No penalty for our 13th man

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 28/08/2011 (5397 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The elephant in the room is the 30,000-plus fans in the stands.

And there can no longer be any doubt — the rabid Winnipeg Blue Bombers following this summer has become so loud and so vocal that they are having a material impact on games.

Consider the evidence from Friday night’s sold-out 30-27 Bombers win over the Hamilton Tiger-Cats at Canad Inns Stadium:

— Bombers defensive tackle Doug Brown said things were so loud on the field Friday night that the Hamilton offensive line was having difficulty hearing their own snap count, putting them at a distinct disadvantage. “It’s so much easier when you see their offensive line — they had to hold hands to know what the snap count is,” Brown explained. “It makes it so much easier and advantageous for us to get off the ball.”

— TSN sideline reporter Sara Orlesky tweeted at one point during Friday night’s game that the Canad Inns crowd was the loudest she has heard in the CFL this season.

— Bombers head coach Paul LaPolice said the fans were so loud Friday night they were almost too loud — causing some problems for even the Bombers. “It’s gotten so loud, we’re going to have to start using crowd noise ourselves during practice. We missed a bunch of checks because we couldn’t hear on defence. We have to start practising that ourselves.”

The noise monster is partly of the Bombers’ own deliberate making. Not all the crowd noise — particularly when opponents have the ball — has been entirely spontaneous this season. Sideline stadium announcer and local radio personality Dave Wheeler regularly exhorts the fans to make noise at key times in the game and LaPolice revealed Saturday that’s no coincidence.

“We’ve told Wheeler, ‘When they’re in the huddle, make sure you tell everyone to make noise.’ He’s done a great job of that and it’s gotten loud.”

It may, however, be getting a little over the top at times. Hamilton Spectator beat writer Drew Edwards took some Bombers fans to task Saturday on his blog for some particularly odious tweets directed at Ticats receiver Dave Stala after the game Friday. “I won’t repeat or retweet, but some of the language they used around Dave Stala was homophobic and/or misogynist, and I think that does a disservice to an otherwise excellent fan base,” Edwards wrote.

“It is, I think, a byproduct of the Swaggerville phenomenon which walks a fine line between good-natured confidence and unseemly arrogance. Some fans may not understand — or care about — the difference.”

Stala, of course, was the Ticats player Bomber fans learned to love to hate last week after he mocked the Bombers’ self-styled “Swaggerville” moniker in an interview with TSN. That, in turn, prompted Tina LaPolice, wife of the head coach, to mock Stala on her own Twitter account.

At the end of the day, it was the Bombers who walked the talk. Bombers defensive back Jovon Johnson, the self-ordained CEO of Swaggerville, registered more yards (67) and more touchdowns (1) on his first-quarter interception return than did Stala, who finished the night with just a single catch for 20 yards.

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In a league where the term “13th-man” will forever have a negative connotation, thanks to the Saskatchewan Roughriders and their infamous Grey Cup debacle, the Bombers appear to be making that extra man work in their favour in a season when just about everything has broken the Bombers’ way en route to their current 7-1 record.

Asked if his club has gotten a bit lucky at times this season, LaPolice pointed to things like Johnson’s interception return as evidence of the fruits of hard work and preparation.

But in the next breath, the coach admitted that half the Bombers’ wins this season could very easily have broken the other way.

With those kinds of narrow margins, it makes you wonder if the sellouts at Canad Inns Stadiums — four in a row and counting — are not only producing revenue, but also victories.

paul.wiecek@freepress.mb.ca