From Paul Wiecek:

 

If a professional football team's practice falls in a forest but no one sees it, does it exist?

 

That was the question at Investors Group Field Thursday after the Winnipeg Blue Bombers confirmed publicly for the first time they have been holding secret on-field exercises at IGF this season that neither the public nor the media were told about.

The latest stealth workout -- the Bombers are adamant they are not "practices" -- occurred behind closed doors at IGF Tuesday. Head coach Mike O'Shea revealed Thursday his team has been holding the stealth workouts all season.

 

Now, there's nothing wrong with CFL teams holding closed practices. The league rules specifically allow teams to close up to one practice per week to the public and media.

CFL teams have done so from time to time. Both the Edmonton Eskimos and Calgary Stampeders, for instance, have held closed practices now and then in recent years, and the Saskatchewan Roughriders close one practice every week.

 

But while league rules allow closed practices, the same rules also clearly stipulate teams must inform the public and the media the practices are occurring, even if they are closed.

That's not what the Bombers have been doing. Instead, the club has been posting a practice schedule for the media and public this season that specifically states no practice is scheduled, even when the stealth on-field exercises have been occurring.

 

So what does the CFL think about that?

 

League spokesman Jamie Dykstra said Thursday the league has looked into the situation and has accepted the Bombers' explanation what they are doing this season on their first day of a practice week -- 'day zero' -- does not technically constitute a practice.  "We have discussed this with the Bombers and it is our understanding that day zero is a day of meetings where certain players hold walk-throughs (on the field) after reviewing film," said Dykstra.

 

The league's use of the term walk-through to justify what the Bombers are doing on the field behind closed doors is curious. CFL teams also describe the light practices they hold the day before a game as walk-throughs and the league makes it mandatory those be held in public and in full view of the media.

 

Moreover, the stealth on-field exercises are also occurring on a Bombers team that under O'Shea already has the most restrictive media-access policy in the nine-team CFL. The Bombers are the only team in the league that never allow media access to any of the team's assistant coaches.

 

While other CFL teams have occasionally restricted access to assistants in previous seasons, the Bombers will become the first team in CFL history to do so for an entire season, unless O'Shea relents between now and the end of the season.

 

Other CFL teams have been criticized by fans and media for closing their practices. It is a new phenomenon in recent years in a league that was once unrivalled in its fan friendliness.

The Bombers' decision this season to close their first on-field workout of each practice week -- without letting media and the public know the workouts were occurring -- allowed them to escape such scrutiny.

 

That's no small caveat, given the Bombers are holding those stealth workouts in a $210-million stadium that was paid for in large part by taxpayer funds. Indeed, O'Shea said Thursday he is actually opposed to closed practices precisely because he thinks Bombers fans deserve better.  "To me, especially here, the fan base are so important to us and so loyal that if we closed a practice and the fans couldn't come out and enjoy what they enjoy, I think that would be contrary to what I believe in."

 

So what exactly is going on during these stealth workouts and why do the Bombers feel they are so different than the practices they hold the rest of the week? O'Shea said they are simply slow-motion run-throughs of corrections from the last game.

 

"There's nothing about it that's a practice. They're in tennis shoes and ball caps and they're sitting mostly," said O'Shea. "There's nothing organized about it really. It's certainly nothing worthwhile (for fans to see) because it's not as organized as a practice would be. They don't do anything out there." The issue of the Bombers' practice schedule has come up recently in part because the club has held just two full practices in each of the last two weeks despite having lost four of their last five games.

 

O'Shea was asked why he hasn't been asking more of his team on the practice field given the recent losing skid.  "I've always maintained, and what I witnessed the last couple years in my previous job (as an assistant coach), is that fresh was best. Keeping guys physically ready to go allows them to do their job, allows them to execute.

 

"There's an adage in football that when you're tired, the first thing to go is your head... So we do more classroom work and more focus on that kind of study than going out there and running them."

 

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/sports/football/bombers/stealth-sessions-274860401.html?cx_navSource=d-top-story

 

Does the Winnipeg media hate the Bombers? How are they with the Jets?

Jets get a lot more respect from the Winnipeg media.

 

Odd considering how pathetic the Jets have been.

Still in the "if we don't support this thing, it might not last (again)..." honeymoon phase...

Still in the "if we don't support this thing, it might not last (again)..." honeymoon phase...

Winnipeg should be a forever lock for having an NHL team. There are simply not enough U.S. markets that can compare as far as support goes.

What Wiecek says was totally stupid. What does a closed practice & taxpayers money to build a stadium have to do anything? If we use Paul Wiecek's incredibly twisted logic then season & game day tickets should be free to every taxpayer in Winnipeg because you guys paid for that stadium with your tax dollars. Complaining about closed practices & tying it into publc money? Now I've heard everything. 

 

It's hilarious that the folks who tell me not to read these threads can't follow their own advice and not read the newspapers.

 

I would think the difference is that this message board's basic purpose is to talk about the team, the articles, and by extension the press.

 

Where as you decided to call those posters out directly for doing pretty much exactly why this message board exists.

 

As far as I know you aren't part of the Winnipeg media, so why do you care if people complain about it.

 

 

Let's also consider the fact that I've seen numerous threads on this site discussing a well written article as well. We are not slow to give praise to a writer when they deserve it. We're probably even quicker actually, since we're all so desperate for them.

Do we have to have a pack mentality here when we disagree with someone's opinions? I think it's wrong to personally attack TBurgess because he simply stated his opinion. I may not agree with him because I think what Paul Wiecek wrote was totally stupid but TBurgess has every right to say what he thinks without being insulted. There's a difference between being a troll like Road Griller who says **** to draw attention to himself on every thread or being an actual contributor to this site like TBurgess is. I think some of you need to cut him a bit of slack. 

The person who really deserves grief is the sports editor at the FP.  He needs to challenge the reporters to do better, and their columnist at times too.  Problem is the Free Press is governed by seniority.  They can't get rid of anybody once they are tenure, people get promoted based on seniority and whenever they need to make cuts or changes, it is all done by seniority not merit.

 

There's another doozy by Wiecek in the FP today, which has basically nothing to do with the game today, on gameday.  Interesting that these types of articles almost never have a byline of Tait, Penton or Wiebe.

Do we have to have a pack mentality here when we disagree with someone's opinions? I think it's wrong to personally attack TBurgess because he simply stated his opinion. I may not agree with him because I think what Paul Wiecek wrote was totally stupid but TBurgess has every right to say what he thinks without being insulted. There's a difference between being a troll like Road Griller who says **** to draw attention to himself on every thread or being an actual contributor to this site like TBurgess is. I think some of you need to cut him a bit of slack. 

My thought has always been that if you're going to put your opinion out there you had better be prepared for people to take objection to it. 

Do we have to have a pack mentality here when we disagree with someone's opinions? I think it's wrong to personally attack TBurgess because he simply stated his opinion. I may not agree with him because I think what Paul Wiecek wrote was totally stupid but TBurgess has every right to say what he thinks without being insulted. There's a difference between being a troll like Road Griller who says **** to draw attention to himself on every thread or being an actual contributor to this site like TBurgess is. I think some of you need to cut him a bit of slack.

Except he wasn't agreeing with the article, he was whining about posters who happened to be complaining about the article. Which is really adding nothing to the discussion and very close to trolling. He knew the exact reaction he would get when he posted it.

Do we have to have a pack mentality here when we disagree with someone's opinions? I think it's wrong to personally attack TBurgess because he simply stated his opinion. I may not agree with him because I think what Paul Wiecek wrote was totally stupid but TBurgess has every right to say what he thinks without being insulted. There's a difference between being a troll like Road Griller who says **** to draw attention to himself on every thread or being an actual contributor to this site like TBurgess is. I think some of you need to cut him a bit of slack. 

 

You realize he basically insulted everyone else who replied to this thread before anyone even responded to him, right?

Does the Winnipeg media hate the Bombers? How are they with the Jets?

Look up circle jerk and you get the idea how the media treats the jets

C/mon Iso, that's not the way it went down.

It's not the 1st time TBurg has jumped in with his media schtick comment.

He knows darn well when a poorly written article gets printed, chances are there will be opinions on them, more deserved than not.

That's not going to change.

Why is there no fuss when we compliment good writing by the media?

It's like Rich says…it's borderline trolling

I know TBurg well enough here that he's not a troll. I just think his bashing was a bit excessive. 

Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

C/mon Iso, that's not the way it went down.

It's not the 1st time TBurg has jumped in with his media schtick comment.

He knows darn well when a poorly written article gets printed, chances are there will be opinions on them, more deserved than not.

That's not going to change.

Why is there no fuss when we compliment good writing by the media?

It's like Rich says…it's borderline trolling

it's not borderline anything, it is trolling.

 

Much like roadgriller trolls with his comments an dmuch like 17to85 trolls with his i'm smarter than everybody else(they are added solely to get a reaction) comments. There is no borderline about any of it, say something you know isn't true and you know will be strongly argued against just to get a reaction out of people then and you are trolling. The more you do it, the bigger the troll you are.

That's no small caveat, given the Bombers are holding those stealth workouts in a $210-million stadium that was paid for in large part by taxpayer funds.

 

Give. Me. A. ****ing. Break.

No kidding. All teams hold closed practices, if they don't they are doing a disservice to the fanbase. Like Cortez has stated before, yes some teams actually plant fans to scope out opponents practices. Aren't all NFL practices closed to the public?

Why really is it necessary for people to know about practices?

 

I really see this as a non-problem.

It is a non-problem.....but for this lazy media group, it represents a "story" with the ole underlying narrative - Bombers sucking up tax dollars, while shutting out the public, or something of that ilk........

If any team wants to hold occasional closed practices then really so what? If the practices were closed all season then yes, the media & fans would have a right to criticize. But this is a non story except to Paul Wiecek who is the most negative reporter covering the Bombers. He looks for negative things to print.

I was glad to read they were practicing more lol, they need to practice more if they wanna truly be among the best. To satisfy the media they should just send the media the full playbook with any pertinent notes and footage so these guys can do their job! Give them free hotdogs too, cause taxpayer.

 

Does the Winnipeg media hate the Bombers? How are they with the Jets?

Look up circle jerk and you get the idea how the media treats the jets

 

Except when it comes to Evander Kane. 

I listened to the O'shea press conference where he was constantly asked about it by I'm assuming it was WICEK. And honestly, from what O'shea said, I don't think that i would even consider that a practice. O'shea was right with what he said, basically saying fans wouldn't see much, they would just see a few guys on the field in sweat pants and that stuff walking around. I've been to 1 bomber practise this year and that practise i saw, they were all wearing their pads and stuff, this one, they don't. I don't see the big deal here and it seems the majority feels the same way. Wicek, lol, i agree with the others who have said if you go to a practise and look around, you see all the media huddles up, talking to each other, not paying attention to the practise at all, I go back to a time last season i believe, buck pierce threw like 1 pass and toth  tweeted that pierce has looked good today, he threw one darn pass lol.

 

The media doesn't even pay attention to what is going on on the field, they don't. People from outside the city or province may not understand exactly cuz they don't have the luxury to go to a practise if they want but... seriously, for the 2 hours or so i was there, the media guys maybe turned their heads twice to look at the field and that's only when the fans who were there reacted to a play on the field. 

 

If i want to know what happened at a practise, i certainly don't pick up the paper to find out cuz i just won't, theres maybe one or 2 small lines there about what went on at practise, honestly, if i want to know how practise went, i either go myself and check it out (when i can) or just... come to this site and read the fans practise reports because they are a lot more in depth than what the papers give us. That's for sure. 

I don't mind the media asking about O'Shea's practice schedule and how he conducts "Zero Day" practices because finally we do get an insight into why there are only two practices a week. I had wondered about that, especially when we had time for three.

Now we know O'Shea prefers up tempo practices and doesn't want to exhaust his players….which he believes leads to mental exhaustion which leads to posts like Ω√∫˜µ≤≤ makes. mistakes. 

He prefers teaching and fixing errors, with some of it in the classroom.

He feels it's working as evidenced by how much energy they still have in the 4th quarter.

Hard to argue with that.

 

What I don't get is there is ammunition (info) to be gleaned from these practices and backgrounds to every position on the team. But somebody has to do their homework.

Ed Tait does, Randy Turner used to. 

They just have to pay attention to a certain position or positions each time and not only will they get their blurbs…they might learn something

The hate the media in this city has for the Bombers is bordering on obsessive.

I agree the media there sure gets after the team. But I will say as a Rider fan I wish our media asked some friggin questions sometimes that the fans really would like to know the answers to.  O'Shea had a tough post game presser after the labor day game, thought he handled it fairly well. Its a fine line sometimes between the media being too tough and being pom pom wavers.

 

The hate the media in this city has for the Bombers is bordering on obsessive.

I agree the media there sure gets after the team. But I will say as a Rider fan I wish our media asked some friggin questions sometimes that the fans really would like to know the answers to.  O'Shea had a tough post game presser after the labor day game, thought he handled it fairly well. Its a fine line sometimes between the media being too tough and being pom pom wavers.

 

They don't ask hard questions though, they ask stupid questions. There is a really big difference. That's the big problem we all have with the media, it's not that they're hard on the Bombers, it's that they're stupid on the Bombers. Asking hard questions is fine, but they rarely do that. Gary Lawless asks leading questions. He's figured out the response he wants in advance and tries to lead the people into answering the way he wants. Wiecek wishes he could be back at the race track or curling rink so he just throws **** and hopes it sticks without knowing anything about the sport he's covering, Paul Friesen spends his time staring into his toilet looking for **** to disturb. With Ed Tait moving to the Jets the press covering the Bombers really are a bunch of hacks.