Inept Lions are last hope for inept Blue

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 02/10/2010 (5520 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

You’ve all seen those action movies where some poor schmuck is hanging from a cliff or the ledge of a skyscraper, right?

It’s all pretty dramatic and climactic. The ominous music is reaching a crescendo. One finger slips, then another. Or the rope is unraveling down to its last thread.

The hero pleads, “Hang on! I’ve got you!” (Unless the person hanging is the bad guy… or a personal injury lawyer. Then it’s slow motion all the way down, baby.)

Which brings us to the 2010 Winnipeg Blue Bombers, the Rubik’s Cube of the CFL that continues to defy all the laws of post-season gravity.

Let’s not sully this exercise with trying to rationalize why a 3-9 football team should be in the playoff discussion in the first place, given that they have spent the vast majority of the season in last place. Thanks to the generosity of the league’s crossover formula, most any CFL team has more playoff lives than Ghandi’s cat. Deal with it.

But suffice to say that the Bombers’ storyline since July has been a study in erosion. Remember when they were 2-2 and poised to battle the then-surprising Toronto Argonauts for second place in the East? Then a three-game losing streak changed the plot to “putting some distance” between themselves and the struggling Hamilton Tiger-Cats.

One finger slips.

This was followed closely by another losing jag, another showdown with the Argos that would have kept a potential playoff berth in the East alive, and another crushing loss. Gone are any pie-eyed notions of overtaking either the Argos or Cats, both 6-6 with a season-series advantage over the Bombers.

Barring a cataclysmic reversal of fortunes, the East is a dead end.

One more thread on the rope unravels. The grip loosens.

Now it’s October and the only remaining prey are the equally-dysfunctional B.C. Lions, who at 4-8 represent the Bombers’ last realistic grasp at salvation. Preacher Wally Buono’s Lions have their own issues, what with replacing the erratic Casey Printers under centre with the less dynamic but more dependable Travis Lulay.

It’s not just that the Bombers have to leave the Lions den with a victory Saturday night. In order to gain any foothold, they must sweep the back-end of the doubleheader next Monday back in Winnipeg to find traction. A split would almost certainly be fatal.

(This is where the 3-9 Eskimos, who will host the Bombers on Oct. 30, would be saying, “Don’t forget about us.” Point taken. But, hey, we can only deal with one train wreck at a time.)

Regardless, these are the Bombers now: Clinging by a fingernail on the precipice with no one left to save them but themselves. Not even a fine fund can help them.

Tortured

Naturally, a reasonable person might ask, “What’s the point?” After all, tortured Bombers fans have already been subjected to three months of their lives they can’t get back. Just prolonging the inevitable would be uncommonly cruel. You know, like giving Jim Belushi another series on network television.

But these Bombers are a different animal, no question. They are a Sergio Leone spaghetti western — the good, the bad, the ugly — in spandex tights. They have soiled the sheets against the worst and scared the bejeezus out of the best.

Because this much is self-evident: In order to make the playoffs, the Bombers will almost certainly have to win at least four of their last six games. That’s just the math. That follows that if the Bombers do somehow manage to capture a crossover berth, they can only do so with a heretofore unseen consistency.

It’s the only way out, this theory goes. Anything less is an 18-storey drop to the pavement.

Of course, in the movies the cliffhanger almost always has a happy ending. Just as the final thread breaks or the last finger slips, one last desperate lunge finds purchase.

The day is saved.

This is Bomberville, however, and the lift up these days seems just as steep as the drop below.

It might not be the stuff of crackling theatrical drama.

Like it or don’t, it’s all the Bombers have left.

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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