It used to be losing meant financial disaster for the Winnipeg Blue Bombers. How times have changed.

Through most of my 25 years in the business of reporting on sports in this town, a stretch like the one the Bombers are going through now would have produced a balance sheet drenched in red ink.

Yet your community-owned pigskinners this week proudly announced a profit of $4.4 million (not including Grey Cup cash) on the season that was – up half a million from 2014.

This after a fourth straight season out of the CFL playoffs, something that's only happened one other time in this club's illustrious history.

The last time Winnipeg missed out on the playoffs four straight years: 1967-70.

It only took three consecutive last-place seasons to put the Bombers on the brink of collapse in the late 1990s. A major government bailout kept the franchise afloat.

The new taxpayer-funded stadium and the increased revenue it brings has changed everything — except the team's propensity to lose far more than it wins.

Bombers president/CEO Wade Miller had an interesting quote about the healthy bottom line this week.

“We can't be expecting that we are going to see results like this every year,” Miller said.

The $7.1 million from hosting the Grey Cup, obviously not.

But the $4.4 million from the rest of the season?

They'd better earn that much every year, if not more.

The Bombers are supposed to make another $4.5-million stadium loan payment this year and next, a $3.5-million payment in 2018 and payments of up to $4.4 million every year after that, up until 2058, to cover their share of the original stadium tab.

So this past season better be rock-bottom.

A line from the team's annual report raises concerns that beginning in 2017, making those payments will be a challenge.

“... with increasing costs to operate and manage Investors Group Field along with significant transportation plan costs, there will be additional pressure on the Club’s cash flow and the Club may be required to use new efforts to generate sufficient excess cash to make the payment.”

The season-ticket decline in the new facility has already begun, and the report acknowledges “going forward we project season ticket sales to be lower as a result of on-field performance.”

This is no time to make franchise history by missing the playoffs a fifth year in a row.

Even Winnipeg fans have a limit.

DEJA VU IN BLUE

Not sure what took so long — I guess it took a new corporate uniform deal at the league level — but the Bombers are finally going back to royal blue jerseys, teasing fans with shots of the new look on Twitter.

My favourite tweet, though, came from former sportswriter colleague @wazoowazny, who offered the following gem:

“Fans liked beer snakes, they brought it back

“Fans liked the royals, they brought em back

“Someone should tell the Bombers they like winning”

ALL ABOUT THE 'O'

All CFL teams hold off-season mini-camps nowadays, but none are doing it quite like the Bombers.

Winnipeg is asking its entire offence (the camps are not mandatory) to show up for three days at the end of April, hoping to get a jump-start on implementing new coordinator Paul LaPolice's system.

Virtually every other team leaves veterans, aside maybe from quarterbacks, out of the mini-camp mix.

Coming off the vanilla attack of former coordinator Marcel Bellefeuille, the expectations are going to be mighty high for LaPolice, a guy who's worked in TV the last three years and who hasn't called a game in anger since 2012.

LADD'S NEW LAD

You may have heard how former Winnipeg Jets captain Andrew Ladd nearly missed Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Playoffs when his wife went into labour the day his Chicago Blackhawks opened the post-season in St. Louis, Wednesday.

Ladd flew to Chicago, only to scramble back to St. Louis in time to suit up -- with the blessing of his wife, who finally welcomed their new son into the world, without dad present, after midnight.

You'll recall Ladd, as a Jet, missed a regular-season game for the birth of his previous child a day earlier, drawing public criticism from former Bomber and local radio guy Troy Westwood.

Reached Friday, Westwood wasn't backing down from his previous stand.

“No chance I would miss a playoff game,” he told me. “If I know the approximate due date, I would have family support or close friends there with mom and I would be at the game.”

Turns out that's what Ladd did, this time, getting updates from the delivery room during the game, which Chicago lost, 1-0.

CONNOR VS EHLERS

With all this talk of the speed of newly-signed Jet, Kyle Connor (U of Michigan), I got to wondering who'll be faster: Connor or established speed demon Nikolaj Ehlers?

“I'm not sure,” Connor told me. “We might have to do a little race to figure that one out.”

Jets head scout Mark Hillier wants a front-row seat for that one.

“We'd have to see maybe in practice or next year's skill competition,” Hillier said. “That's hard to say. It's harder to be faster than Ehlers, that's for sure.”

A reason to go to the skills competition — who knew?