With their loss to Windsor over the weekend being their 47th consecutive, the Varsity Blues have officially entered Andy Stitzer territory. Losing to a team called the Lancers has enough phallic connotations as is, but if the men’s football team and Steve Carrel’s character from The 40-Year-Old Virgin share one thing in common it’s this: both have very little to no game whatsoever, and both have gone a very long time without getting any.
U of T’s football team has become its own version of the 40- year-old virgin, a lovable loser. Sure, you want to laugh sometimes at just how bad they are, but part of you also can’t help but empathize, even root for the underdog to finally, well, get lucky.
Throughout the streak, luck has not been on the Blues’ side. They have been outscored by an average of 52-11, and even lost 72-0 on two separate occasions. Still, it’s the close games that will haunt the team if and when they break the record next weekend against the Western Mustangs.
Against Windsor, for instance, the Blues seemed poised to end their five-year dry spell (somewhere in the neighbourhood of 2,177 days). It seemed like the perfect opportunity, as the Windsor Lancers were the last team U of T defeated, all the way back on October 13, 2001. Unfortunately, on this night history would not repeat itself. Windsor, already ahead 23-7 at halftime, coasted to a 42-21 win over the Blues before a crowd of 2,109 at Varsity Centre. Lancers running-back Daryl Stephenson, who set an OUA career rushing record last week, had two first-half touchdowns and registered 223 yards rushing on 21 carries before leaving the game with an ankle injury early in the second half. Stephenson’s replacement was Paul Lefaive, who scored a touchdown and added 119 yards on 19 carries.
There’s no shortage of men’s football coverage these days. Type in U of T and streak in any search engine and you’re likely to find enough articles to make your own failures seem just a little more endurable. It’s a sad story for the once-proud Varsity Blues football team, a program that in its 130 years of existence has won four Grey Cup championships, two Vanier Cup titles and 25 Yates Cup crowns.
How bad has it been? It’s tough going when Bruce Kid (Dean of Physical Education) starts ringing off the platitudes and sports clichés.
“You win a few and you lose a few,” Kidd said during one interview, “but the ones that hurt the most are the ones that are rained out. It’s better to be in the game than anything else.”
With all due respect to Mr. Kidd, is he serious? To quote Carrell’s reaction after flying through a billboard: “There were two sides to that billboard, and they both hurt equally.” We believe that at some point the Blues will win— hey, even a blind squirrel can find a nut every now and then. But there’s gotta be a better party line than essentially claiming, “It’s not whether you win or lose, but how you play the game.” It is disengenuous considering the amount of money invested in the much ballyhooed Varsity Centre — a symbol of U of T’s supposed dedication to athletics. Just a few years after trying to fold the football team in the first place, it seems like an over compensation of sorts.
If the streak has had one positive effect on the campus, it has operated as an awesome conversation starter. All throughout U of T, awkward silences can now be eliminated with the simple phrase, “So our football team’s pretty bad, eh?” And so, through the Blues, friendships are formed. It’s a heart warming story to be sure. After all, Andy Stitzer only had to wait 40 years to reach the promised land. In comparison, the Blues’ streak hasn’t been quite that long. But when you’re not getting any, 6 years can feel like 40.
