Yet that's exactly the sour feeling that was percolating in Winnipeg prior to the opening kickoff. Because you don't head out for a Bombers home game anymore wondering about such mundane questions as, "Can they win?" No, you go to a Bombers home game and wonder just how messy it could get. That's what it's sunken to, and it's getting very, very expensive.

Can one single victory over another equally challenged rival turn around the Bombers' fortunes? Absolutely not. It's going to take awhile.. That's why [Michael Bishop] and Co.'s performance was so crucial. The tsunami-like tide of bad public relations was threatening to swallow the club whole. The anti-Kelly forces were growing exponentially. A witness relocation program for the beleaguered head coach was in the offing.

That's the weird thing, frankly. Because while Kelly arrived in Winnipeg with the reputation of an offensive guru, rooted in his tenure as Bombers' offensive co-ordinator in the mid-1990s, it's as though the less he meddles in the X's and O's, the more this year's cast produces.