OK, this isn’t easy but… I’m changing teams

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 25/11/2011 (5244 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

I am conflicted. I am torn. I am a house divided.

My colleagues find my soul-searching amusing. Every day, they wander down to my cubicle, fold their arms over the flimsy fabric walls and hold my feet to the fire.

“Ha ha ha,” they will chortle because, unlike me, they are not gripped by inner turmoil, a spiritual tug-of-war. “So, Doug, what are you going to do?”

What they want to know — and what I’m losing sleep trying to decide — is whom I’ll be cheering for in the sporting event of the century — Sunday’s Grey Cup game between the Winnipeg Blue Bombers and my beloved B.C. Lions.

My friends are full of advice, such as this email I received from my buddy, Mark, a hardcore Bombers fanatic: “Doug, I would like to suggest you limit your articles this week to the topics of the weather, your dogs, the Jets and maybe even world peace. Otherwise, I will start to dislike you and it could limit our friendship!”

Regular readers, assuming they are still taking their prescription medication, will recall I suffer from a lifelong obsession with the B.C. Lions. I grew up in Vancouver and the Lions have always been my team. That’s just the way guys are.

When you’re a kid, you pick a team and that is YOUR team for life. Like dogs, guys are all about loyalty. For example, if you are a guy and Joe cuts your hair, then Joe will cut your (bad word) hair for the rest of your (bad word) life unless (a) Joe drops dead; or (b) Joe makes fun of YOUR team and you are forced to bludgeon him with his electric nose-hair trimmers.

Women, like cats, don’t get this concept. I hate to make sweeping generalities, but women will change hairdressers, even if (gasp) the person who normally cuts their hair is still alive. They will change sporting allegiances because they think another team’s uniforms make the quarterback’s posterior region seem more alluring.

Which brings us back to football. I have always cheered for the Lions. It’s who I am. But, like I said, I am torn.

The thing is, whenever I leave my house to take part in some random charity event, I invariably meet one of the Bombers, especially quarterback Buck Pierce, who used to play for the Lions and is easily my favourite player in the CFL.

Being a guy, I admire Buck for the way he plays on the field. He’s a guy with a damn-the-torpedoes attitude who, if he has the option of running around an opponent or sliding under him, will instead run right through him, usually head-first.

Sure he gets hurt a lot, but that’s because Buck’s willing to put himself on the line to help his team win. The other guys will walk through fire for him because they know Buck will be leading the way.

But it’s what he does off the field that makes Buck a hero. Not long ago, when I hit the streets at the ungodly hour of 6:30 a.m. to sell newspapers in support of children’s literacy, there was the Bombers QB, fresh off a recent injury, tirelessly flinging himself into yet another event the only way he knows — at full speed.

And, not long after, there he was going head to head with me and a bunch of other non-athletic media weenies at a spaghetti-eating contest in support of Winnipeg Harvest. That’s not what pro quarterbacks typically do. They are supposed to be aloof and cocky. But not Buck Pierce. He’s a lot like our adopted city — humble, decent and down-to-earth.

When a good friend’s son had his football career threatened by a nasty injury, Buck called and told him to keep fighting and everything would be OK.

Buck’s not alone. When I visit a school for I Love to Read Month, there’s Bombers long snapper Chris Cvetkovic making the kids laugh. At Dancing With Celebrities, the annual ballroom competition in support of the Society for Manitobans with Disabilities/Easter Seals, there’s Bombers centre Obby Khan helping me judge the contestants, whose ranks this year included his boss, head coach Paul LaPolice, a regular guy who is always willing to stop and chat, even with an obnoxious Lions fan.

In contrast, before the 2006 Grey Cup, I raced over, tiny heart pounding, to legendary Lions coach Wally Buono and had the following breathless conversation.

Me: “Hi, coach, I’m like, the biggest Lions fan ever!”

Wally: “???”

Me: “Like, I am s-o-o-o-o-o-o excited to meet you!”

Wally: “???”

What I’m struggling to say here is I can’t root against heroes like Buck and Chris and Obby and Paul. And maybe not rooting against them isn’t enough this time. Maybe, for once, I have to root FOR a team that isn’t wearing black and orange.

I’m just not sure how to break the news to Wally Buono.

doug.speirs@freepress.mb.ca