3-7 and life just couldn’t be better

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 18/09/2010 (5532 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It’s half-past September, and the man at the centre of the Most Confident (3-7) Team In The World is basking in the bleakness of autumn.

Winter and darkness are coming. So is the pain.

Obby Khan takes a breath of chill air and exhales in joy over the suffering of others.

“I love it. Love it,” the Bombers short snapper began. “This is what offensive lineman live for. Everyone’s beaten up. Everyone’s hurting. But as offensive linemen, we’re the grinders. We want to go out there and we play through pain. We’ve been playing through pain all year.

“It’s my favourite time of the year,” Khan said. “Players get tired. Players get hurt. Confidences start to go up and down. And we just keep rolling.”

Such is the curious case of the Winnipeg Blue Bombers, whose collective spirits belie a record that plants them firmly in the East division basement. They are sleeping on futons in a place with no windows, but a stranger to this place would believe them to be Bud Grant’s favourite sons.

They have not won a single road game this season. They are in last place, coming off a lone victory that mercifully ended a five-game winless streak, after losing their No. 1 quarterback for the season. If the playoffs started tomorrow, the Bombers would find themselves at the kiddies’ table with the dreadful 2-8 Edmonton Eskimos, who are to the CFL this season what BP is to the preservation of marine life.

Yet these same men somehow still possess sanguine expectations that would make Tony Robbins sound like a ledge jumper.

“I’d say regardless of our record, we’ve been the most optimistic group all year,” Khan continued. “The atmosphere around here… I’ve never seen anything like it on a CFL team. The energy we have, the fun we have in practice and the fun we have in games, and the confidence and belief we have I’ve never seen before.”

Um, isn’t that unusual? You know, being in last place and all?

“It’s very unusual,” Khan readily agreed. “To be 3-7 you’d think, “Oh, guys are starting to get down on each other. There’s turmoil. There’s guys looking over their shoulders (for job security), questioning what we’re doing. Questioning other players and coaches.

“None of that,” Khan insisted, “is happening here.”

Of course, the first reaction to such a glass-half-full notion would be, “Why the hell not?” But what makes Khan’s rosy outlook — albeit laced with the promise of pain inflicted on the less fortunate — just this side of sane is the historic nature of the CFL’s seasons of two solitudes.

Khan’s right. The truisms of post-Labour Day are beginning to manifest themselves. Jack Frost is nipping on their cleats. Questionable teams with admirable starts — namely the Toronto Argonauts (5-5), the Bombers opponent on Sunday — are beginning to flounder under the weight of a long season.

Tendencies and vulnerabilities are being exposed and exploited.

The wet cement of summer’s salad days is beginning to harden, for better or worse.

And the Bombers, long considered underachievers even by their own rivals, just held their least favourite neighbors, the Saskatchewan Roughriders, to two points. In the realm of accomplishments in professional sports, that’s like holding Tiger Woods to two mistresses.

It’s not just optics. The local 12 is tied for third (with the Riders) in points scored this season and their improving defence is ranked second overall in fewest yards allowed. These are not the statistical calling cards of a last-place team.

“A lot of guys don’t understand,” Khan concluded. “It doesn’t matter how you start off the year. It’s the middle to the end of the season which will position you for the playoffs. Whether you succeed in the playoffs depends on how well you finish the season.”

Look around. The days are getting shorter. NFL discards are falling from the sky. And in a league where only two of eight member teams are denied entry in the post-season — where 8-10 teams win championships with alarming regularity — the Most Confident (3-7) Team In The World is brimming at the thought of winning two straight.

For any other team, in any other league, such lofty aspirations would reasonably be considered absurd. Even laughable.

But players get tired. Players get hurt. The attrition of an 18-game season is about to intensify.

And just the notion that others are about to suffer, too, between now and November is enough to warm the cockles of an offensive lineman’s unforgiving heart.

The nasty business of the CFL homestretch awaits.

Turns out, so does the unfailingly cheerful wrath of Ibrahim Khan.

randy.turner@freepress.mb.ca

Randy Turner
Reporter

Randy Turner spent much of his journalistic career on the road. A lot of roads. Dirt roads, snow-packed roads, U.S. interstates and foreign highways. In other words, he got a lot of kilometres on the odometer, if you know what we mean.

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