saskbluefan

Well if this was the Argos we would all mock the move as bringing in another name guy who flamed out in the NFL. But since its the Bombers it's awesome. Can't hurt anyway and sends the message they're trying.

IS Gilmore hurt?

The only fact is that Edmonton traded for Reilly's rights and Winnipeg didn't. The rest is speculation and hearsay. I would agree with this but I don't think anybody else would. It's hard to argue Reilly didn't always want to go to Edmonton when he ended up going to Edmonton. I just think we don't know that. Even if he did favor Edmonton an exclusive negotiating window and enough Sir Robert Bordens might have changed the outcome. As those kind ofthings do in a lot of other free agent cases. There are some people who believe there is absolutely nothing Joe Mack could have done to keep LaBatte either.

I think all of this starts with the presumption Reilly wanted to only go to Edmonton and works backwards from there. I think the facts are a bunch of stuff happened that you and I don't know about and Reilly ended up on the Eskimos. The team that wanted him more got him.

But is it worth that just for the chance to talk to him? 'Cause there's no guarantees that he'd sign. It was JUST the rights to talk to him... Can't argue with that. I guess you would need to make sure you've done your due dilegence (tampering) so that you knew he would be willing to sign with you. Now, somebody is going to jump in and say no way he was signing here no matter what. Which I don't believe but I'm not going to argue anymore because it's been argued to death and it's hypothetical anyway. Just out of curiosity ... In your opinion, how much diligence is due? I mean, to me, it's an obvious red flag when Wally says "Edmonton is allowed to talk to him, but Winnipeg isn't" Why isn't Winnipeg? The obvious answer to me is that Wally knew we wouldn't like what Reilly's agent had to say. See I don't see it quite that way. I think Edmonton said we want to trade for Reily and Wally said "ok but you can't talk to him" and Edmonton said, "Well then get stuffed" and then they negotiated and something got worked out. I think Winnipeg said we want to trade for Reily and Wally said ok but you can't talk to him and Winnipeg said "We can't get Reilly which is ok because we can find someone better ourselves anyway." It never made sense to me that Wally said Edmonton can talk to him and Winnipeg can't. And that Edmonton has to give us a 2nd and 3rd and Winnipeg has to give us a 1st and 3rd. I believe Wally opened negotiations with both teams at the same place and Winnipeg walked away and told everyone they couldn't get him and Edmonton kept at it and got him. For better or worse. Okay. Please explain why Wally would not let ANYBODY talk to him. All it could do is increase the return he could get in a trade. Possibly, he told people that as a negotiating tactic. It's leverage he had. Really the only leverage he had. You don't want to pay what we want take your chance Feb 15th. If everybody is talking to him then he has no leverage because they are all essentially negotiating with him in advance as if he's already a free agent.

You mean like saying he only wanted to play in Edmonton and Winnipeg could never have gotten him because he's from Washington State and Edmonton is closer? As if he's flying home every day after every practice. lol Oh yeah, and magnanamous Wally took less and refused to negotiate with one team because he wanted Reilly to get his wish? That's not skewing the facts at all.

But is it worth that just for the chance to talk to him? 'Cause there's no guarantees that he'd sign. It was JUST the rights to talk to him... Can't argue with that. I guess you would need to make sure you've done your due dilegence (tampering) so that you knew he would be willing to sign with you. Now, somebody is going to jump in and say no way he was signing here no matter what. Which I don't believe but I'm not going to argue anymore because it's been argued to death and it's hypothetical anyway. Just out of curiosity ... In your opinion, how much diligence is due? I mean, to me, it's an obvious red flag when Wally says "Edmonton is allowed to talk to him, but Winnipeg isn't" Why isn't Winnipeg? The obvious answer to me is that Wally knew we wouldn't like what Reilly's agent had to say. See I don't see it quite that way. I think Edmonton said we want to trade for Reily and Wally said "ok but you can't talk to him" and Edmonton said, "Well then get stuffed" and then they negotiated and something got worked out. I think Winnipeg said we want to trade for Reily and Wally said ok but you can't talk to him and Winnipeg said "We can't get Reilly which is ok because we can find someone better ourselves anyway." It never made sense to me that Wally said Edmonton can talk to him and Winnipeg can't. And that Edmonton has to give us a 2nd and 3rd and Winnipeg has to give us a 1st and 3rd. I believe Wally opened negotiations with both teams at the same place and Winnipeg walked away and told everyone they couldn't get him and Edmonton kept at it and got him. For better or worse.

But is it worth that just for the chance to talk to him? 'Cause there's no guarantees that he'd sign. It was JUST the rights to talk to him... Can't argue with that. I guess you would need to make sure you've done your due dilegence (tampering) so that you knew he would be willing to sign with you. Now, somebody is going to jump in and say no way he was signing here no matter what. Which I don't believe but I'm not going to argue anymore because it's been argued to death and it's hypothetical anyway.

I always said it was never about what you had to give up for Mike Reilly. First rounder? A first and a third A second and a third? Meaningless. It was always about whether you thought Mike Reilly could be your QB for the next 5-10 years. Because if so, he's worth all of the above and more.

Why WAIT when Cauchy Muamba is already here?

Are the Huskies the good one? Or is that the other Edmonton team? I voted for the Rifles anyway. If not, Bisons for sure. Did Carter ever get his special permission to play Rifles again after dressing for that one game?

Well someone's going to take the job. And if it's not an experienced guy it's going to be someone like O'Day. A lot will depend on Wade's ability to convince someone that things will change. ie. they will answer only to him, not meddling hobbyists on the board and that the money will be available to be competitive. O'Day might stay where he is. So might McEvoy and Murphy etc. But these jobs aren't falling off trees and I doubt O'Day sees Brendan going anywhere soon.

Though I'm not convinced Buck isn't the best bet to win this game- not that I want to engage in argument 7,523 about that right now- this is for sure the best move. Anything that casts an eye to the future is the best move.

Agree. And I know this is kerosene around here but of all the "known commodity" GM's Brendan is the most likely to come here. Sask won't want to lose O'Day. Brendan has an affinity for the Bombers. He and Miller have a previous relationship. Well, we could go on and on. And I won't even complain when he trades draft picks for a Quarterback. Bombers should have some strategic (for a change) leaks about wanting to go hard after O' Day. Let the fan base in Sask get all panicky about losing him.

This is why Chris Williams is sitting out the season.

It's an interesting point. They say "nobody owns the Bombers." Well when your revenues are in the area of 10 mill a year and you owe someone about 100 mill, they own you. If the current Premier or the next one or the next one or the next one decides changes are needed then changes are coming.

Can we discuss Marcel's purple shirt on here or does it need it's own thread? Can somebody hook the guy up with some team apparel?

If we are serious Bomber fans talking about serious subjects that actually mean something then this piece is far more relevant then what the Riders play by play guy is blogging about. But there is no thread for this and maybe there should be. What do you think of BArtley's A,B,C plan for fixing the way the club is run? http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/local/community-owned-puntthat-idea-220083901.html There are people who believe in all sorts of fanciful things in Manitoba that unfortunately do not exist. You know, like Sasquatch, Manipogo, balanced provincial budgets and a community-owned Canadian Football League franchise. Contrary to popular belief, the Winnipeg Blue Bombers are not a community-owned football club. What's officially known as the Winnipeg Football Club is a non-profit organization without any form of public ownership whatsoever. Yet the myth persists that the Blue & Gold are somehow community-owned. The main culprit is the club itself, which gleefully perpetuates the fiction. "As a community-owned team, we are responsible to our longtime and supportive fans," reads a misleading passage in the otherwise excellent history section of the official franchise website, www.bluebombers.com. This simply isn't true. No public entity owns the club. The City of Winnipeg doesn't own the team. Neither does the province, Ottawa, a Crown corporation or any of the multitudes of quasi-non-governmental agencies -- "quangos," as the British gleefully call them -- that conduct the affairs of government without being subject to pesky governmental rules. While the city and province did plunk down $190 million of the $200 million required to build Investors Group Field -- and only expect to recoup $160 million, plus interest, over several decades -- Main Street and Broadway don't own so much as the chinstrap on Max Hall's helmet. Similarly, Bombers fans have nothing remotely resembling ownership of the Winnipeg Football Club. Yes, ticket buyers pay for the bulk of the club's expenses, but that doesn't translate into ownership. Being a customer does not make you an owner: No matter how many times you buy a Big Mac, you still don't own a piece of McDonald's. So what is the Winnipeg Football Club? As governance expert Andrew Moreau pointed out in these pages a week ago, the club is a corporation without share capital. What that means is no individual owns any piece of the team, which is run by a board of directors. In this way, the Winnipeg Football Club is no different than hundreds if not thousands of other non-profit organizations in Manitoba. Bombers fans have no more of an ownership stake in the football club than, say, Winnipeg Folk Festival patrons have in the annual summer shindig or Folklorama attendees have in the Winnipeg Folk Arts Council: Which is to say, no stake whatsoever. There is such a thing as a community-owned football team. The NFL's Green Bay Packers, which operates in the smallest market in North American major professional sport, has sold stock to the public five times over the past 80 years. No individual can own more than 200 Green Bay shares, which don't actually allow their holders to have any direct say in the way the Packers operates. But those shareholders do elect a board of directors, which in turn appoints an executive committee that actually runs the NFL club. You would think Winnipeg would be eager to model itself after Green Bay, considering how this city wound up with its name. Winnipeg is named after Lake Winnipeg, which was accidentally handed the same name the French gave to an algae-covered section of Lake Michigan: Green Bay, which the Jesuits called "Baye des Puans." That translates into "Bay of Stinkards" in English and simply "Ouinipeg" in Algonquin. But I digress. Instead, Regina would copy the Packers' model. The Saskatchewan Roughriders, which play in the CFL's smallest market, retooled their ownership model a decade ago to resemble that of the Green Bay NFL franchise. The Riders have sold shares three times since 2004, set a limit of 20 shares per person and are governed by an 11-member board of directors. The Winnipeg Football Club has no shareholders. But the club has made a token effort to appoint one member of the public to the board. After accepting nominations from the public, the Bombers board will select a single person to sit within its midst. As Moreau pointed out, this isn't quite the same as actually allowing fans to elect someone. Given the horrific recent performance of the Winnipeg Football Club, both on and off the field, fans can be justified in wondering whether it makes sense to run a professional sports franchise with an unaccountable board. It's also fair to consider whether the club would be better off with no board whatsoever. Five years ago, this sort of talk was controversial. In 2008, many fans freaked out when lawyer-philanthropist-entrepreneur David Asper -- now vice-chairman of the Bombers board -- sought to purchase the club. At the time, some fans were concerned about the spectre of privatization, not realizing the club is already a private entity, even if it does not exist to maximize a profit for any owner. Today, many of those same fans might welcome a private owner. But there are few businesspeople insane enough to acquire a football club that's currently in the midst of paying off $95 million worth of stadium-construction debt. A deal to hand the Bombers over to a private owner would resemble the NHL's sale of the Phoenix Coyotes, which effectively involved paying an owner to buy the hockey team. But unlike in Glendale, Ariz., there is no sucker of a municipality in Manitoba to bankroll such a crazy plan. In other words, don't expect True North Sports & Entertainment to suddenly skate into the Bombers picture, as much as many Winnipeg sports fans wish that would happen. The best fans can and should demand: A) the elimination of the Bombers board's power to appoint its own members; a transition to a transparent appointment process; and C) the transfer of power over all operations to an executive management group that will succeed the crisis-management efforts of interim CEO Wade Miller. As my colleague Gary Lawless wrote on Saturday, anything less than wholesale change will result in fans giving up on the Bombers. Fans can accept losing -- heck, they've got used to it over the past 23 years -- but they must be given hope. Start with the little stuff. Stop pretending a pro sports franchise is a "community-owned football club" and start running it like a business, not a club. bartley.kives@freepress.mb.ca

We can get mad at the source all we want or agrue the specifics but no denying their is serious dysfuntion going on.

I was always Mack bashing while he was here. Well, not always but the last couple of years anyway. Mostly in response to some IMWT type statements that I found completely off base. Not because he was a bad guy but because I strongly felt he was in over his head in regards the totality of the GM's job and because I thought he had some flawed philosophies that he was too unwavering on. But now that he's gone I wouldn't do that (above paragraph being the exception). The guy lost his job and why pile on? Plus, nobody likes and "I told you so" type. I would rather argue with you guys about what to do now then what we did before. It's in people's nature to want to believe and believing in the hidden genuis of Joe Mack was the best way to believe happier times were just ahead. Especially when the alternative is what's happening now. A complete rebuild with a new guy who will probably be hired by incompetent meddlers on the cheap (in other words the same way Joe Mack was hired).

Assuming only rostered players are in the draft (not guys who teams own CFL rights to like Bilikudi and Mulumba): Greaves, Swiston, Pencer, Etienne, Kohlert, Muamba If Bilikudi and Mulumba are included, I'd knock off one of the receivers and protect Mulumba. Pencer is an interesting study in the post-Mack world. What happens to him after he comes off the 9 gamer. If Walters and the coaches totally don't believe in him and he was forced on the by Mack he could be gone without ever playing a game. Given that this is a lost season they should play him a bit and see what they have.

Coaching is a problem. Not the problem.

I could grab stats that show Setven Jyles is better than both of them. Not that this isn't a well presented argument here because it is. Truth, they both suck. And so does most of what's around them in a chicken and egg sort of way. These stats underscore to me that Walters or whoever replaces him will eventually overpay for one of Collaras, Mitchell, Tate or Willy. And I'm ok with that.

In hockey that happens almost everytime a Coach is let go. they accept another position within the organization. Often scouting. I'm sure sometimes they do very little and sometimes they do a lot. Too bad this isn't as common in football. I would rather be paaying Lapo to be at NFL camps writing reports then working for TSN. Then he could scout CIS all fall. You can say he would never do a good job of it etc but it works in hockey.

Our collective will in pulling together to support the team in this tough time won't solve anything. That's namby pamby feel good babble. The people in charge of this thing or the people who replace those people need to solve these problems. Us ignoring them won't do it. The fans are complaining because yesterday was a disorganized mess. Because the whole organization is a disorganized mess. P.s. yesterday Lawless told us that as soon as today Walters would be named interim GM. Today he's named interim GM. Glad they sealed off those leaks.