Trash talk today is rubbish.

Seriously.

Consider the feeble to-and-fro in advance of Friday night's grass-grabber between the Hamilton Tiger-Cats and the Winnipeg Swaggerville 12, more commonly referred to as the Blue Bombers.

Dave Stala, a pass-catcher of note who has a habit of finding open spaces in enemy end zones, fired the opening salvo by describing the animated, on-field frolicking of the Bombers brash and swashbuckling defensive dozen as "a cartoon or something."

Never mind that the men in blue lead the Canadian Football League in every category of stinginess. They are "a cartoon or something."

The Ticats top receiver says so.

And how did the Bombers respond? They didn't. They had less to say than a street mime.

Talk about lame. I mean, what kind of a to-and-fro is it without the fro? Who was Abbott without Costello? Laurel without Hardy? Butch without Sundance?

But then along comes Lady LaPo to engage in some Ticat taunting.

For those of you who haven't been introduced, Lady LaPo goes by the name Tina and she is a former Bombers cheerleader who now is the bride of Winnipeg head coach Paul LaPolice.

"Ti-Cats Stala no fan of Swaggerville," she tweeted (the tweet has since been deleted). "We'll see what they call themselves after the game. We'll see hacky sack boy!"

Who would have thought the Swaggerville 12 had a den mother? You go, girl!

Trouble is, the fact that the coach's bride felt obliged to mock Stala's ritual of playing hacky-sack with a football in celebration of yet another touchdown reception merely underlines the lameness of this week's to-and-fro.

"If we’re calling these things trash talk," coach LaPo told reporters at a press gathering today, "boy, we don’t have very good trash talk." You've got that right, man.

You think Jungle Jim Trimble would let his wife do his trash talking for him? Not on your life.

Jungle Jim invented trash talking. The former Ticats bossman once announced he was the best football coach in Canada, then boasted, "No, hell, in the world."

Prior to the 1958 Grey Cup game between his Tabbies and the Bombers, he declared, "We'll waffle 'em. We'll leave 'em with lumps on the front and the back."

He had every right to think that, of course. The Ticats, you see, were big, mean, nasty and ugly, just like Jungle Jim, who once took such a dislike to Ian MacDonald of the Montreal Gazette that he punched him out in a bar and, as legend has it, tossed him into a Toronto harbor. Moreover, Hamilton had walloped Winnipeg in the previous year's CFL title game, 32-7.

Not that the Bombers were shrinking violets, mind you. No one ever mistook Herb Gray for Peter Pan. But, the Cats were going to "waffle 'em."

Final score: Bombers 35, Tiger-Cats 28.

Trimble's chin-wagging inspired Winnipeg radio personality Cliff Gardner to come up with the song "Hang Down Your Head, Jim Trimble," and the Bombers booster club sent Jungle Jim a waffle iron when it was all over.

I was just a wee sprig in Winnipeg when that song was all the rage, and I still remember some of the words:

"Hang down your head, Jim Trimble. Hang down your head and cry. You know the Bombers beat you, now eat your humble pie."

It was fun stuff—and the origin of trash talking in the CFL.

I'm guessing that Lady LaPo is a whole lot prettier than the late Jungle Jim Trimble, but when it comes to trash talking, he was a beautiful piece of work.