CFL Losers - The Entire East Division

It seems like every year lately the East Division of the CFL is becoming more and more of a joke. A quick perusal of the standings makes this more and more evident. Three of the four teams there are below .500 and two of them are so far below there is no conceivable way for them to crawl back into it. It all starts with Casey Printers for the Hamilton Tiger Cats. A former MOP, he tried his luck in the NFL for the Kansas City Chiefs and was unceremoniously cut. There is nothing new about CFL players trying out for NFL teams, what could be disturbing is that unlike Jeff Garcia, Doug Flutie and Warren Moon, Casey Printers tried out for a terrible team, and didn't even manage to make it on as a backup. His CFL MOP season was tremendous, but given his recent performances in Hamilton and Kansas City, it leads me to believe that the onus for those campaigns was more on the rest of the team than Printers himself.

Look at the Lions, even now, dead last in the West (yet still above .500). They still have arguably the best receiving corps in the league, far and away the best defensive line in the league, a seriously good offensive line, etc. The message should have been sent around the league when Wally Buono started Dickensen instead of Printers in the Grey Cup.

The rest of the division has not fared too well this season either, Toronto is in shambles, Kerry Joseph has recently been benched for under performing. Winnipeg has randomly become an absolute mess, just a smidgen better than the lowly Ti-Cats. Recently Montreal ventured west only to get totally creamed by a hungry Stampeders team that was desperate for some separation in the West (they didn't manage to get it, the Tiger Cats played their best only to revert back to their old ways and lose to Edmonton).

The only thing buoying the Alouette's record this season has been a terrible division to feast on, otherwise they might have been below .500 as well. As terrible as the East is, every once in awhile they show flashes of brilliance. Winnipeg in particular this season has had some amazing 'almost won' games. Mental errors seem to have plagued the cellar dwellers more than anything else this season, o-linemen totally missing blocking assignments, receivers running routes that the quarterback did not anticipate or were not part of the play, etc. This season it looks probable that we will have two west teams in the Cup final, hopefully BC and Calgary.