QUEEN'S HOMECOMING: THERE'S NO "I" IN GOLDEN GAELS, BUT THERE'S TWO IN "DICKISHNESS"

(Alternative Title: "What It's Like When Your Alma Mater Loses The Homecoming Game And You Act Like An Immature Jerk About It.")

There is no I in "Queen's Golden Gaels fan," but there are two in dickishness.

Sadly, yours truly was plenty guilty of that while taking in today's Homecoming Game with four family members (two of whom are also alums).

Now it's clear why ye old alma mater maintains the façade that the football game is the central part of its Homecoming weekend. It's the best of both worlds. The Queen's P.R. machine keeps up appearances by having a big crowd out for the game, but very few of the some 12,000 students or alumni get too wound up over the outcome of the game -- or even stick around for the full four quarters. Which is cool. Not everyone's a football fan. It's Canadian ball, so a little ironic detachment is expected.

Really, it's a good thing most Queen's students and grads treat the game as an excuse to meet up with friends and co-ordinate plans for the evening before hauling ass shortly after halftime.

Take the amount of alcohol that flows among students, grads, and out-of-town fun-seekers with no ties to the school who descend on Kingston for the weekend. Throw in the recent history of street parties getting out of control over the past of couple years. Now, imagine if all of those people had the same kind of reaction yours truly did to the way the Golden Gaels beat themselves in a 22-18 loss.

As you're about to see, the resulting mayhem would make Times Square on New Year's Eve look like your grandma's Bingo Night.

BUT WHAT ABOUT THE GAME?

It wasn't so bad at first, even while Windsor's quarterback Dan Lumley threw three touchdown passes to Glenn MacKay that staked the Lancers to a 21-0 lead less than 12 minutes into the game. (As this week's CIS preview noted, "How well Windsor can pass will also loom large.")

The onslaught started with a triptych of plays that can charitably called idiosyncratic. Windsor had the wind for the opening kickoff and sent a towering boot into our end zone; our returner elected to bring the ball out and got tackled on the 3-yard line. Following two running plays that gained next to nothing, Queen's elected to punt rather than trade a two-point safety for better field position. A shanked punt by Ryan Elger led to Windsor starting its first drive inside the Gaels' 30-yard line. That set the tone, as Windsor scored three times by virtue of playing the whole quarter with a short field.

No worries. My time on the Queen's sports beat coincided with a rather low period in Queen's football annals (on my watch, the Gaels lost 16 straight games in the old Ontario-Quebec conference before returning to the OUA for the '01 season), so staring into the black hole of a three-touchdown deficit was nothing new. It already seemed like old times, since our group's seats happened to be one row behind those of a former Queen's Journal colleague whom I hadn't since 2000 who was there with her spouse and cute-as-a-button one-year-old daughter. (Great to see you, Julieta.)

So for a while there both the scene and this author were somewhat pleasant. The sun was out and the Gaels had made a pretense of getting back into the game by cutting Windsor's lead to 21-10 by halftime. No matter how alienated or distanced one is from their undergrad years, you do feel part of the Queen's community when you see all the official homecoming classes, some of whose members are well into their 80s, parade around the field at halftime.

Except that, instead of falling apart after halftime and making it clear this was a lost cause, or roaring back to take complete command of the game, the Gaels kind of just muddled along. Windsor's so-called Thunder and Lightning running backs, Nick Romain and Daryl Stephenson, who had scored about a gazillion touchdowns in easy wins over Waterloo and the University of Toronto, both looked rather mortal against a semi-legit defence. Unfortunately, Queen's was considerably less impressive when it was on offence.

Which was the real burn. If you had said that the Gaels would keep Thunder and Lightning, so-called, to a total of 125 rushing yards and just 4½ yards per carry, yours truly would have predicted a seven-point Queen's win. If you had then added that Queen's would have a seven-minute advantage in time of possession, and that it would stop Windsor cold on a third-down gamble in its own territory, the estimate would have been upped to 14 points. Maybe even 17.

Except the the Queen's offence, led by quarterback Danny Brannagan, couldn't do much against Windsor's defence. In the final 10 minutes, the Gaels came away empty-handed following both an interception and a fumble recovery.

The last two minutes were especially sadistic. After Windsor's offence consumed some precious time off the clock and punted, Queen's got the ball back inside its own 10-yard line with 1:37 left, needing to score twice in rapid succession. Translation: You can't blame the alums who had long since headed for the parties and bars downtown.

Sports, however, lacks such proper symmetry, so instead of a meek three-and-out, Queen's scored, with Rob Bagg turning a short pass into a 104-yard touchdown. The convert was blocked, meaning instead of needing only a field goal to stay in the game, it would take a touchdown.

One minute and 21 seconds to go. Time for the onside kick. Elger popped up a short one and Queen's recovered at the Windsor 45-yard line. More than a minute to go down and score. Plenty of time. Didn't all those people who had left early look silly now?

Actually, not so much. Queen's hadn't been able to run the ball all day, but for some reason called this slow-developing stretch play to Billy Burke (who scored on a 14-yard run and gained a grand total of six yards on his other 13 carries) that Windsor gobbled up in a heartbeat. Two more incompletions by Brannagan completed the meek three-and-out the game demanded, although there was a brief moment of hope when Stephenson fumbled on Windsor's next play, only to have one of his blockers quickly cover up the loose ball.

Windsor punted one more time, but there wasn't enough time for the Gaels to do any serious damage.

READY FOR THE FALLOUT

Full marks to Windsor... them's the breaks ... it's only a game ... defence played great ... oh, can the charade. It's not so much that the Gaels lost, but the feeling that beat themselves at crucial points and that a certain someone is being a bit of a 10-year-old about it.

Any other upwardly mobile late 20/early 30-something Queen's grad who'd chanced to come back to K-town was probably, by that point, drinking something out of a plastic cup and partying like it's 1999, but not me. Noooooooooooooo. Yours truly had to retreat into a surly funk, compliments of The Geek, acting like the neighbourhood codger after putting out another flaming bag of dog doo left on his porch -- all hissed cuss words and gritted teeth. In front of my mother, no less.

(Parenthetical dig: Gee, Neate, can't imagine why you're still single.)

The worst part is that when things go badly for the favourite teams, suddenly everything is bad. No joking here. This is a semi-serious problem, and it only seems to have become worse as yours truly has become older.

Don't worry, though. It is only a game, and this too shall pass, so should any Queen's coaches and players read this, don't take it personally that one of your diehard fans is prone to occasional sojourns into general dickishness. Blame his alter ego, The Geek, who is sometimes allowed to steer the ship.

Lesson learned. Next year, that duty will be left to Captain Morgan.

(DISCLAIMER: If there are names missing from the game details, it's because yours truly was attending his first CIS football game since 2004 and neither Queen's or Windsor has names on their jerseys. Well, that, and on the way out of the stadium, I threw my program off the bleachers and over a fence into someone's backyard. Sorry about that.)

AROUND THE OUA/CIS

• Had to laugh like hell when Richardson Stadium p.a. announcer Doug Jefferies had some fun with the out-of-town scores: "Elsewhere in the OUA.... a final score.... University of Toronto 25 (long pause) ... Waterloo 28." For one sweet moment in time, several thousand people though U of T had ended The Streak, which is now 36 games. The U of T's next good chance to end comes Sept. 30 against York (also now 0-3).
• Not much a job by this dim bulb of a prognosticator: a mediocre 8-5, leaving the season record at 27-6. As was the case for a lot of people, the big surprise was the Concordia Stingers winning on the road against the No. 4 Montréal Carabins, 25-11.
• McMaster winning at Ottawa has to be considered a mild upset. Mac's secondary doesn't look so "suspect" after it stopped Ottawa several times in the closing minutes.

That's all for now. Send your thoughts to neatesager@yahoo.ca.