Since other people have to read this besides me, I will refrain from filling this column with exclamation points.
I will, however, proudly applaud my Toronto Argonauts, who played championship-calibre football when it counted the last few weeks and ran the show against the hottest team in the CFL, the Calgary Stampeders.
Given that the Argos missed the playoffs last season and haven't done much of note since winning the 2004 Grey Cup, I expected this to be a building year. So did just about everyone else, except, apparently, Argos general manager Jim Barker.
He was bound and determined to remake this team from a bottom dweller to a Grey Cup champion, in the historic 100th Grey Cup, on home turf.
Bringing in Ricky Ray for peanuts certainly helped toward that goal, but it took more than that.
Ray was the calm veteran who got them this far, but it doesn't happen without the hiring of Scott Milanovich as head coach. The former Montreal Alouettes offensive co-ordinator was the perfect fit for this job. He was the right man for an offence that has consistently been the worst in the CFL in recent years.
Along the way, the organization had the guts to make a deeply unpopular move in releasing running back Cory Boyd, at the time the league's rushing leader, in order to hand Chad Kackert the reins.
Kackert had shone before when he got limited opportunities to start. There was no doubt he could play. But release Boyd? For nothing? It didn't sit well. Now we know that Milanovich and Barker knew exactly what they were doing, and Kackert - who's a very likeable guy on a team full of them - is now a Grey Cup MVP.
This was a team that took some time to get to where it needed to be. There were struggles in the early going. Inconsistency. Lots of new faces who took awhile to get used to their new teammates and make an impact. Really, it only all came together in the last five weeks.
It was only two months ago that receiver Jason Barnes, a significant free agent signing, was released by the team. He hadn't done anything of note, despite having played with Ray in Edmonton.
But Barnes was a key contributor the last few weeks after being brought back, as was fellow receiver addition Mo Mann.
Other players took a while to get comfortable as the season wore on. Chris Jones, the wizard we call a defensive co-ordinator who shut down Jon Cornish on Sunday for the third time this season, wanted defensive end Ricky Foley to adapt to more of a drop-back role as part of pass coverage.
It wasn't long ago that Foley just didn't seem to fit in Jones' defence. Now he's the top Canadian in the Grey Cup, in part thanks to a key early fumble recovery that set up the opening touchdown by Chad Owens.
Other defensive players like Pacino Horne and Marcus Ball took awhile to hit their stride.
All that matters is the Double Blue came together at the right time, shut up the critics (including myself at times) and carried out Barker's blueprint to completion.
Now let's hope more people in Toronto begin to embrace the Boatmen. Grey Cup week was a good start - so much for the people complaining that Toronto would do a horrible job - but it may take more than that to regain relevance in a city with so many entertainment options.
***
The Estevan Bruins missed a big opportunity to solidify their grasp on fourth place in the Sherwood Conference on Saturday.
Instead, after a 5-3 loss to the Kindersley Klippers that saw the Bruins put together a terrible first 40 minutes, the Bruins are back in fifth place, two points behind the Klippers.
The Bruins still had at least two games in hand on every team in the SJHL heading into Yorkton last night - and as many as five on some teams - but as head coach Keith Cassidy said following the Klippers game, there's no point in having games in hand if you don't take advantage of them.
The Bruins had turned in a pretty solid effort in a 5-2 win over La Ronge on Friday, a game that saw a stellar first game back from injury for Matt Brykaliuk, and the continued emergence of left winger Austin Daae.
But the Bruins just never got their act together against Kindersley, with a poor first period going from bad to worse when the two teams got chippy in the second period.
The officiating wasn't great, there's no denying that - but in no sense of the word did the Bruins deserve to win, good officiating or not.
The Bruins will play four road games in five nights beginning Friday, a stretch that could either resign them to the bottom half of the division for good, or help them make some headway toward a top-three spot.
