Rich

Bit of a controversy in Hamilton right now. There was a 4th quarter offside call on a goal line stand against the Tiger Cats in the Toronto game. You can see the Hamilton players hand clearly over the goal line which means he was offside and in the neutral zone. You can also see Barker behind the ref. This is against league rules in that he can't be standing there, that far away from the Toronto bench. There is concern that there was "coaching" going on, that he was talking to the ref, pointing out the offside, etc. Otherwise it might not have been called as it is very marginal. http://scratchingpost.thespec.com/2014/10/ticats-owner-cfl-officiating-not-good-enough.html?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+thespec%2FDRCe+%28The+Scratching+Post%29 Here was Bob Young's post in the Ticat forum. The officiating in the CFL is not good enough. But he shouldn't be spouting off publicly about it. I hope he is fined for doing it (not that it will matter to him, he can easily cover the fine). This stuff needs to stay behind closed doors. Calling out your officials publicly won't fix the problem. It makes it worse. Officiating is already a hard, thankless job. Don't need this stuff piled on top of it. Barker should be fined too. It is ridiculous he is way down ther eon the field. In the BC game last weekend, Benevides was always running out onto the field, 10 - 20 yards in looking and talking to the officials. He should be fined or assessed a penalty for this too. Stay on your side line on off the field of play. CFL needs to tighten up on stuff like this.

You're right -- taking the contrarian point of view toward every decision the club makes is a real fan. Fans come in all types from Kool aid chuggers who can't ever see anything bad to those who can't see anything good and everywhere in between. From those who can't afford season tickets to those who can afford to go to games even in other cities. From those who vote with their wallets to those to show their displeasure to those who buy anything Bombers including pigeon poop jersey's. From the sunshine, lollipops, rainbows and unicorn set who 'feel sorry for people who can't see just how good we will someday be' to the pessimistic Eyeore's who can't understand how we will ever win another game. All are fans. In a perfect world, they'd all be treated with the same respect. I am curious, which of those groups do you see yourself in?

Doesn't matter whose fault they are, he still took them and and that takes a toll. Wasn't until later in the year that the sacks were on him more then on the O-Line. I don't think anyone would deny that his play has been bad the last 3 - 4 games. But there is a cumulative effect from the punishment he took.

Actually, no. His bad play started when he was taking a beating. Especially when he took that hit to his throwing hand on an opposing players helmet back in mid summer. He has been taking a beating all year.

The Bombers have only given up a record 70 sacks to date. Calgary has only given up 24 and the league average is 45.3. Taking all those hits, you are right he probably isn't hurt, he is just playing like crap.

Pav always starts slow(bad) and finishes slow(bad). But how does he do in the middle?

Kind of concerns me that their trying to insure themselves against this. Just commit to improving the team and there would be no need to do this. A smart business doesn't put all of their eggs in one basket. It's not like they are thinking ... we are going to fool all these suckers into committing long term so we can take the winter off and spend it in Florida. They are still going to do everything they can to upgrade the team and field a winner. Reality is, it is very unlikely the Bombers are contending for the Grey Cup next year.

To a point, yes. No one is happy with the record or how the team played this year, and no one should be. Not the fans, not the management. But this group is not responsible for 25 years of futility and shouldn't be blamed for that. The question in my mind comes down to this. Did they do enough this year to keep their jobs. In that, you have to take into account the team / players they were given and where they are now. Personally, I'm dissapointed with the lack of new impact imports that were not brought in. Fixing the Canadian talent on this team is going to take time, and I can accept that. Recruiting imports should be where the staff is making their bread and butter. That area should be fixable in a shorter time period. I will give this group (Walters / O'Shea) at least one more season before I start calling for the winds of change.

Not sure how I feel about this. Willy is still a young QB and can use the reps to continue growth. However after seeing him play last game, he is either still too injured or seriously shell shocked from the season. If injuries are still hampering him, then go with Marve. If his injuries are "acceptable", then I like him getting to play to try and take the bad taste of the last game out of his mouth. That would be a horrible way to end his season. If the time is split between the QBs as is mentioned in the above post, I would be able to take that. Going to be a boring game. Calgary has nothing to play for, already having 1st place wrapped up. Winnipeg has nothing to play for being out of the playoffs. Hopefully Winnipeg comes out flying for this game. Our players should be playing for their jobs next season. Tough choice for Calgary on how much they play their starters this late in the season. Always tough to balance keeping your players in game shape / condition and worrying about injuries. They have this week, next week, then a bye before their playoffs start. A long time to not really be playing for anything. Wonder if the rust is going to hurt them come playoffs.

The question is what is the commitment for those years. Do you have to pay in full up front, put a deposit down, or just agree you are going to pay (and what happens if you agree you are going to pay then you don't)

With the Bombers record and their play the last few years, I don't think many of the fan base will be thinking that the Bombers have much of a chance of playing in the Grey Cup next year. This is a good way to get a chunk of the season ticket base to buy a Grey Cup ticket anyway.

Yep, sorry for the inconvenience. Apparently we ran out of disk space. An upgrade we did a while back wasn't properly allocated to the server, and everything went down when it ran out of space. And it of course had to happen while I was at the Jets game

The article isn't about what went wrong in Winnipeg, the article is about the value a veteran player can bring to a team. Why would he talk about his part to blame on what went wrong. Did he use it to take a veiled shot at his old boss? Sure. But to imply he doesn't place any blame on himself because you never heard him say it is a bit ridiculous. Any coach who has made it to the level he has has learned to critique and evaluate his methods and refine. Has learned to pull from their mistakes and learn going forward. That is just human nature. I do this in my job all the time after a project or after something has gone wrong. If Lapo doesn't do this, I'm surprised he would have made it as far as he did. Lapo was a rookie head coach, of course he made mistakes. And I'm pretty damn sure he knows it.

IGF isn't original. It is the same design as the Seattle Seahawks stadium, just scaled down. More so then SK's design is to IGF.

Toy Mountain will be collecting unwrapped toys at the Bomber Game for their Christmas drive. If you are heading to the game, bring one out for those less fortunate!

Pick 'Ems need to be in this week by 5:30 PM tonight. http://morningbigblue.com/community/index.php?app=pickems&do=games&pid=5&wid=65

The original story that website links to has a date of August 5, 2013.

Looks like Bowman is the new mayor. Going to be interesting to see what he does in City Hall. Congratulations to our new mayor.

You didn't mention the Willy trade. Walters has done something that other GMs couldn't - get us a QB. That alone gives him an A in my books. Any of Collaros, Willy or Burris would have been a huge upgrade over last year. Walters couldn't make a bad choice at QB unless he decided he didn't want any of them. Collaros would have been a good choice. IMO, not Burris. At this point in his career Burris is pretty much done. He has this season and maybe next season. Unless the rest of the team is fielding a contender, you might as well be trying to find your QB of the future. And the rest of our team wasn't and isn't a contender.

It really depends on how banged up Willy is. If he isn't close to 100 percent then play Brohm again. If Willy has healed up Willy goes back in. If Brohm stinks up the joint the Willy goes back in if he can grip the football.

Reminder that picks need to be in by 6PM tonight!

Except the coordinators "people" are the players. Not the media. Guaranteed the coordinators are allowed and encouraged to speak to the players.

It isn't a valid question when it has been asked and answered the same way numerous times already. O'Shea's answer is that he is the head coach and he can answer any questions they would have for the co-ordinators, it is his job to know. Agree with his answer / policy or not, the media asking over and over just amounts to them bitching and complaining about the policy, not making it a valid question.

Not a lot of info in the presser. O'Shea was asked if Grigsby quit on the team, his answer was quit was a strong word that he wouldn't use, but did say that Grigsby asked for his release. Also it was decided prior to that that Cotton would start again next week because he didn't get enough reps in last weeks game due to them being down by so much so early. Willy is questionable for next week. He still can't quite grip a football, but they will wait for the last minute to decide. January also questionable. More bitching by the media about if and why they don't get access to the assistant coaches. At the end of the presser, one of the media asked why there was a closed practice today. O'Shea explained that the RCMP were running a drill in the stadium today and they couldn't have non staff running around the building. He was then asked why the media wasn't told that before, and O'Shea paused for a moment, pointed at the guy and said "Because I don't have your number, thats why" and walked away from the podium. Thought it was kind of funny. Can imagine what he really wanted to say to the media.

O'Shea press conference starting now http://bluebombers.com/live-press-conference