Well, so much for that

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 06/11/2010 (5449 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

To say the Winnipeg Blue Bombers’ 2010 swan song had a pointless vibe is an understatement.

At least a pre-season game is a pretense to the year ahead, when hope and the promise of sun-baked days await.

But then no one was under any illusions, right?

Just cast a glance into the stands at Canad Inns Stadium about 15 minutes before kickoff and it looked like it was Phoenix and a hockey game broke out. But lo and behold if Bombers fans, despite all the abuse they’ve suffered, didn’t start to file in to make the scene respectable (22,056).

That’s not the depressing part, though.

Face it, in all the recent years of Bombers football — no matter what the outcome — can you remember such a lost season?

Think about it: Back in June, which seems like a wistful memory now, this was a franchise with questions desperate for answers. Could Buck Pierce and Steven Jyles solidify the crippling void at quarterback? Could incoming GM Joe Mack bring back a semblance of order to a team in chaos? Would rookie head coach Paul LaPolice soothe the faithful who had revolted under the Mike Kelly regime?

Well, let’s say you were lost at sea for the summer, or a Chilean miner and returned to civilization just in time for kickoff Friday night. Would one of those questions be answered?

One, perhaps. That Mack has at least instilled an aura of respectability and professionalism to the organization. And that’s something, but what else?

If the 2011 season was to open tomorrow, the remainder of those uncertainties would not only be valid, but muddled by a 4-14 season devoid of much in the way of long-term solutions to a 20-year-old problem.

For example, for the Bombers to begin training camp in 2010 with Pierce and Jyles and expect different results would be a huge risk. Besides, that would be the same Steven Jyles, don’t forget, who was benched by LaPolice with the Bombers’ playoff hopes still hanging by a thread. So that’s where Jyles stands, whether anyone inside the Bombers camp wants to admit the painfully obvious or not.

So, clearly, the quarterback question remains unanswered. What? Did somebody say Ricky Ray will be a free agent?

Then there’s the head coach, who for all his patience and diligence and saying the right thing has just lived through his worst nightmare. Because if you had told LaPolice back in June, when his team was 2-2, that he would win just two more games he would have broken into a cold sweat. He wouldn’t have slept for a month. He would have been sick to his stomach.

So would the board of directors who hired Mack, who hired LaPolice. So would the diehards.

Yet here we are.

Still, in the process of this train wreck the Bombers actually set a CFL record with nine losses by four points or less. So it would be rash (for a reasonable observer, at least) to conclude that LaPolice has been a total bust. Or Mack, for that matter.

Even if firing LaPolice was a possibility — which it is not — how could it be justified? I mean, um, other than the four wins out of 14.

After all, when the Bombers had a healthy Pierce and Jyles, they were 2-2. Nobody was complaining. Quite the opposite, in fact.

Besides, judging a team now employing its fourth quarterback of the season is about as fruitless as drawing any conclusions from a who-gives-a-damn game in November. Even the fact that greenhorn Joey Elliott has, during his brief audition at quarterback, shown more spunk and guile than any of the carousel of rookies the Bombers have thrown to the wolves in recent years means about as much or little as you want it to mean.

And that’s the unfortunate rub.

They played a football game Friday night. And the final result didn’t mean a thing.

It was just, well, there.

Alas, a more fitting microcosm for a lost season would be hard to conjure.

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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