Crappy Honker Award - Grey Cup Edition
by H.F. Salisbury
In the great tradition of recognizing “Cactus” Jack Wells and the Happy Honker Award given out on C-Job radio here in Winnipeg, I present for you yet another installment of the Happy Crappy Honker Award given to an individual(s) for a fantastic unforgivable performance directly related to the continued floundering of our once beloved Winnipeg Blue Bombers. This award is handed out after every Winnipeg Blue Bomber loss.
This one hurts. Bad. The Bombers played poorly for three quarters of the 99th Grey Cup game. It was a boring game for the most part. Lots of “two and outs” for both teams. However one had to win and the Bombers luck ran out. The simple fact of the matter is that you can’t always rely on coming from behind when you play a team as good as BC is. Given we didn’t show up until the 4th Quarter, there were many potential Crappy Honker nominees.
At one point during the game, I said if we won, I’d still give out the award to the referees. I mean, how many missed calls can Team Zebra blow. The answer is lots when you count the number of BC Lion Offensive Pass Interference calls not made. But as usual, I’m not going to go that route and blame the refs on the Bombers loosing. We did a fine job of insuring that ourselves.
Runner up is our punter Jamie Boreham. His average was 36 yards per kick. At one point he had a 16 yard duffed punt. That is brutal. The real problem with that is we give up great field position to BC. The field is shortened and BC gets more offensive plays to choose from in order to move the ball a shorter distance to score a major. At one point after a punt, BC started at approximately the Bombers 45 yard line. Cripes with McCallum kicking for BC, they were already in position for a field goal. They clearly won the kicking game on Sunday. Boreham was a significant piece of the loss but not the biggest.
Which brings me to the Crappy Honker Award winner. That person; loyal ABF readers, is none other than Odell Willis. Willis was a distraction earlier during the week with his tweets. Oh sure you heard the excuses. Coach LaPo said “that’s just Odell being Odell.” My personal favorite excuse came from Odell himself saying “you (The Media) are trying to make something out of nothing. There is no story here.” Sorry Odell, when you are prepping for the championship game in a TEAM sport that you would rather be at home eating turkey in the US with your family rather than working as hard as those around you from the same TEAM… well it is a distraction and amateur hour at best.
However, Willis didn’t earn the Grey Cup Crappy because of his Twitter account. He earned it because he let us down when we needed him the most. In the 3rd Quarter, BC has the ball on their own 19 yard line. Lulay tossed up the lamest of lame duck passes right into the arms of Willis. It was an easy catch and Willis could have walked into the end-zone. The Bombers would have been down only by 8 points (one possession) with a full quarter to go. What happens… Odell Willis dropped the ball. He probably was thinking about what a great tweet he would could send out after scoring rather than concentrating on the job at hand. The worst part… on the resulting drive, BC ate up tons of clock time and scored a major with a pass to former Bomber and current Hot Dog/Lion Mr. Arland Bruce III. With Willis not scoring and ultimately BC getting a major, that’s a 14 point swing in a game that had us down by 15 at the time. I knew we were done right there and than. Made the last 10 minutes that much more excruciating.
Odell, you were one of my favorite bombers but you let me down. You let your team down. You let Bomber Nation down. Little Timmy (name changed to protect the innocent - WHOOT WHOOT) in Section 2A has your number and name on the back of his jersey. Personally if Timmy burns it, I’d be willing to bankroll a replacement and get him a Suber/Johnson/Hefney/Brown/etc jersey. You know… one of the guys happy to be postponing their turkey dinners in order to get the job done for themselves, their team, and their faithful fans.
I’m so pissed at you that you can come pick up your award. I’m not shipping it out. You can find it on the curbside by my house. Just make sure you look really ashamed when you pick it up. Make sure to use both hands when picking it up… wouldn’t want you to drop it. Perhaps walk 19 steps and spike it down. We will for years to come remember who the real Thanksgiving Turkey Twit(er) is.
For yet another year…. I am an ANGRY BOMBER FAN.
