A lot of little things mean a lot, Blue prove

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 16/10/2010 (5807 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

So the other day the local football squad sent out this press release entitled, “Blue Bombers Add Bishop to Practice Roster”.

After being resuscitated by paramedics, I discovered the news in question was referring to a non-import wide receiver named Josh Bishop. That was a relief.

But you never know what can happen in Bomberville these days, especially when it concerns quarterbacks. It’s a volatile and uncertain time, and the fact that Steve Jyles could actually begin a football game bolted to the bench, his future in Winnipeg clearly in jeopardy, only to end it as the unquestioned starter moving forward, tells you volumes about a 4-10 team’s perilous state.

Yet the Miracle on Maroons only underlines the age-old dictum in professional sports that winning is everything. Much has been made, for example, of the fact the Bombers have lost seven games — 70 per cent of their losses — by seven points or less. They have lost six games by four or less, a club record and only one short of the CFL’s all-time standard for narrow margins of defeat.

That’s a mouthful, sports fans. Narrow defeats happen all the time, but rarely does one team have such a lopsided monopoly on razor-thin losses.

It boggles the mind, quite frankly, to imagine how the Bombers’ universe would be unfolding today if not for their nearly unparalleled ability to play just well enough to barely lose.

Because the result can be so stark, the written history completely altered, by a missed field goal here or a boneheaded punch in the groin there.

As Exhibit A, look no farther than the Bombers’ improbable 47-35 stunner against the Lions last Monday, arguably one of the greatest comebacks in the franchise’s 80-year history.

The Bombers weren’t just lousy in “building” a 32-11 deficit against the Lions, there were wince-inducing moments that were embarrassingly laughable. Worse, head coach Paul LaPolice’s decision to bench Jyles in favour of neophyte Alex Brink was fast becoming a public relations disaster. The boos raining down from the home crowd were getting uncomfortable.

It was like a crowd stopping to jeer a four-car pileup.

Let’s all agree that without the series of improbable events that followed, LaPolice would be wearing that Lions game like a baby-blue leisure suit. Frills on the collar and everything. The man’s sanity would be a matter of open debate. His team would be in smouldering ruins.

What happens? The Bombers win, and lo and behold if a constituency of fans connects the dots and concludes that LaPolice, that sly genius, should be credited for “lighting a fire” under Jyles.

You know, by benching him and keeping him there for three quarters while the Bombers fell behind three touchdowns.

Using this line of logic, it would follow that the introduction of New Coke was marketing brilliance because the consumer revolt only (eventually) reinforced the public’s affection for the original. You know, teaching the world to sing and such.

Hey, perhaps it’s only fair.

If LaPolice’s decisions can be the focal point of all those nail-biting losses, valid or not, the reverse should follow if the Bombers win — no matter how they win.

Which brings us back to the wildly fluctuating optics of the Bombers’ 2010 season. While it took an unbelievable string of events to produce a victory against the self-destructing Leos, how many other losses snapped from the jaws of victory this season could have been avoided with a single first down late in the game? Or a 30-yard field goal? Or just one timely interception or sack?

Never has the fine line between mastermind and village idiot been better illustrated than in Bombers defensive back Deon Beasley being joyously escorted into the Lions end zone in double overtime.

We’ll never know what might have been, of course.

But regardless of how the Bombers’ season unfolds, we now know what the giddy flip side of the coin would have looked like.

The Blue Bombers never needed a miracle to save their season. They just needed one forced fumble here or a punt return for a touchdown there to drastically change the optics and potential outcome of any number of games.

That’s how 4-10 becomes, say, 7-7. That’s how 32-11 Lions becomes 45-37 Bombers and everybody from GM Joe Mack on down is awash in accolades. That’s how the same fans lustily booing become a sea of unadulterated love.

If the 2010 Winnipeg Blue Bombers are anything, they are a testament to the fragility of how success and failure are defined in professional sports.

So close, yet so far away.

Their kingdom for a few points when it counted most.

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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