Why Don’t You Smell What You’ve Been Shoveling
By Mike Alexander
Ever get the feeling of deja-vu? Of course you do. Do you recall the last time the hair on your hairs stood up on end on your arm at the realization that you were completely and utterly lost and unable to find your destination? And worse, had no idea how to access the tools required to get to your destination? I have.
I was in a van driving overnight from a city called Pardubice in the Czech Republic on route to the western edge of Poland. It was something like a 14 or 15 hour drive and we were only a few hours in at about 3:30 AM when I awoke in the back seat to the sound of the van making its way through a bumpy dirt road, apparently in the back of someone’s farmland. Totally off the map. In the front of the van, the driver and the navigator in the front seat anxiously discussed our reality at that moment. Some facts being thrown around involved our GPS unit failing us and not taking into account some road construction. Other points that came up included a strong sentiment agreed by both parties that we would likely end up with our van being commandeered by insane Polish thugs with pistols. People in our van seemed almost resigned to the fact that we were going to be shot multiple times in the face. We took turns assuring each other that our bodies would be thrown in a ditch and left undiscovered for several months. It was a strange time to remember that I was as far away from home as I had ever been and that no one was going to help us out of our situation. Picturing a gruesome murder in a strange land seemed to make as much sense as any other situation that rattled around inside our disturbed brains. And why not? Literally dozens of people are routinely abducted, mutilated, robbed and executed all over the world for reasons that never make any sense to the rest of us. We are honest people that have clean drivers abstracts, who eat balanced meals and who usually do not need to apply for bail while hazily viewing the world through a black eye and cracked rib having been lead down the brightly lit and cold corridors of your local drunk tank.
These scenarios are real and happen to all kinds of people all over the world. These are terrible images and frightening scenarios that best be drilled into the memory banks of the Winnipeg Blue Bombers who are in need of a dire warning of bad things to come should they fall to a 1-3 record tonight at home against the Edmonton Eskimos.
No one here is sounding any alarms just yet. So let me be the first. Failure to dominate the 0-3 Eskimos tonight will likely allow for a gruesome autopsy of a failing team to be on display for all to see in gory detail after tonight. You will feel the same dread and horror that you felt last year and the year before that. It’s awful to contemplate. No one in Winnipeg is up for the task of sitting back and dejectedly watching Ricky Ray find his receivers and chew up the field unobstructed by and injury plagued and stagnant defense, coached by Kavis Reed, a fucking relic and chronic bore who has never been very good at his job. Him and his goddamn lousy schemes and terrible coverage concepts.
But here under a summer sky, from comfortable vantage points at the beach, the cabin, on decks and on patios, it’s easy for us all to shrug our sun baked and possibly burned and tumor-infested shoulders. The Bombers after all, are only 1-2 and hey, lots of teams go 1-2. So what if the team has no composure, possesses troublesome instincts and suffers from a lack of consistency. It’s July and we’re hot and enjoying beer, and staying the fuck out of town whenever we get the chance.
But what I life in Winnipeg really hasn’t changed this year? What if it turned out that we’re starting our fifth or sixth quarterback in two years tonight? Who have we gone through recently? Gone are Dinwittie, LeFors, Bishop and now Buck Pierce, out with a knee injury for an indeterminate amount of time. So that puts Steven Jyles at the helm.
Steven Jyles. Since finding himself outside looking in at the NFL, he quietly headed north and has been warming up benchs and cleaning the work of other people on three teams. In the last five years, he has been a starter only twice. Does this sound familiar? It should because we have seen the likes of Steven Jyles before.
What is the value of a team that has not won a league championship in 20 years? Within such an organization, you find that faces come and faces go without much by way of fanfare. A lot of people stand around and never seem to make an impact. A rotating cast in ineffective yahoos dress for games when really all they are is a bunch of armature hour assholes and well-intentioned jerks who can’t catch a ball. With no trade value, it creates a stagnant situation and everyone suffers from a failure to thrive. Repeat this miserable pattern for the next twenty years. Hang head in a familiar sense of disappointment.
Frankly, I have no reason to celebrate the arrival of a second string bench jerk coming into a game against Ricky Ray, a quarterback who has arranged for space to be made for his name at the CFL Hall of Fame at age 30. The man know how to throw a ball and can read a D with ease. With Fred Stamps ready to continue to lead the league in receptions, I can see Stamps finding his rhythm early against Winnipeg defenders.
It’s not that happy a prospect for serious fans of the game to check this one out tonight. The East is being represented by a team that doesn’t usually show up to play until the second half of the game, once it’s out of reach. And the West is offering up a team that requires a Heimlich maneuver every time they are in possession of the ball. It’s a case of dumb and dumber and all bets are off which bow legged and buck tooth sad sack team will emerge the victor.
And so it’s with decidedly low expectations that we head into tonight’s match. They will all say the same thing. They will all say words about promise and potential. It’s a familiar maze that we find ourselves in. We need to start answering questions about stability and consistency. We need to come up with ways to find ourselves and finding focus to win the game both defensively and offensively. We can no longer speak of death and desecration of our own corpses in farmers’ fields with no chance of survival.
Answers are needed. It’s week four in Winnipeg. Wake the fuck up, Blue.
