Courtesy Toronto Sun:

The tire tracks are fresh enough on Michael Palmer’s back that he is willing to say what his coach will not.

“They threw him under the bus, man,” the Saskatchewan Roughriders receiver said yesterday, jumping to the defence of his boss, Kent Austin.

“Releasing him halfway through the season, blaming it all on him.”

They would be the Argos, a team that in its rush to judge, relieved Austin of his offensive co-ordinator duties midway through the 2006 season.

Both Austin and Palmer, who was cut by the Argos this past summer, have made it to the Grey Cup in a city whose CFL tenant rejected them.

For public consumption, both have nothing but good to say about the Argos and the friends they made here.

“Welcome to the game of life,” Austin said yesterday at the Grey Cup coach’s press conference when asked the inevitable, to once again rehash his controversial firing.

“We’re all big boys. We know what we signed up for and it doesn’t mean there aren’t better things in store for you in another situation.”

For Austin, those better things include coaching a successful team in a football-mad city, one that would never leave 10,000 empty seats for a division final as the Argos did.

They include getting to a Grey Cup game that was supposed to be all about the home team, a game in which his new team is favoured over the Winnipeg Blue Bombers by 11 points.

They have been better days as well for Oakville native Palmer, who quietly is contributing to the new team’s success since Austin rescued his season.

These days, Austin’s public testiness at getting the axe is limited to being goaded into revisiting the issue any time he is near an Argos logo.

Privately, those who know him well will tell you another story.

Riders general manager Eric Tillman put it as blunt as one could earlier this year, calling the Boatmen hack job “scapegoating in its purest form.”

In 2004, the first under the current regime and Austin’s debut as offensive co-ordinator, the team won a Grey Cup.

In the second year, Austin brilliantly managed quarterback Damon Allen to the only MVP season of his career.

The first season with the Roughriders has seen more of the same, resurrecting the career of quarterback Kerry Joseph, who is favoured to be named player of the year tonight.

Those familiar with Austin’s role with the Argos will offer any number of theories for his demise.

Most prominent was his supposed refusal to adjust his offence to make more of a role for underachieving celebrity running back, Ricky Williams.

When the Green Riders cleaned house, it didn’t take long for Tillman to snag Austin.

Now the man who as quarterback led the Roughriders to their most recent Cup title in 1989 is on the verge of becoming a legend in Saskatchewan as a rookie head coach.

“It was an opportunity for me to come back to a place that I loved, that I had my best football experience as a player,” Austin said of his return to the prairies.

“(It was a chance) to be involved in something that I knew would be very, very special if we were ever to accomplish a championship.”