So, the kindly old coach sat there, in front of the baying dawgs of the media, and the creases in his grandfatherly face seemed squeezing tighter as each word slid off the big mouths of the media wretches, who now could smell blood.

And, he was in an ugly mood. And, he was not at all happy having to be there, answering to all these no nuthin’s, whose role in life is something he has always known: To build somebody up and then tear them down.

At his feet, lay the carnage of one of the worst seasons in Saskatchewan Roughrider history. Never in the playoff hunt, a lost ship no matter who was on the deck, getting worse all the time, that is what they were. And, you knew, you just knew if you had been around long enough and seen this stuff before, that this would be the moment the blowup would come because now, now that the playoffs were officially out of reach, there was no where to hide, no sliver of hope you could cling tenaciously to after all around you had collapsed.

So, when The Leader-Post’s mild manned Rob Vanstone innocently flipped out a question which seemed to beg the answer to whether or not Miller intended to come back as head coach in 2012, you would have thought the venue was Mile High Stadium because there’s where the roof went after Miller blew up.

He lectured Vanstone on questioning his commitment to the Riders, even though Vanstone’s question strayed nowhere near that subject, not even in the wildest of imaginations. And, away Miller went, the frustrations of two Grey Cup losses came spewing out, and everybody ducked.

Who could blame Miller? He had indicated he was ready to retire as head coach after the 2009 season, but hung on. At the end of 2010, with another Grey Cup loss, he did retire and was promptly named vice-president of football operations. His first job was to hire a head coach. And even though heads all around him were shaking no, no, no, Miller went ahead and hired the guy nobody else in the league would ever give a head coaching job to.

And, eight games into the season, he said let’s fire Greg Marshall and offensive co-ordinator Doug Berry, and so he made general manager Barry Taman go do it. And, then, Miller announced that Ken Miller would return as head coach. There was a burp of three straight wins, but that didn’t last, and then there have been the most nightmarish string of lop-sided defeats, some the worst in Rider history, and it was awful. Miller went from the bridge to the first lifeboat and then on a sunny, Sunday afternoon, he and his team went under, and it was more than he could handle.

The autopsy has already begun, because there is nothing else really that can be done now that their fate has been sealed. Hamilton can lose 100 games in a row, and it won’t guarantee the Riders nothing because they can’t even win one. Hell, they can’t even score a touchdown.

What happened Sunday against B.C. said it. The Riders played hard, but not always smart. How else can you explain Andy Fantuz pulling up on a pattern that had he kept going would have been a TD? How can you explain Christ Getzlaf’s suddenly leaky hands? How else can you explain giving up two huge touchdowns in the fourth quarter?

You can’t explain it. But, as Ron Lancaster often said, “The hardest thing to learn in football is how to win, and the longer it takes you, the harder it gets.”

·         By his very actions on Sunday in the wake of what had to be devastating to him personally, his words spoke volumes. He has run out of words that mean anything to anybody. He created much of the mess that he found in his hands, and he has no idea on how to put it back together again. Green is still the colour, but football is not the game right now.