Blue have been in Twilight Zone all season

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 01/11/2011 (5147 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It is time to try and make sense of the nonsense.

As professional sport evolves, statistics, facts and figures become more prominent. Extensive analysis and detailed breakdowns generate probabilities and likelihoods for every conceivable situation that can occur in a contest, and the results influence decisions being made with more regularity as organizations and sport move forward.

With that in mind, determining the fate and fortune of your local gridiron gang this past week and the weekend upcoming, could have been far easier predicted by simply studying the environment and factors surrounding the games than actually playing them out.

For instance, a number of keen and intrepid observers could have told you well before last Friday’s game against the Toronto Argonauts, with the way we had been performing all year against underachieving teams in the CFL, that the deck was stacked against your Blue and Gold.

For starters, Toronto was tied — and still is — for the worst record in the CFL, which always makes us nervous. They have been out of the playoff picture since we could smell November, and we had already beaten them at home and at the Rogers Centre. Win or lose, they could not advance or lose traction in the division.

They had two starters out for the season on their offensive line, a quarterback who hasn’t started many games for them, an almost weekly shuffling in their receiving personnel, and a defence that had been giving up yards of late like a cash-hungry homeowner next to a full parking lot.

Add to the fact that it was a night game in late October in Winnipeg with a sold-out home crowd that has been setting decibel records and was closing out a stadium where the ghosts of Blue Bomber pasts have been stabled for seven championships, and their enthusiasm was at an all-time high.

Variables

With that many variables going our way, we didn’t stand a chance.

Lucky for us, however, our fortunes may be turning. We are about to embark on what, historically, has been a road trip from hell for your Blue and Gold. We would have an easier time matching up with NFL Pro Bowl rosters than the Stampeders of late. In the 11 years I have played on this team we have won in Calgary twice, and not since 2002. In fact, if memory serves over the last nine years, and I think it does, most of those games haven’t exactly been too close either.

They are a team that is tied for first in the West Division, were the first team to beat us this season in our own park, they sport a record identical to ours, and will most definitely be favoured to win. They just beat Montreal in their own barn, and have so much talent at quarterback that last year’s Most Outstanding Player in the CFL, Henry Burris, is backing up. One of the best running backs that has ever played for their organization is also a part-time player, and they will have an opportunity to clinch first place in the West if they beat us at their house.

Furthermore, according to what I have read in the papers, our starting quarterback will not be playing in the most important regular-season game of the year for us, where if we win, we are guaranteed a first-round bye in the post-season.

In any other season, on any other team, I would say this seems like a collusion of insurmountable odds that will require the most supreme of efforts to battle and overcome, and this could well be the case. Yet this year, with the way things have been going and with a deck stacked against us and the oddsmakers sure to write us off like a fraudulent cheque, I can’t help but like our chances.

Welcome to the Twilight Zone, Blue Bomber football style, where things are never what they seem and you can often expect the unexpected.

Doug Brown, a hard-hitting defensive tackle with the Winnipeg Blue Bombers and even harder-hitting columnist, appears Tuesdays in the Winnipeg Free Press.