Wacky year in CFL West
By TERRY JONES -- Edmonton Sun
It's an historic occasion.
Some day you may be telling your grandchildren about it.
"I'll tell ya, sonny, way back when I was your age, way back in ought four, I was there when ...."
It's never happened before.
There's never been a season when no team from the West has a winning record going in to the seventh week of the season or will have one when the weekend is done.
There's never, in the entire history of the CFL, been a key, crucial, maybe even massive game before between two two-win western teams for first place one-third of the way into the season.
LOSER GET PUBLIC FLOGGING
Tonight it's the 2-3 Winnipeg Blue Bombers versus the 2-3 Edmonton Eskimos. Winner goes to .500. Winner gets first place. Loser gets a public flogging.
"You play this game long enough or watch this game long enough, I guess you'll see everything," says Eskimos running back Mike Pringle.
Wally Buono says it won't last. It's an illusion. The B.C. Lions boss figures a West team or two will break out, get it going and end up with a 12-6 season. But in the meantime, it's fair to wonder if the team which loses tonight will end up missing the playoffs even if they end up in third place.
Nobody ever thought much about it before, because everybody figured the CFL's crossover rule was for the West, but ...
"At 11 p.m. one team is going to be 3-3 and the other 2-4. It's going to be interesting to see how this all shakes down. Everybody thought the crossover was for the West but we could see an eastern team here this year for the West semifinal," says Eskimos head coach Tom Higgins.
That would be a first.
Higgins, who says the West coaches are off to such a bad start "even the wife and kids boo you" has a couple of theories.
"No. 1, parity," he says. "The eastern teams have improved and there is more parity in the league than I can remember.
"No. 2, injuries. There have been a lot more injuries in the West so far this year than in the East."
Dave Ritchie says he doesn't have a clue.
"I don't have an answer," said Bombers' much-maligned head coach.
"It's really strange.
"I've been telling everyone this year that it's not how you start, it's how you finish. We've usually had pretty sound starts and not finished so well. Maybe we'll finish well this year."
The Eskimos played with a baling wire and binder twine defensive secondary for a couple of weeks and now the Bombers are going through the same thing.
While he could be leading the conference by this time tomorrow morning, nobody has been getting as much spit and abuse as Ritchie.
"I've been doing this 44 years and the first 43 have been pretty great, but this one ...
"It's how you go," he says. "If you don't go good it's 'get the coach' and 'get the quarterback.' "
Maybe it's the quarterback, laughed Ritchie, who has watched Khari Jones struggle this season.
Actually, in all seriousness, quarterbacks explain a lot of things east-west so far this season.
"It's those young quarterbacks in the East. Those 50-year-olds," said Ritchie of oldtimers Damon Allen and Danny McManus up there with Anthony Calvillo as the top three quarterbacks in the CFL statistics.
MAYBE IT'S THE QUARTERBACKS
Eskimos defensive co-ordinator Greg Marshall thinks it's the quarterbacks, too. The western ones.
"It's been a long time since the West has had a season where the quarterbacks have been so unstable. You've had injuries to Nealon Greene in Saskatchewan and Dave Dickenson in B.C., the situation with Jason Maas returning to take over from Ricky Ray here and the problems Khari has had in Winnipeg," he says.
"There's been so much uncertainty behind centre," adds Marshall.
"As the quarterback goes, the team goes," says Pringle.
Maybe it's to each his own.
"We purged the defence. I don't think I'd do that again," said Ritchie of his problems with Winnipeg.
"Age and dollars," he added of the reasoning in the turnover, particularly in the secondary.
Luck may even play in there somewhere. Eastern teams are plus 20 in the giveaway-takeaway stats for turnovers.
Whatever, it takes us to tonight and a game which is going to leave one team in position to salvage their 0-3 (Eskimos) or 0-2 (Bombers) start to the season and move onward and upward while leaving the other back in the hole they dug themselves in the first place.
This is not the way the West is usually won.
