Will ‘Groundhog Day’ ever end for Bombers?

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 01/11/2010 (5453 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Earlier in the 2010 season — when the frustration over all these close Winnipeg Blue Bombers losses was just beginning to build — Doug Brown referenced the movie Groundhog Day.

That 1993 cinematic gem featured a frustrated TV weatherman covering the annual Groundhog Day event in Punxsutawney, Pa., and waking up every morning on the exact same day with the exact same scenes happening over and over and over again.

Now, yours truly was recapping that movie in the wee hours after Saturday night’s 16-13 overtime loss to the Edmonton Eskimos at Commonwealth Stadium, considering whether it is the perfect representation of a team that set a CFL record this season with eight losses by four points or less.

Yes, the 2010 season has occasionally felt like Groundhog Day with this team freezing up in the critical moments of contests, with this team taking far too many stupid penalties, with this team having to use four different quarterbacks and struggling to find the end zone when it matters most and ultimately losing tight games over and over and over again.

In the movie, the TV-weatherman character Phil Connors — played perfectly by Bill Murray — first relives his day by going on drunken rampages, stealing, seducing various women, attempting to kill himself a number of different ways and even kidnapping the groundhog, Punxsutawney Phil.

But, alas, he still finds himself waking up over and over on Feb. 2 in small-town Pennsylvania.

At the peak of his frustration, he laments:

“I was in the Virgin Islands once. I met a girl. We ate lobster, drank piña coladas. At sunset, we made love like sea otters. THAT was a pretty good day. Why couldn’t I get THAT day over, and over, and over…”

Phil Connors, meet Bomber Nation. Oh, if only the Bombers could be reliving the 1980s or late ’50s/early ’60s again…

But at least in the flick there’s a happy Hollywood ending with the guy getting the girl and living happily ever after. And so it’s here, as the season is about to close, where Groundhog Day and the 2010 Bombers are not at all alike.

Yes, by the end of the movie Phil has re-examined his life, learned to play the piano, to sculpt ice and speak French — Rita, the gal he’s chasing, loves French poetry — saves lives and helps the townsfolk while eventually nabbing the love of his life.

My question, then, is this: when does the plot finally change for this Bomber side?

Could it be this Friday in, mercifully, their final game of the season at home against the Calgary Stampeders? Is it sometime early in the 2011 season?

Or is there some sort of character flaw/talent/coaching issue that will continue to see this heartache play out over and over again unless it is identified and repaired?

We know head coach Paul LaPolice is thinking the same thing because late Saturday night — not long after the players and coaches got the F-bombs out of their systems behind closed doors — the boss emerged and still looked like he wanted to grab somebody by the throat and squeeze.

Really, really hard.

“We can say all we want about close games, but we give games away,” said LaPolice. “We gave that game away. They had two drives that were all based on penalties… we can’t do that and if guys want to do that and be selfish like that they can’t play for us.

“It’s Week 17. We can say how young we are as a team and all that stuff but if we continue to make the same mistakes we have to make changes because if guys want to do that all the time… it’s not right.”

“Winners,” added defensive end Phillip Hunt, “find a way to win games at the end. It’s frustrating. It’s like I keep saying every week: we’ve got to learn from this and keep pushing forward.

“All these close games… we’ve got to find out a way to win at least some of them.”

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Yup, that would certainly be a dandy place to start.

In the meantime, however, many Bombers will likely spend the winter occasionally reliving all the heartache over and over again. We know LaPolice will.

They’ll wake up each day with the clock radio coming to life at 6 a.m. and Sonny and Cher warbling I Got You Babe.

And that might just be the best way to represent the torture of the 2010 Bomber season.

ed.tait@freepress.mb.ca