It’s no disease: Bills can only blame themselves

By Anthony Bialy  |   Monday, December 01, 2008  |  Comments( 105 )

 Buffalo Bills
The Buffalo Bills’ game against the San Francisco 49ers ended as just their year will: They’ll finish with frustration because of a frustrating inability to finish. Four red-zone trips led to three points, which in turn leads to another season where they somehow brutally managed to make themselves irrelevant. Averaging a point every 20 minutes...
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CommentsComments: 105
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 No.1
8and8Forever		 10:19 AM
12/01/2008
My take is less on yesterday, but my realization after the 1st quarter that "no way this team can win any of its last 4 games playing and coaching like this". That is the point. We ARE the 49ers now. Or the Browns. Or the Lions. Looking like 6 -10 to me.
 No.2
 10:39 AM
12/01/2008
An open letter to Ralph. I appologize to those of you who find it too long.
For years we’ve heard Ralph Wilson Jr. ponder aloud whether Upstate NY with its struggling economy and shrinking population can support an NFL franchise? He usually asks this question most loudly just before coming to State or Erie County leaders to pick up the tab for operating and improving his stadium. We know it’s his stadium because a few years ago he made certain there’d be no question regarding its ownership by attaching his name to it. Or when he when he wants to justify increasing the ticket prices despite offering a lousy product on the field. Or when he wants to justify moving regular season games out of his taxpayer supported stadium to Toronto because he can make more money in Mr. Roger’s neighborhood.
Today I’d like to change the paradigm. I’d like to ask Mr. Wilson, “Ralph why does your business deserve our support?” As a form of pure entertainment? Please, your teams for 40 of the past 50 years have been about as entertaining as going for a root canal. Civic pride because it keeps our area in the national consciousness? Well so does our brutal winter weather. We can take some perverse civic pride in being hardy survivors of our tough winters just as we can take some measure of perverse pride in being diehard fans of your loser NFL team. But your team, like our weather is nothing in and of itself to be proud of. It doesn’t make anyone around the country wish they lived here to share in the misery they bring. As a source of revenue for the area? Subtract the cost of the stadium deal, the annual direct subsidies to your payroll, the added cost of police patrols and other first responder support across the area on game days from the state payroll income taxes received and the increased service sector business in the form of meals and snacks and beverages and gas sold and I doubt the area does any more than break even. Even if having your business here generates more money than it costs to host it, having the Bills here is no economic windfall for the area. Then consider that most of the money being spent on game days is by Upstate residents who would be spending their money here anyway, and I really question any argument that the Bills economically benefit Buffalo, Erie County or New York State. Then there is that nagging little question about what happens to your team when you pass on to that great country club in the sky? Which considering your advanced age is most likely to be sooner rather than later. You’ve made it abundantly clear that you will do nothing to insure the team remains in the community that has given its unconditional love, loyalty and financial support to it for the past fifty plus years.
By in large most of us scorn the avarice and greed of the money grubbing barons of Wall Street who are now begging for taxpayer welfare to bail them out. Are you Ralph and the other 31 billionaire princes of the NFL who look to their host municipalities for huge taxpayer subsidies in the form of sweetheart stadium deals any better? Who created the NFL Network that denies 60% of the country the ability to view select NFL games. Who created blackout rules that deny people living 3 and 4 hours away from an NFL stadium the ability to watch the closest NFL franchise on television. At least when the Wall St. barons business improves so to do our 401Ks. Whom besides NFL ownership and players benefit from your greed driven business?
So Ralph today the question is not whether Buffalo and the surrounding Upstate area can support an NFL franchise. The question is whether your business is deserving of our continued support?
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 No.3
ba bye		 10:41 AM
12/01/2008
My remaining interest is to see exactly how badly the Bills will tank during the last four games. Unfortunately, many of these stiffs will be back next year, and the new high character, high motor "Marvians" have proven sadly futile. The "promote from within" means that they vomited up quite a mess.

Please, tell me again about how the defense played great. I spent most of the first quarter (14 plays, 72 yards, over 8 minutes) of the game watching them get totally dismantled by the reeking San Francisco 49ers. They made Isaac Bruce look 20 years old again.
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