Courtesy Calgary Herald:

REGINA - He made a decidedly animated corpse.

As much a dead duck as a lame one, Tom Higgins stubbornly refused to run for cover Saturday as the pins on the live grenades concealed in questions were pulled and lobbed relentlessly into his bunker.

“Do you think anybody will shed a tear for Tom Higgins?” The accused man in the dock of the kangaroo court shook his head slowly. “No way. If it ends tomorrow, it ends tomorrow. If it’s the last football game I ever coach, if this is my last press conference, so what? I have no regrets. This isn’t life and death.

“I’m not going around saying ‘Oh, poor me!’

“This isn’t about Tom Higgins. Please, too much has already been said and written about Tom Higgins this week. It’s about the Calgary Stampeders lining up to play a football game. This is about the product.

“If the Stampeders don’t want me, somebody else might. If they don’t want me to coach again, maybe I can do something else. Don’t think I’m naive enough not to know things are happening.”

Ironically, the passage of time will show this to be Higgins’ finest hour as coach of the Calgary Stampeders.

It’s impossible to imagine anyone handling the situation better.

On Saturday afternoon during the West Division semifinal media availability, all Higgins wanted to talk about was football. About the Stamps and the Riders this afternoon at Mosaic Stadium.

And all anybody else wanted to talk was about him. About the incoming John Hufnagel.

Under the most trying circumstances possible, he was eloquent and heartfelt and politically astute and sporadically funny at a time when others would’ve been bitter or self-pitying.

He was impressive.

The Stamps can do the Nixon thing and deny, deny, deny, go all apoplectic and pop blood vessels over the timing of the re-opening of the Hufnagel saga. But the story has been in the hopper for months, and to re-ignite it at such a sensitive moment means there had to be a leak from inside. Don’t use convenient outside scapegoats, gentlemen. Be braver than that. Look within.

What it’s done, unfortunately, is leave Tom Higgins hanging on a meat hook at a delicate time.

Higgins’ tone of his voice indicated a man resigned to his fate on Saturday. He appeared drawn. He actually spoke of himself a couple of times in the past tense.

Still, his sense of humor occasionally shone through.

“People say we’re a team in dissension. We’re not a team in dissension. Some guy (Julian Battle) didn’t want to get taped to the goal post. But it’s a ritual on a guy’s birthday. Somebody read the media guide wrong. It wasn’t his birthday. But players were pouring cold water over him and he couldn’t breathe.

“Wouldn’t you just know we’d get the birthday wrong.”

(Offensive guard Jay McNeil gleefully explained that the mistake was in inverting 7/11 with 11/7: July 11 with Nov. 7)

Many of Tom Higgins’ sideline decisions make football people cringe in disbelief. The Stampeders’ penalty epidemic, an ongoing blight for this team, falls under his domain; it’s up to the head coach to demand and receive discipline from those in his charge. He admits himself to being “a little anal.” Three years into the grand reclamation project, the Stamps have managed to regress in every one, going from 11-7 to 10-8 to to 7-10-1 and missing out on a home playoff gate. An offensive co-ordinator was gassed after 2006, a defensive co-ordinator turfed during this season.

Higgins had to know if things went awry the next bullet had his name engraved on it.

“This whole past week has been a test about trying to believe in yourself. Oh, sometimes I want to go home and kick the garbage can,” he conceded. “But if you do kick the garbage can, you can hurt your foot.

“I’m blessed to have three children, two girls and a boy, all under the age of 20. They’ve been through it before. Sharon, my wife, rallies them. She tells them ‘What dad needs now is support, being upbeat and positive.’ It’s a treat to go home.

“You don’t live life saying ‘What if …?’”

As the Stampeders’ short run-through wound down Saturday at Mosaic Stadium, Higgins dropped on the bench beside McNeil, set to retire at the end of this season. It made for an interesting contrast. The player going out on his own terms after 14 years, and the coach, set to go out on someone else’s after three.

“I can’t imagine being in his situation,” said McNeil later. “He’s a very classy guy.

“A lot of people are saying this is tearing our family apart. Actually, it’s brought us closer together. It’s similar to 2001, when nobody believed in us.”

For Tom Higgins, there is nothing beyond today. It’d be a helluva thing if the Stampeders could extend this at least one more game; give him a send-off to remember. One more celebration.

“We didn’t fluke our way into this,” Higgins maintained. “We don’t feel like we’re a spoiler. This isn’t winning one for the Gipper. They have to be hungry for it; to do it for themselves.

“I can’t wait. Let the fur fly.

“Let’s see how this plays out.”

We know how it’s going to play out. What remains to be determined is how long.