TIME FOR CHANGE IN WINNIPEG?

WINNIPEG – For veteran receiver Terrence Edwards, a season like the one the Winnipeg Blue Bombers just ended is about as depressing as it gets.

Edwards and his teammates cleared out their lockers Sunday after finishing 3-15, tied for the team’s worst ever record in the 18-game CFL, capped with a crushing 37-7 loss to the Hamilton Tiger-Cats.

Looking up from the CFL cellar isn’t where a receiver who has spent nine seasons in the league – seven with the Bombers – wants to be at the age of 34.

“It hurts,” said the softspoken native of Tennille, Ga. “Could it be my last season? … I’m planning on returning next year but you never know what will happen, this is professional sports.

“It would be a sad thing if I left Winnipeg with this taste in my mouth.”

Despite injuries that limited his playing time, Edwards finished second on the Winnipeg receiving yards list in 2013 with 549.

With five head coaches in nine years, plus changes at other key spots, consistency throughout the organization seems lacking.

General manager Joe Mack and sophomore president Garth Buchko paid with their jobs for the team’s struggles.

Coach Tim Burke doesn’t know what the future will hold for him. This was his first full season after taking over mid-2012 from Paul LaPolice.

But he agrees stability and success seem to go together in the CFL.

“I think if you look at the teams that are most successful, they’re the most stable,” he said in what, for now at least, was his last scheduled meeting with reporters.

“If you look at Calgary, I think they’re very stable outfit. B.C., very stable. Through the years Montreal has been very stable. It usually starts at the very top.”

The very top right now isn’t all that stable either. Team president Wade Miller, a former player, and general manager Kyle Walters both have “acting” in front of their titles.

A lot of fingers have been pointed at the self-perpetuating board of the community-owned team for not making better decisions.

They weren’t confined to who’s running the team. The new $200-million stadium the Bombers finally opened a year late this season also came with more headaches.

An open-air pressbox at Investors Group Field, for example, needs a $400,000 refit before the CFL will approve a Grey Cup for the city, which the team would like to land in 2015 or 2016.

A lack of planning saw many fans tied up in traffic for hours as they tried to make their way through the few congested roads that allow access to the stadium site, the campus of the University of Manitoba.

If there is a bright side to the disaster this season brought, it may be that major change is unavoidable. And that the stars are aligned to make it easier.

“Sometimes it does take something like this to create change,” says veteran offensive lineman Glenn January, who, like Edwards, doesn’t want to end his career on such a low note.

“I think there is going to be change across the league with the expansion draft. We’ll have to wait and see.”

(Canadian Press)