U Sports Football Report (Week 2)
With the season in full swing, the top teams were having their way with their competition but a more interesting story was developing.
The OUA is now three weeks into their season and in those three weeks, one team has been more surprising than any other.
The University of Toronto has a long history in football as they have been one of the most legendary teams in Canadian football.
They are one of the few university teams who have actually put their names on the Grey Cup over 100 years ago.
Varsity Stadium itself was the home of football in Toronto and the centre of the Canadian football universe for decades.
All of that history would seemingly make them a destination for the best talent in the country and yet they have struggled for years.
In 1993 the Varsity Blues took what would end up being the last Yates Cup they would win which propelled them into their second Vanier Cup win.
That was the last time that the Blues would experience that type of success as they began to struggle without the talent they needed to compete.
Eventually, it got to the point where the Blues were not only a bad team but the worst team in the country.
They didn’t just struggle to win games they struggled to just win one game every year.
Since the 2000 season, the Blues have a total record of 24-128 with multiple seasons where the Blues would win no games.
It has a been a rough run for the Blues as they have struggled to be relevant in the OUA and on the national level.
In university football that can be as bad as the death penalty as bad teams can remain bad for years.
The best players make their decisions based on a number of ideas but one of the key factors is the ability to win.
That keeps great teams great and bad teams bad as the best players want to go to a place where they can win.
No great player wants to sit on a team that isn’t going to win a game all season and potentially commit to a team for four or five years of losing.
It becomes one of the toughest jobs for coaches to recruit top players to go to Toronto in order to turn things around.
Even if they can get those players they need a lot of help in a lot of places to be able to compete for the playoffs.
There have been a few good seasons in the last two decades but very rarely have they led to anything all that successful.
Three weeks is hardly enough to tell whether or not the Blues will be able to have one of those good seasons and certainly isn’t enough to say whether or not they can turn things around.
Still, there are some promising signs after three games that at least this season won’t be another total loss.
The first game of the year provided the first hope as the Blues competed with the Waterloo Warriors.
The Warriors aren’t necessarily the best team in the province but they are a team that competes for the playoffs.
The Blues took the loss but with a three-point difference meant they weren’t completely out of the game.
The next week Toronto took on Windsor, a team that they usually can compete against but this time they showed a lot with a 54-26 win.
It was a dominant win over a team that they usually play close with and that was a sign that this team had more this year than last.
This past week there was another sign when the Blues took their biggest win in years by beating Laurier.
The Golden Hawks were a top ten team in the country and it was going to be a challenge for Toronto to beat them.
It was their toughest game yet but the Blues took the win 38-34 showing that they were ready to compete.
They could be on their way to a good season after that win but there is a long way to go until the end of the season.
That is what they have ahead of them as they look to break the pattern and potentially find their way to the playoffs.
The Sport Addiction 