If You Can Use a Fork, You Can Play for York

The Varsity Blues’ forty-nine-game losing streak is officially yesterday’s news. They must’ve enjoyed their first victory since 2001, because two weeks later they won again, a notable accomplishment for a football program that hadn’t won a game in almost seven years. It was also a highly symbolic victory: as the seconds ticked away, a torch was passed in Canadian university men's football.

The team they beat, the York Lions, is now the worst team in the entire country. By a mile. York isn’t merely losing: they’re getting killed. Heading into yesterday's game against the Queen's Golden Gaels, they’d scored seventeen points and allowed two hundred and ninety-three...in five games. Their previous two losses had been shutouts. And that was before facing the team ranked second in the nation. Prior to kickoff, Queen's fans were predicting a sixty-point victory. And here's the thing: it never sounded like idle boasting. It wasn’t just because Queen’s is really, really good (although they are), but also because York is really, really bad.

The final score: Queen’s 80, York 0. It was the single-biggest victory in Queen’s’ history…and York’s biggest-ever defeat. According to our unofficial count, the closest York got to Queen’s territory was their own 53-yard line—and that was on the team’s opening drive. The Lions never had a chance, not even when Queen’s brought in its backups in the third quarter. At one point, York picked off an errant pass and brought it back deep inside Golden Gaels territory…only for play to be nullified by a dubious roughing the passer penalty. To add insult to injury, the player who made the interception had to be helped off the field. When things go wrong for York, they go really wrong.

The Lions’ potentially historic year hasn’t exactly come out of nowhere. Their most recent victory—over the Varsity Blues, naturally—happened over a year ago. Prior to this year they had consecutive 1-7 seasons; not to belabour the point, but both wins came against U of T. To be fair, some of the same conditions that blight the Varsity Blues affect York as well; moreover, and perhaps more significantly, the team is full of first-year players, meaning they’ve got plenty of room to grow. Still, when opposition fans are expecting a sixty-point victory and they’re actually underestimating their team, that’s bad, right? The York Lions have a long way to go before matching the University of Toronto’s historic futility—but they’re certainly beating a similar path. They're a virtual lock to finish the season 0-8. And if the rest of the OUA's traditional cannon fodder keeps on beating them, York might yet reclaim the record their downtown rivals took from them last year.

Photo by sevennine from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.