The words flew off my computer screen like so many red-hot sparks leaping from a late-night campfire.

"Just how popular are the Winnipeg Blue Bombers? Well, they’ve never been as popular as they are right now."

Say what?

"They've never been as popular as they are right now."

I read those 10 words over and over and over. And I could draw only one conclusion: In their fantasy summer, newspaper scribes in Winnipeg are now writing fantasy.

Actually, it's just one scribe. That would be Kirk Penton, a chronicler of sports for the Winnipeg Sun who has the freshly scrubbed look of a greenhorn and apparently skipped class a time or two when Bombers History 101 was on the docket.

I mean, to say the Winnipeg football club has never been so popular as now is to say Kenny Ploen was an annoying squeegee kid. That Bud Grant was a short-order cook at the Salisbury House. That Jack Jacobs and Dr. Tom Casey were pot scrubbers at Rae & Jerry's. That Ernie Pitts, Herb Gray and Gerry James were jockeys at Assiniboia Downs.

Now, based on his mug shot, young Mr. Penton is not far removed from puberty, so he wasn't around when Jacobs was changing the face of Canadian football with his right arm. Nor was he an eye-witness when the Grant-coached Bombers were winning Grey Cups as often as Sarah Palin sticks her stilettos in her mouth.

Ken Ploen

But that doesn't forgive his naivete.

There's a reason we have history books. And libraries. And the Internet. And people with grey in their hair and age around their eyes, for that matter. They're tools to prevent us from ignoring the facts.

Had young Mr. Penton used any of these tools, he wouldn't have written something as absurd as this:

"The Winnipeg Blue Bombers are riding a wave they’ve never experienced in their 81-year history."

To prop up his argument, he leans heavily on ticket and merchandise sales. The Bombers, he tells us, will have four successive sellouts by the time the Banjo Bowl rolls around on Sept. 11. True. But, as Paul Wiecek of the Free Press correctly points out, that is been-there, done-that material. They did it as recently as 2007.

Penton further advises us that the Bombers are on pace to set all-time attendance records. Ergo, the club has never been more popular.

Mule muffins!

The Montreal Canadiens perform in front of more spectators today than they did while winning all those Stanley Cups in the 1950s, '60s and 70s. And they sell more merchandise. But I think it's safe to say they aren't as popular today as they were when the Rocket, big Beliveau, the Flower et al wore le bleu, blanc et rouge.

Someone ought to take young Mr. Penton aside and give the kid a crash course is Bombers History 101. Someone who was there. Like me. Or his dad, Bruce, an old newspaper guy.

I could tell the kid that, although I never saw Jack Jacobs hurl a football, I do know the great quarterback made the Bombers so popular in the early '50s that they had to build a stadium to accommodate the demand for tickets. That's correct. The thirst for Blue Bomber football was such that the club had to flee old Osborne Stadium (capacity 7,800) in 1953 and move into sparkling new Winnipeg Stadium, which could seat more than double the fannies.

I could tell the kid that's why they called the joint "The House That Jack Built."

Today, construction on a new facility for the Bombers is under way not due to any level of lust for the Canadian Football League club. It's because The House that Jack Built is rotting and held together by binder twine and spit.

I swear, if Chris Walby stood at Maroons Road and passed gas the place would crumble to the ground.

I could also tell the kid that I bore witness to all those teams in the late '50s and early '60s that waffled coach Jungle Jim Trimble's Hamilton Tiger-Cats so often in the Grey Cup game.

That, not today, was the zenith of the Bombers' popularity. They weren't just the talk of the town. They were the town.

I'd tell the kid that, to this day, there's never been a Winnipeg athlete held in as lofty esteem, long-term, as Ken Ploen. Not Bobby Hull. Not the Swedes. Not Teemu Selanne. Nobody. Ploen, a DB and QB in the glory years, is to Winnipeg football what Jean Beliveau is to Montreal hockey.

He's Mr. Blue Bomber.

Finally, I'd tell the kid that the next time he had the urge to talk about Blue Bombers history, he might want to have a chat with poppa Bruce first.