You haven’t given up on this season…you’re not out of the playoffs…”

O’Shea (still gobsmacked): “No. This is where you have to beep this answer out.”

Lawless: “We have to ask this question.”

O’Shea (still gobsmacked with gusts up to pissed right off): “Come on. We’ve got seven games…”

Lawless: “You’re 4-and-8.”

O’Shea: “Six…we’ve got six games left…”

Lawless: “It’s not an unfair question. It’s not an unfair question.”

O’Shea (ready to eat live rodents and wondering what sort of bizarro world he has fallen into): “No, we’re not giving up. We’ve got too many good players that aren’t gonna give up. We’ve got coaches (not gonna give up), we have fans not giving up. There’s no way we’re giving up. We’re still in a position where we can win a bunch of games and get in the playoffs. Is it one game tougher? Absolutely, it’s one game tougher. All right? And we’ve got some tough opponents coming up. Oh, well. We understand where we’re at and we’ve gotta overcome that.”

Full marks to O’Shea for not flat out losing it.

Seriously. Yes, the man’s team is in full wobble at 4-8, but it remains a mere two points removed from a playoff position and there are another half dozen matches to be played. And just so we’re clear on this, it is not uncommon for sub-.500 outfits to qualify for the Grey Cup tournament. It’s happened seven times in the past eight seasons. So, yes, the question was grossly unfair. It was also inflammatory, nakedly stupid, not rooted in the reality of precedence, and it never should have been asked.

It’s astonishing that O’Shea didn’t go all Bobby Knight.

(Footnote: In his initial piece on the Bombers-Alouettes skirmish, Lawless reported the final score as 38-15. That, of course, was a blunder. Eventually, an editor who initially missed the gaffe caught the gaffe and covered Lawless’s sizeable butt. I don’t suppose he’ll give up writing football, though.)

Winnipeg Blue Bombers: Will Mike O’Shea fire the special teams coach this week?

I cannot survive in a 140-character world, so here are more tweets that grew up to be too big for Twitter…

Well, it’s obvious what Mike O’Shea has to do now, isn’t it? Right. The Winnipeg Blue Bombers head coach has to fire his special teams coach. Punt the bum. Pronto. Just like he did in making a sacrificial lamb of previous special teams coach Pat Tracey.

Except O’Shea is his own special teams coach now. Talk about job security.

Sigh.

I don’t know what was more disturbing Sunday afternoon, watching Stefan Logan skedaddle through the Bombers’ kick coverage like a jack rabbit hopped up on Red Bull (273 yards, one touchdown) or the reality that the Montreal Alouettes now hold down a playoff position—in the West Division. In giving the Bombers a good an proper paddywhacking, 35-14 at Percival Molson Stadium, the Larks lurched ahead of Canadian Football League turtles in B.C. and, of course, Winnipeg. An eastern team in the western playoffs would not be cool. Definitely not cool.

Could Kyle Walters’ and Wade Miller’s friend in the Winnipeg media (you know who you are, Gary Lawless) please explain to us one more time why it must take more than two years to turn around a moribund CFL outfit? The Ottawa RedBlacks were an expansion franchise a year ago. They finished their maiden season at 2-16. Today they are 7-4, sniffing at first place in the East Division. Why do Bombers CEO Miller and GM Walters require more time than their counterparts in Bytown?

Big improvements at the Little Hockey House on the Prairie. They’ve added 278 premium seats, meaning they now can accommodate 15,282 sets of eyeballs for Winnipeg Jets games. Not only that, these are swivel chairs. How convenient. Whenever goaltender Ondrej Pavelec coughs up a hair ball, you can simply turn your back on him.

I see where cops made a big drug raid in Quincy, Mass., about 12 miles southeast of Fenway Park in Boston. They discovered oxycodone pills, money-counting machines, police scanners and $9,000 in cash. Oh, ya, and a 2004 Red Sox World Series ring was part of the ill-gotten loot, confirming that you really do have to be on drugs to cheer for the Bosox.

Well, look who’s talking tall again. It’s old friend Evander Kane. It was right about this time a year ago when the now-former Jets problem child was flapping his gums about scoring 50 goals in the 2014-15 National Hockey League season. Never happened. Now he’s popping off again, saying, “Maybe I want to score 40 or 50” with his new team in Buffalo. I’m guessing the Sabres would settle for 25-30 goals, and they’ll be absolutely delighted if he doesn’t leave his clothes lying around in the dressing room.

When Patrick Kane read a prepared statement the other day claiming he had “done nothing wrong,” why was I thinking of Richard Nixon? Well, it’s because Tricky Dick kept telling us that he was “not a crook.” We all know how that turned out, don’t we? I don’t know if Kane, the Chicago Blackhawks resident bad boy, raped a women this summer, but I found his presser to be offensive in the extreme and wondered why the the Hawks trotted him out for news scavengers. Bad move, bad taste.

Steve Simmons of the Toronto Sun is somewhat miffed because the Toronto Maple Leafs won’t be making room on their charter flights for team broadcasters. Oh, those poor boys. They’ll have to fly commercial and mingle with all those pesky brats who squawk during an entire flight. When will people like Simmons learn that, on the Give-a-Damn meter, the public simply doesn’t give a damn about media woes like seating arrangements on an airplane or the cost for a pre-game meal in Chicago? I mean, Boo flipping hoo.

So, Wayne Gretzky has weighed in on the federal election. The Great One is backing the Grate One, Prime Minister Stephen Harper. The Great One advises us that the Grate One has been “wonderful to the whole country” and “an unreal prime minister.” I’ve always liked Gretzky, but ex-hockey players who live in the United States and cannot cast a ballot in Canada shouldn’t be telling us how to vote.

Just wondering, but does Ronda Rousey scare men? She surely seems scary. But any talk of the UFC diva and fist-fighter Floyd Mayweather climbing into the octagon together is reckless and irrational gibberish. I mean, everybody knows Mayweather only hits women who won’t fight back.

Wow, NASA has named a patch of Mars after Winnipeg. Yup, there’s now a Winnipeg, Mars. In related news, just to be safe, 725 players in the National Hockey League immediately added Winnipeg, Mars, to their list of won’t-go-there destinations in the no-trade clauses of their contracts.

You’re never going to have unanimity on the gay issue in the NHL or anywhere else

Brian Burke is disappointed.

This, of course, is not uncommon. Burke’s smile is often turned upside-down. After all, he once generally managed the Toronto Maple Leafs, a tragic, ghastly hockey outfit that has perfected the art of disappointing its ownership, management, coaches and a fan base whose reach stretches far beyond parochial boundaries.

Not once since the spring of 1967 have les Leafs participated in a Stanley Cup parade, a stretch of annual faceplants that, while not equal in numbers to the Chicago Cubs’ century-plus death march, feels very Cub-ian. Burke can only be held personally responsible for a handful of the Leafs’ springtime melts, but some things tend to cling, and not even fleeing the Republic of Tranna and hiding out in Saudi Alberta can shake off the residue of ruin a man experiences in the Centre of the Shinny Universe.

It isn’t les Leafs who are up Burke’s nose these days, though. It’s a hockey player. A homophobic hockey player.

At least we assume him to be homophobic, because when USA TODAY unsealed the findings of a survey it conducted during a National Hockey League/NHL Players Association media meet-and-greet earlier this month in Toronto, one of 35 skaters turned thumbs down to the notion of welcoming an openly gay teammate into the lair. Guy’s gotta be a gay-hater, right?

“I’m disappointed by the one player,” said Burke, now Grand Poobah of all things Calgary Flames.

Well, sure he’s disappointed. Burke, after all, is among the founding fathers of the You Can Play Project, one of the leading entities in the crusade for inclusiveness in sports, professional and amateur. And already I have heard yelps of “Name him and shame him!” from the rabble. But let there be no witch hunt here. No McCarthyism, whereby we feret out the scoundrel who clings tightly to the notion that gay is wrong, gay is weak, gay is the devil’s own handiwork.

Let’s face it, this is life, which never has been, nor shall it ever be, one-size-fits-all. The crouching tiger of bigotry/racism/misogyny is always at the door.

P.K. Subban, for example, is to be admired universally and unanimously for his commitment to funnel $10 million to charity over the next seven years, yet I harbor no doubt that there are those walking among us who see not the Montreal Canadiens defenceman’s generosity but, rather, only the hue of his skin. To them, he’s just an uppity black man who shouldn’t be making that kind of money.

So finding one rogue hockey player in a group of 35? Not at all alarming.

Seriously, if you were to ask 35 anonymous NHL players if they believe women are nothing more than sex objects to be used for their pleasure, you’re apt to find at least one thick enough to give you an enthusiastic “Hell ya!”

Same thing with Europeans. Still. I mean, xenophobia ran rampant during the 1970s, first when those dreaded Ivans and Igors from Mother Russia tried to steal our game during the ’72 Summit Series, then when a tidal wave of Europeans washed ashore to take jobs from good Canadian boys mid-decade. I would venture to submit that there are still those who would prefer not to sit beside a Russian in the changing room. Some might not be too fond of Swedes. But the xenophobe ranks, I would suggest, have thinned considerably over time.

Ditto the homophobes. I doubt very much that USA TODAY would have received a whopping 97.1 per cent approval rate on its gay question 30-40 years ago. Oh, hell, they probably wouldn’t have gotten it 10 years ago.

So, this is a good-news story, and the fact that at least one player confesses to discomfort with a gay teammate is also positive, in a bass-ackwards way. If, for example, there had been 35-of-35 unanimity, the fallout would have been not only sharp cynicism but flat-out disbelief. Like, tell me Don Cherry is defecting to Moscow and I might buy it. But 100 per cent of NHL players being okay with a gay teammate? Sorry, no sale. That reeks of galloping political correctness.

As it is, we have been given a subtle reminder that educating is yet to be done, and the question now becomes: Is this survey, with its small sample size, enough to convince a gay player to come out?

If nothing else, it is encouraging and I, for one, don’t need to know the identity of the solitary homophobe who took part in the USA TODAY survey. I just assume he plays for the Toronto Maple Leafs, because they always disappoint.

Mike O’Shea: He has no flair for fashion, but does he have to be such a jerk?

Tweets that grew up to be too big for Twitter…

So, let’s see if I’ve got this straight: When the Winnipeg Blue Bombers lose a football game, Mike O’Shea cannot supply news scavengers with a definitive answer without first having to “see the film.” He’s Coach Copout. You get more insight from Mount Rushmore.

Yet, when the Bombers rack up a W, as was the case against the Saskatchewan Roughriders on Saturday night in the Banjo Bowl, the head coach flaps his gums for six minutes and 40 seconds without once insisting he must “see the film” before delivering the goods. That despite the fact many bad things happened in the Bombers’ 22-7 victory, developments that surely would have had him defaulting to film-speak had they led to a loss.

O’Shea is a reminder of what I disliked most about being in the sports media—dealing with jerks.

Why are so many people hung up on O’Shea’s shoddy taste in fashion? So he’s into T-shirts and hoodies and won’t make the cover of GQ. Big deal. Bill Belichick dresses like some guy who sleeps beside a dumpster, and all he does is take his New England Patriots to the playoffs every year and win more Super Bowl games than any living National Football League coach.

Woman beater and professional fist-fighter Floyd Mayweather roughed up some tomato can on Saturday night to run his career ring record to 49-0, and now he’s leaving boxing. Yup, he insists this was the last time he’ll use his fists to give someone a fat lip. Unless, of course, he decides to punch out a few more women. My guess is that with all the extra time on his hands, Floyd will be heading to a jail to be named later.

Speaking of jocks in jail, I see where O.J. Simpson lost an appeal for a new trial on the kidnapping and armed robbery raps that earned him nine to 33 years behind bars, so he’ll remain in a Nevada lockup until 2017, at the earliest. No word on whether or not the Juice will resume his search for the real killers if paroled at age 70.

Prior to her ouster at the U.S. Open, a number of pundits were touting Serena Williams as the best athlete on the third rock from the sun. Not just the best tennis player, understand. The best athlete. Man or woman. That is, of course, utter nonsense. How can she be the top jock when she isn’t even the top tennis player? And in the ongoing discussion about Williams’ place in tennis history, distaff division, I’ll still take Steffi Graf and Martina Navratilova every time.

That Peter Chiarelli is some kind of kidder. The Edmonton McDavids general manager sat down for a gum-flap with TSN’s Bob McKenzie and suggested fab frosh Connor McDavid will top out at 20 goals and 40 points as a National Hockey League rookie. Ya, and it will only snow once in Edmonton this winter. If McDavid isn’t at least a 60-point guy in his first go-round, we’ll need a federal inquiry.

Apparently, the PGA Tour playoffs are underway. Is anyone aware of this? Is anyone watching? Does anyone actually understand the format? And does it really happen if Tiger Woods isn’t there?

I really wish Steve Yzerman would hurry up and sign Steven Stamkos to a contract extension so scribes in the Republic of Tranna (hello, Damien Cox) could stop writing speculative pieces about the star centre/winger bolting the Tampa Bay Lightning to join the Maple Leafs and achieving “hockey immortality” with a place on Legends Row.

The track shoes worn by Roger Bannister in May of 1954 when he became the first man to run a sub-four-minute mile have been sold at a Christie’s auction for $412,062.30. It’s believe they are the most expensive pair of shoes not in Caitlyn Jenner’s closet.

It occurs to me that The Reporters on TSN would be a much more entertaining chin-wag if the gab guys weren’t given a heads up on subject matter. Too much of what Bruce Arthur, Michael Farber and Steve Simmons have to say seems scripted. There’s seldom an invigorating thrust-and-parry. Sparks never fly. They’re afraid to offend one another. Hey, I’m not looking for a verbal donnybrook, but some sizzle would be boffo. As it is, they have time to research the topics on host Dave Hodge’s menu, which makes for rather bland banter. Make ’em do it off-the-cuff. Simmons, by the way, has sprounted scruffy chin and upper-lip whiskers, so he no longer looks like a hamster with nerdy glasses. He now looks like a hamster with nerdy glasses and scruffy chin whiskers.

Winnipeg Blue Bombers: Now that was just stupid

You don’t want to hang all of this one on Brian Brohm. Or the hogs in front of him. Or the defence. Or the special teams.

This was an equal-opportunity screwup. Share and share alike.

But the main reason the Winnipeg Blue Bombers were given a 37-19 wedgie by the Saskatchewan Roughriders on Sunday? Just blame it on stupid.

Stupid is Mike Willie running into punter Ray Early to breathe fresh life into a stalled Saskatchewan drive.

Stupid is an illegal contact penalty on Johnny Adams on the same drive.

Stupid is an unecessary roughness penalty on Johnny Adams on the very next play on the very same drive that ended in a touchdown for Gang Green.

Stupid is an unecessary roughness penalty on Lin-J Shell.

Stupid is an unecessary roughness penalty on Bruce Johnson.

Stupid is Lirim Hajrullahu hoofing the football out of bounds on a short kickoff attempt with one minute and 27 ticks remaining on the clock and the score 30-19 for the ‘Riders.

Stupid is a Marcel Bellefeuille game plan that did not include a pass attempt of more than 10 yards until the skirmish was 28 and a half minutes old. That’s almost an entire half without flinging the football far enough for a first down! And that’s the offensive scheme that we were told was much too complicated for newby quarterback Matt Nichols to master in three days? Five-yard sideline passes? Doesn’t say much for his smarts, does it.

Which brings me to one final stupid: Stupid is the Bombers filmaholic head coach, Mike O’Shea, not starting Nichols despite the fact he hadn’t been in town long enough to sample his first Salisbury House cheese nip.

Oh, yes, stupid ruled the day on many levels for the Blue and Gold, losers to a previously inept Roughriders outfit which, at 0-9 entering the fray, had been the free space on the 2015 Canadian Football League bingo card. The Green People gave the Bombers a proper paddywhacking before an SRO audience on a wind-swept afternoon in that ugly excuse of a ball yard on Piffles Taylor Way in Regina, and I doubt very much that Winnipeg’s filmaholic head coach needs to watch video evidence to confirm how ugly stupid his crew was and is.

I mean, what’s there to see, other than a pathetic parade of penalties and further evidence that Brohm is not a CFL-quality quarterback?

The best you could say about Brohm’s work on Sunday is this: He didn’t implode. There were no picks. Actually, there wasn’t much of anything. No touchdowns. No energy. No excitement. Just blah…and some garbage yards and a few garbage points once the debate had been decided in the ‘Riders’ favor.

Mind you, Brohm is working with an extreme handicap, and this time I’m not talking about his throwing arm. He has Bellefeuille for an offensive coordinator.

I’ve never had a peek inside Bellefeuille’s play book, but, judging by the play-calling, it can’t be any more complicated than an Archie or Jughead comic. And it’s certainly less entertaining. I swear, the Bombers would be better served if the QB simply crouched down in the huddle and designed plays in the dirt. You know, like the kids do in sandlot football. That way we might actually see a deep ball thrown on occasion.

Not with a Bellefeuille offence, though. He’s bold and brash like Donald Trump is mousey quiet. His idea of daring is running with a pair of scissors. Plastic scissors.

So, ya, anyone behind centre for the Bombers is playing with one arm tied behind his back.

Who that will be when the same two outfits do it all over again on Saturday at Football Follies Field in Fort Garry remains a mystery, but it’s my guess that Nichols will get the call he should have received on Sunday.

If not…well, that would just be stupid.

Matt Nichols: The answer at quarterback or a lamb being led to slaughter with the Winnipeg Blue Bombers?

Take comfort, Bombers Nation. Rest easy. The cavalry has been summoned and, no doubt, Matt Nichols arrived in River City with a pocket full of miracles, a satchel full of high hopes and a truckload of good-luck charms.

The mere fact he’s in town, of course, must be recognized as a favorable development, in that the Winnipeg Blue Bombers latest quarterbacking lamb didn’t have a change of heart and retire from football while en route from Edmonton.

I mean, playing QB for the Winnipegs is not exactly a plum assignment. It ain’t what it used to be. You know, back when Ken Ploen and Don Jonas and Dieter Brock and Matt Dunigan and Khari Jones were flinging the football behind offensive linemen who performed as big as they ate. Now it’s more of a bug-and-windshield thing, and you ain’t the windshield, baby. But, hey, you get danger pay.

So, sure, come on down, Matt. Hit us with your best shot.

Naturally, there are those among you who pooh-pooh the acquisition of Nichols as yet another swan dive into yet another Canadian Football League’s dumpster by Kyle Walters, the club’s general manager who is often seen wearing the look of a very perplexed man. (This, of course, is what happens when your original starting QB, Drew Willy, is in sick bay, your current starter, Robert Marve, is also in sick bay, and your third option, Brian Brohm, is quite healthy but unfortunately has a birth defect known as his throwing arm.)

But come now, ye negative natterbugs. You ought to know by now that this is the Bomber way. They dare not wander out into the vast football forest and discover their own quarterback, sign him and groom him into star starter. They wouldn’t recognize a quality quarterback if Bo Levi Mitchell and Zach Collaros were playing catch in Walters’ back yard. Doing it in-house is old school. That kind of thinking went out with Dieter Brock.

Thus, we have Matt Nichols, plucked from the back alley bin of the Edmonton Eskimos for a token finder’s fee of a seventh-round draft choice. A conditional choice, at that. Cripes, man, that’s like giving a kid a participation prize in Pop Warner.

So, I shall not be joining the chorus of harrumphs that arose once word of the Nichols-for-nil transaction arrived. What, I ask, was Walters supposed to do? Bring Danny McManus out of moth balls?

Besides, I have it on good authority that Nichols is of substantive stock. That authority would be none other than the head coach, Mike O’Shea, who stared at a gathering of interrogators on Wednesday afternoon and announced that he had “seen enough film on him” to confirm his new QB’s bona fides. It is always a good thing to hear the coach say he has “seen film” on a player or a game, because it means he doesn’t respond to every question like he’s been asked to explain Donald Trump’s take on Hispanics.

The coach also advised news scavengers that they, and fans, are to ignore Nichols’ numbers while he was adorned in the green-and-gold linen of the Eskimos. Except one—the No. 5, as in the number of Ws he racked up as the Edmonton starter this season.

“The No. 1 job for any quarterback,” stressed O’Shea, “is winning. The first test is winning and he’s passed that.”

Apparently the tall foreheads on the Eskimos’ sideline don’t share that sentiment, because they busted Nichols down to backup and handed the starting job to a CFL neophyte, James Franklin. And, with Mike Reilly soon to rejoin the fray, his best-before date had expired.

Unfortunately, we’re told we shouldn’t expect to see what Nichols has to offer on the Sabbath when the Bombers are in Regina for their annual day-before-Labor Day skirmish with the winless Roughriders. Apparently, three days isn’t a sufficient amount of time to absorb the Winnipeg playbook.

Geez, I would have thought reading football’s version of Dick and Jane wouldn’t take more than, oh, 10 minutes.

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