TheLynchTrain

Semi-related Pegula watch note in Business First - sources claiming Pegula is eyeing HSBC Tower / One Seneca Tower downtown. The author cites two differing sources that claim his interest may or may not be predicated on a winning Bills bid. Maybe he's just trying to diversify his holdings and get into real estate development? It's also a very large plot of land; methinks there's a (very very very) small chance maybe he'd knock the building down to use in part of his stadium footprint??! Who knows, but I wouldn't discount a downtown/waterfront site just yet.

Seriously, he missed VOLUNTARY offseason workouts. He showed up to camp (albeit arbitrarily out of shape in the eyes of the coaches), but he did show up to camp. It's called guaranteed money for a reason. Branch received his penalty; he was fired. I would be more interested at this time in looking at Doug Whaley and his scouts - how the hell did they misjudge this situation so poorly?

To be fair, don't we have a losing record in ALL our jerseys since 2000?

I enjoy a good WGR/Schopp and the Bulldog bashing like the rest of us, but why don't we just have a master schopp bashing rant thread that we can all fall back on? There must be a million of these.

Yep, I figured you did, and I agree with your premise. If they're gonna spend a $100 M or so on a fixed roof, they might as well spend the extra $30-40 M on the retractable roof. Nobody wants a sterile environment like the dome in St. Louis. Hopefully, if Pegula (fingers crossed) can buy this thing outright, the Buffalo Fan Alliance can retrofit their Bills Bonds plan to assist in funding a stadium. I can't imagine NFL ownership or local politicans standing in the way of private financing like that.

As distasteful as a climate controlled playoff game in January in Buffalo sounds to me, I tend to agree with you. The only way we'll convince the public to shell out huge corporate welfare dollars for this stadium is if its able to be used more than 16-18-20 times a year. However, I think the $50 M you quoted (realize this was probably just a number you threw out there) is probably very low. Even, if its a run-of-the-mill, standard retactable roof without the bells and whistles of some of these other NFL stadium designs, I still think it will cost a pretty penny more. Take a look at the estimate this article pegged for the new Atlanta stadium design (of course on the high-end with the bird-nest design) - $185 M, and that is in today's dollars. I can only imagine what the cost would be when a new stadium design is bandied about in 5,10, 15 years whatever. There's also the cost of opening and closing it... EDIT: Bandit, I just realized my argument stood on (half) faulty ground- it looks like the fixed-roof will cost in the range of $100-130-150M, and adding a retractable roof will cost an additional $25-50 M (Vikings Stadium design). It's still a lot of money to shell out either way.

I think you hit the nail on the head. These conditioning tests are usually nothing more than a few wind sprints or whatever drills a position coaches wants to run his players through. I think a lot of times coaches "fail" players for things outside of conditioning - Bill Belicheck did it with Haynesworth in New England, although not like it mattered in the end. I have a feeling its more of Marrone attempting to get through to Marcel any way he can. Regarding Branch, I'm a little disapointed since he skipped all of the voluntary practices in the offseason. I'm the first guy in line that gets ticked off when I hear coaches spewing thinly vieled threats in the media about their players missing voluntary practices (Suh in Detroit), but then again, if you're going to skip this stuff you should be working as hard or harder in the offseason. Of course, Marrone could be using a little psychology on Branch as well...

I'm assuming Kluwe thinks there's a big difference between making homophobic remarks and making fun of pedophiles. That being said, I'm not sure why he's dragging his other teammates into this now, and I've seen him on twitter trashing Minnesota in general. EDIT: For anyone who hasn't seen it, I'd encourage you to read the original article Kluwe wrote accusing the Vikings. Leslie Frazier sounds like a real d-bag. http://deadspin.com/i-was-an-nfl-player-until-i-was-fired-by-two-cowards-an-1493208214

Exactly Byrd has never been a talker, has no prime time endorsement deals that I can think of and he spent his entire career so far in Buffalo.

Exactly, how could they be so flippant with that? As a whole, the NFL averages almost 1100-1200+ sacks a year - by leaving that stat out that would skew the numbers in favor of the author's argument. Also, one quick look at the table shows the excel formulas aren't adding up correctly - take a look at the numbers from 2001 and see how the Pass % and the Run % are switched, again in favor of the author's argument. EDIT: Also, has anyone actually made the argument that running attacks have been greatly diminished? I think the real argument is the disappearance of the featured running back. I think the guy is taking on the straw man argument here.

Promotion/relegation is a pretty cool idea in theory, but I don't know if it has shown it works all that well in practice. I believe the Premier League is dominated by "The Big Four" (Arsenal, Man U, Man City and Chelsea) who've won every championship except one (Blackburn almost 20 years ago). With the dominance of new/retrofit super stadiums in England and the rise of TV money, the top level Premier teams have such a built in advantage that they'll never be relegated. Usually, its the same 6-8 teams taking up the bottom 4-5 slots (and top lower level slots) every 4-5 years while every other team stays in place. There's also the issue with the vast disparity of playing the Premier League versus the lower leagues that teams that have been stable for 100 years go belly up after being promoted, getting used to the new money, getting relegated again and then losing HUGE amounts of money dropping back down. I think the Premier League tried alleviating some of this concern by giving relegated teams "parachute money" to withstand the financial blow, but then that again creates entrenched interests - those recent relegated teams have built in financial advantage against the rest of the League Championship teams. Again, its cool to think that some guy could buy a team in some tiny town, spend the money and go all the way to the top, but the reality of that actually happening is slim to none. EDIT: I think it would be really cool if NCAA Football tried this system. I just really can't see it working in any of the professional leagues though.

I think anyone who's bought a home can relate. While I understand purchasing a home is radically different than buying a damn football team, fundamentally, they're both just assets. You crunch the numbers, check out past comps, and speak with folks in the know. But at the end of the day, its as much of a gut decision - will I be happy with this purchase? Can I make a good investment when I sell? If not, can I stomach losing money, and how much? While I wish I could agree, I don't necessarily know if that actually refers to Bon Jovi. My impression is that Bon Jovi is just the figurehead for the Rogers bid (a la Jay Z with Nets); a guy who is well liked in ownership circles (Kraft, JJ, Goodell) as well as the Toronto business and political community. And while he's worth a couple hundred mil, I'll take an uneducated guess that he probably won't put much of his own money down. The Rogers family could foot the bill themselves, but they see Bon Jovi as adding value to their bid. So yes, I guess you could call this Rogers/BJ group a syndicate. But I get the impression the syndicate the Sun speaks of is a group of folks that individually wouldn't have the cash to go it alone, like when Mark Hammister tried and failed to put a group of investors together to buy the Sabres ten years ago. Just my two cents.

The problem the article fails to mention is that the NFL will demand a stadium. Yes, yes, we all understand ad naseum that it is distasteful for some of the richest billionaires to demand a handout from the taxed to the extreme regular joes, but that's just the way it works in the real world. If Buffalo stands up and tells the new owner and the NFL they won't build a new stadium, the new owner and the NFL will have a perfect excuse as to why they're leaving the 73rd largest city in America for something better. So while we may not need a new stadium, the NFL will demand a new stadium, and they know they have the leverage. It's just the way it is.

Look, maybe the Roger Goodell and Mary Wilson want the Bills to stay in Buffalo, maybe they don't. It's all speculation. What I do know is neither of those parties wants to slam the door on Toronto (or any other location) before bidding starts. That would reduce the number of bidders, and in turn reduce the sale price. It's that simple. All we can do is hope these people have the good fans of Buffalo in mind.

Agreed - I don't think it will hit the $1 B threshold. This is Buffalo, not LA, and we don't have individual, regional TV contracts like the other three sports. I'll peg it as $969 M.

in in IN

I'm no lawyer, but you have to wonder why he took the trial instead of pleading to (possibly) some lesser charge that probably wouldn't have included jail time. Compounded with the fact that the defense called his sister to the stand (who freaking admitted she told him to stop), this whole thing made no sense. He took some really bad advice there.

Didn't catch it. What did he say? Was it standard good teammate/win now/playoffs/our time fare?

From Florio: "Whether it’s lying to one reporter or lying to all of them, the lesson is that no one should listen to anything Mathis ever has to say, if he’s going to continue to engage in the pro athlete equivalent of having pizzas delivered to his next-door neighbor." Or, I have a thought, maybe somebody in the media should have tried to call Mathis and see what happened before "reporting" about it? You know, actually confirm a story that you're writing about is true? I know Florio and his site didn't post about it, but plenty of "reputable" sites actually did...without speaking with Mathis first. And "lying to one reporter or lying to all of them' ???!!! Unless somebody picked up the phone and actually confirmed with Mathis that it was a legit dinner receipt (maybe they did), I think the word lying is a little bit of a stretch. Exactly - you beat me to it

So he was trolling everyone? If so, that's hilarious. EDIT: And then he posted this. Too funny...

For what its worth, when he bought Pabst he moved the headquarters from Wisconsin to.....LA.

I agree with you, my use of the phrase "loss of revenue" was probably not the right choice of words. However, if local communities are trying to "sell" the public that they'll make money on these tourist events through supplemental tax revenue, those models are now out the window if the NFL is demanding they will be exempt from those taxes.

Florio posted some of the outrageous stipulations yesterday (24/7 police escorts for freaking owners). Perusing through the document, I found a fairly ridiculous one - "Section F. Tax Exemptions" on page 68 (page 69 of the pdf). I wanted to copy and paste it here, but the formatting kind of sucks, so take a look yourself. Basically, the section says any entity or individual associated with the NFL (AND ITS "MEMBER CLUBS," ie teams and team personnel) are exempt from ANY local taxes, be it income, gross, occupancy, etc. They said they expect the host committee to basically has to figure out how to get around any taxable authorities, and if they don't, they expect the host committee to reimburse any taxes. Look, I think people in the media make too big a deal out of the fact that the NFL as an association is a "not for profit" that pays no taxes, because hey, if the NFL and then member clubs were both taxed, they would effectively be taxed twice on the same money. But the fact that the NFL is demanding that all of it's entities and employees are exempt from taxes is insane! The NFL (and well-paid host committee executives) have always trotted out dubious studies that show the economic impact that such an event provides to a community. These studies are always predicated on expected tax revenues local communities can bring in. Now the NFL is removing a serious chunk of that tax revenue. I'd be quite interested in seeing what the potential loss of revenue is there - 12 million? 15 million? 50 million?

So, this was never confirmed? It looks like the OP chimed in and then bounced. If this actually occurred, you'd figure that Shredd and Regan would have posted this on their twitter feed and other folks in the media would have picked it up. Neither have happened.

He was already charged and arraigned for illegal speed racing, among other things. As I said I doubt the specific charge sticks, too many variables. And Marcell doesn't need to justify anything, the prosecutor does. Well just have to see how it plays out 6 months down the road.