I, Chicken Little, have decided that indeed the sky is falling. Others in Bomber Land are simply choosing to pick out individual falling stars disintegrating into dust. The INDIVIDUAL EMPHASIS: It's the GM. No, it's the quarterback. No, it's the coaching. Others are focusing on the offensive line, while we rant and rave about the draft and free agent picks. Some are picking the city itself is the reason the Blue Bombers cannot succeed.
This argument has gone on and on for a quarter-century, literally... really. Our last championship was 26 years ago. What is the common thread, the repeated over and over cause of our failure? Or are we just randomly unlucky as our personality and character trait? Can we even say that there is a single cause?
Isn't it easier to say there is no pattern, no analysable source for the failure?
We used to say that the New York Mets would be a joke forever, until one day they weren't anymore. They were actually championship calibre. So what changed with them?
We love to dump on the Saskatchewan Rough Riders but they went all out to win a Grey Cup and they did it. Then when they realized that the team had developed into stardust, in the aftermath, they went out and did something. They hired the Grey Cup winner's coach, a hated man called Jones. He has talent, he finds talent and he is demanding for the very best a player can put out. We can see how critical football is to the Regina community. Businessmen get involved with their own money; people make sacrifices for the team. The Rough Riders is like the province's National sport and obsession.
By contrast, in Winnipeg, our board of directors is like an old boys club. It's very prestigious to be on the board, a status symbol, not an act of self-sacrifice. And we're a very stingy lot, nicknamed Wholesale City for our cheapness. It was almost like a national emergency when we paid big bucks for Matt Dunigan back in the mid-90s (and we still had a little bit of sense left from the not too far removed Grey Cup days). I for one don't really believe at all that our current Board of Directors cares enough to do what it takes to win it all. There are exceptional individuals on the Board from time to time but for the most part they are a lackadaisical lot were sitting on their personal laurels while a couple of others are accountability types was only ambition is to protect the investment of the City and the Province. No one is ever going to light a fire under that group... never in a million years. We don't have anything resembling true leadership there. Wade Miller was a perfect hire to represent that board.
The fate of the Bombers is not going to change because we are perpetuating the root of the problem. As one sage once said "they heal the wound of my people slightly". They just appease us with the hope that "we are doing the best we can": hoping that we believe our former glory days will somehow return. Those that control our fate have no motivation.
The sky has fallen; we just haven't accepted it yet.
I, Chicken Little, have decided that indeed the sky is falling. Others in Bomber Land are simply choosing to pick out individual falling stars disintegrating into dust. The INDIVIDUAL EMPHASIS: It's the GM. No, it's the quarterback. No, it's the coaching. Others are focusing on the offensive line, while we rant and rave about the draft and free agent picks. Some are picking the city itself is the reason the Blue Bombers cannot succeed.
This argument has gone on and on for a quarter-century, literally... really. Our last championship was 26 years ago. What is the common thread, the repeated over and over cause of our failure? Or are we just randomly unlucky as our personality and character trait? Can we even say that there is a single cause?
Isn't it easier to say there is no pattern, no analysable source for the failure?
We used to say that the New York Mets would be a joke forever, until one day they weren't anymore. They were actually championship calibre. So what changed with them?
We love to dump on the Saskatchewan Rough Riders but they went all out to win a Grey Cup and they did it. Then when they realized that the team had developed into stardust, in the aftermath, they went out and did something. They hired the Grey Cup winner's coach, a hated man called Jones. He has talent, he finds talent and he is demanding for the very best a player can put out. We can see how critical football is to the Regina community. Businessmen get involved with their own money; people make sacrifices for the team. The Rough Riders is like the province's National sport and obsession.
By contrast, in Winnipeg, our board of directors is like an old boys club. It's very prestigious to be on the board, a status symbol, not an act of self-sacrifice. And we're a very stingy lot, nicknamed Wholesale City for our cheapness. It was almost like a national emergency when we paid big bucks for Matt Dunigan back in the mid-90s (and we still had a little bit of sense left from the not too far removed Grey Cup days). I for one don't really believe at all that our current Board of Directors cares enough to do what it takes to win it all. There are exceptional individuals on the Board from time to time but for the most part they are a lackadaisical lot were sitting on their personal laurels while a couple of others are accountability types was only ambition is to protect the investment of the City and the Province. No one is ever going to light a fire under that group... never in a million years. We don't have anything resembling true leadership there. Wade Miller was a perfect hire to represent that board.
The fate of the Bombers is not going to change because we are perpetuating the root of the problem. As one sage once said "they heal the wound of my people slightly". They just appease us with the hope that "we are doing the best we can": hoping that we believe our former glory days will somehow return. Those that control our fate have no motivation.
The sky has fallen; we just haven't accepted it yet.