the 4th star

Gather up all the commentaries from the last 24 hours or so, like this one or this, and you’ll have a pretty good idea what the latest Mike Kelly fuss is all about. If you don’t, you can always read the exchange between the Winnipeg Blue Bombers head coach and radio-rights holder CJOB again. Then there’s this beauty that surfaced on the Montreal Gazette website last night. Check out this sentence:

Mike Kelly might be the best quote in the CFL, but the Blue Bombers’ head coach is bombastic, arrogant and, at times, unprofessional.

Whoa. And that was the lead.

Oh sure, Kelly has people in his corner. Maybe they’re not the most credible sources (like anyone believes you’re at the gym) and maybe their positions in this latest nail in the coffin have more to do with grinding an axe than anything else, but they’re out there. That’s a blowhard minority position, though. A common refrain from the team spokesmodels and pro-Kelly faction on the Bomber message boards is one of distraction, excusing the actions of Kelly with the coach’s ‘passion for the team’ and stuff like that. Disrespecting the media partners (again) is just how Kelly operates, and his only job for the Bombers is to build and coach a winning football team. That argument losses a lot of colour when you pull the 7-10 record out of the washer and pin-up a post-season opportunity to a win in the final game of the schedule. Oh, but never mind that – there’s a good group of guys in the room, in case you didn’t know.

Kelly’s reportedly Lyle Bauer-forced apology that appeared on the Bombers website following his “regrettable” and “juvenile” post game actions was quite funny. Funny, not for the “I’m sorry you’re fat” message, but for the fact the Bombers must have a specific ‘Kelly Apology’ template for the website. For those of you counting at home, I think this might be four apologies this year: There’s the Saskatchewan comment. There was the Hamilton-spygate apology. Was there one for the Brendan Taman comments? I think there was. Did Kelly apologize for the Pacman thing, too? That would make this FIVE apologies then. Anyway, here are his comments to reporters at the media scrum today. Notice the lack of humble pie.

I apologize if people were offended by the language that I used. I will defend my players like a lion protecting its pride. People that don’t show up to practice that want to make comments about the efforts that are made by our football team will not be tolerated or accepted. It’s that easy.

If I offended people, I apologize. I am passionate about what we do here, I’m passionate about this football team, I’m passionate about these players. I will defend them until there is not a drop of blood left in my body. We went out there, we played hard, and we didn’t get it done.

Two things:

1. Bashing Mitch Zalnasky’s analysis of what happened in Montreal as weak and uninformed because the colour commentator wasn’t at practice that week was…well, weak and uninformed. Zalnasky’s job is to provide objective explanations for what is happening on the field and when a team gets it handed to them like the Bombers did, speculation on the club looking ahead to the biggest game of the season certainly isn’t out of left field. I wasn’t at practice and I gathered the same opinion after watching the Bombers mail it in Sunday. Making it look like you’re working hard isn’t the same as working hard. Ask anyone in a government office.

And it’s not like Zalnasky hasn’t been there before, either. Want to know why his opinion counts, Coach? The guy used to play in the CFL. That looks pretty good on his analyst resume, eh? Who better to speak to what might be going on with the team yesterday? In fact, Zalnasky provided this assessment in the post game, one that certainly would hold some water:

What I was going to say before Mike came on is that you go into the game focused, but if things start to turn against you, you start to lose some of that intensity — because you know you have next week’s game to salvage. I think that’s partly what happened…Game’s over, forget it and move forward, and that’s going to be the challenge Mike Kelly has is to forget this game and move forward.

2. What is with this Kelly bravado about defending the players? Either he’s so insecure about his own standing that he has to go out of his way to at the very least ensure that his employees like him. He sounds so pathetic when he does that. I will defend my players until there isn’t a drop of blood left in my body. We have a good group of guys in the room. I haven’t lost the team. And so it goes. A sure sign of a bad manager is when he or she goes out of his or her way to be friends with the employees.

Of course, the underlying sentiment in Kelly’s employment eulogy – whether its delivered this winter or next season – will be that the tough talking coach will say all the right things when it comes to his Herculean efforts in defending his players, but as soon as the heat gets turned up a few degrees he’ll run for cover. The radio show will be the black rose on his lapel, and his ‘handled internally’ rant will be forever referenced when people talk about the difference between assistant coaches and head men. Questions become off-limits and if you ask me about them, I’m out of here!

But his actions over the last 24 hours show there’s a new wrinkle to Kelly’s media approach. Yes, not only will there be no more discussion on how his childish actions affect the team or how those regular combative displays impact the club’s bottom line and his head coaching future in Winnipeg, people will not be allowed to speculate on why the team just had it handed to them or what could be going on at field-level.

That’s right: If you’re not with us, then you’re against us. Welcome to the world of make-believe, where things like accountability and respect only occur when the sun is shining. What we need around here is more yes-men. And more juice! This is bullshit!