Looking at the Winnipeg Blue Bombers is sort of like looking at a department store Santa Claus.

I mean, he looks like Santa. He ho-ho-hos like Santa. He pats little children on the head, holds them on his knee and asks them if they've been good little boys and girls, just like Santa.

But you know he really isn't Santa Claus.

Similarly, there's something about the Swaggerville 12 that tells you they really aren't the premier outfit in the Canadian Football League.

To be sure, the Bombers' 7-1 record is real. Their defensive dozen, which is stingier than Scrooge, is real. Their devotees, a rowdy rabble that packs the sardine can that is a decaying Canad Inns Stadium each home game, are real. And the fact that their starting quarterback, the brittle Buck Pierce, is still vertical eight assignments into the season is real.

Still, as the CFL approaches its Labor Day weekend and the halfway point of the 2011 season, there is a reluctance to accept the Bombers as the real deal.

Indeed, scant seconds after they'd bettered the Hamilton Tiger-Cats 30-27 last week, a doubting Thomas surfaced in the losers' changing room.

"We’re better than them, period, straight up," defensive lineman Stevie Baggs told Drew Edwards of the Hamilton Spectator. "Not to take anything away from them, but we gave this game away."

While Baggs is clearly blowing smoke out the earhole of his helmet, he isn't singing solo because, while I certainly believe they're better than the Ticats, I'm unprepared to suggest the Bombers are the top outfit in the land.

The Calgary Stampeders, with one less win and one loss more, are better. Period. Straight up. And I base that statement on what I call a degree of difficulty.

If we are to accept that the Stampeders, Bombers and Montreal Alouettes are the cream of this year's crop, then we must accept that the lads from foothills country are No. 1. In mano-a-mano matches, they beat the Bombers, in Winnipeg, and they outduelled the Als in a classic tussle last weekend.

To be the best, you must beat the best. The Stamps have done that. The others haven't.

And, yes, I'm quite aware that Calgary beat the Swaggerville 12 by the slimmest of margins. A single point. A rouge. I also realize that the aforementioned brittle Buck Pierce was rendered hors de combat in the first half of that joust, leaving a novice, Joey Elliott, at the Bombers controls for the entire second half of a 21-20 game.

Still, until the boys in blue and gold can topple the Stamps and Larks, I can't put the No. 1 label on them.

For now, the pecking order is this: Calgary, Winnipeg, Montreal.