May Day 10

I agree on schopp. Overall, I appreciate his approach to sports. Everything needs to be backed up and proven. Nobody has any time to suffer through some fan's trade proposal for connor mcdavid. But man, I can't listen to the constant gambling and fantasy talk. It's just boring radio. Maybe have an hour dedicated show to it or something.

Sal and White would be a terrible combination. I also agree that I dont think his career/other obligations would allow him to be a 6-10 daily host.

I trust Lee Smith's opinion. Comes across as a smart and grounded guy. Has experience in this room. I'm cool with what he says.

Some version of this would be fine IMO. Its an unpopular take, but I think NFL games are very well officiated. Its an impossible job and these guys do it as well as humanly possible. Mistakes happen, its the human element and part of sports.

Mahomes is a freakishly good quarterback. He has the MVPs and Lombardis. Its unimpeachible. Brady wasnt spectacular at all early in his career. He was a decent game manager, but New England had great special teams, defense, and coaching (and maybe a little something else*) that got them through that first superbowl and the early 00s. My eyeballs saw that Payton Manning was 10x better as a QB but was shouted down due to 'rings'. Brady really never showed any superlative skill. He was just really well prepared, dedicated himself to his craft, and had ice in his veins. Belichick out-coached the opposition nearly every game too. Then you add the various bending of the rules allegations, and brady's wooden public persona. It is tough to like him. I just dont know why we couldnt have Scantling, JuJu, and/or Toney. They gave Josh crap to work with this year.

For MLB, I would shake the whole thing up now they have the universal DH. Put the cross-town and regional rivals in the same Division: Mets/Yankees, Orioles/Nationals, Cleveland/Cincinnati, Tampa/Marlins, etc... I don't mind seeing the current # of teams in. 162 games is a long season, and the more teams with meaningful games for the stretch-run, the better. NHL is trashed. Not sure what they did with the Divisional alignment, names, and playoff format, but woof. Go immediately to the 3-2-1-0 points system. Change out of the current Division-heavy playoff system where you only play some divisional opponents 3 times (while playing an irrelevant team in the other conference 2x). I think the NHL could do the 8-Division format the NFL has with 2 conferences. Play each team in your division 8x, other 3 divisions in conference 3x each, and other conference 1x. That would be a 76 game schedule which I think is fine. If they want those 6 extra games, blend them into the rest of the conference or Division on a rotating basis. They could also choose to play 2 divisions in the other conference in a home/away, flip-flopping every year with the other 2 divisions. Division winner makes the playoffs, 4 wild-cards in each conference. Seeded 1-8 in each conference for round 1. After Round 1, seed the remaining teams 1-8, regardless of conference, and play it out. That way, any NHL Final is possible. NBA, Im not sure, I dont follow it close enough, but I think they are doing a good job. That play-in round concept is neat. NFL I am torn. I like the 4 team Divisions, but Im entirely bored with the Jets, Dolphins, and Patriots. I was fine with 12 teams making it, although I dont hate the idea of 2 additional teams. I do dislike the current format of only 1 team getting the top seed as well as the bye. I honestly would think about giving the choice to the #1 seed: Bye OR top-seed/home field.

I'm tired of the afc east as well. The nfl alignment as a whole is stale and has been the same for 20+ years.

I was spoke to a lot of football fans in the past few months and they say mahomes is like Otto Graham, Allen is Bobby Layne, burrow ya tittle, and Herbert norm van brocklin

I went last year. I thought it was good. I saw them back in the 80s as a kid and this time it didn't seem to have quite the hilarity.

I strongly disagree with this. I probably watched about 98% of every minute of every Sabres game from about 1987-maybe 2013. Win or lose, bankruptcy, even eliminated from the playoffs. Long time multiple-decade season ticket holder too. There was a time that it was not worth it to watch anymore. Through the slog of some of the end of the Ruff/Regier era. Boring uncompetitive hockey, and then the tank. Why bother. I began to miss a lot of games, and I didn't miss watching... Mind you, this coincided with having kids too. In the Phil Housley and Kruger time, I think I missed entire seasons other than attending a few games. I was a very early adopter of knowing who Jack Eichel really is and it bled into the entire organization, and no manager knew how to handle it or step up to him. The 3-hour time commitment of watching an irrelevant hockey team in an irrelevant game where nothing interesting will happen just wasn't worth it. Going to the game was even worse, even for free and I got rid of my season tickets. I like this team and direction, however, it is still hard for me to get back into that habit of watching entire games 82 times at 3 hours/pop. I have issues with the NHL product as a whole too. I tend to follow how they are doing on the ESPN app... and if its close in the 3rd I will tune in. I have been to about 6 games this season (and also jumped in as a STH because a great location was available and the Sabres wined and dined me)

This is the biggest factor IMO. The team fell into an artificial demand trap. Golisano slashed STH pricing at the perfect time. The team went on 2 deep runs and the ticket pricing was a huge value. In 2007 they sold out of STH because you could literally sell only the Leafs games and finance the rest of the season. They slowly but surely (some increases were somewhat aggressive) increased the pricing. People did not want to miss out as there was a 2-5K person waiting list for season tickets, and the box-office pricing was oppressive. There was a FOMO for the STH. People were ready to start bailing at a few junctures, but there were massive moments and the STH continued with FOMO. First was when Pegula bought the team. People were fed up with status quo and he came in promising resources we never were able to enjoy. Huge hooplah. Then, people got sick of it again with Regier/Ruff and we had the master plan of getting McDavid and building a Chicago/Pittsburgh type dynasty. Eichel came along, with a few other splashes and we were energized. People got sick of it, then the promise of Eichel and Dahlin.... cant miss! However, this last juncture, there was no hope left to sell. Just before Covid, STH finally started to bail and it was clear the STH waiting list were electing NOT to buy season tickets. All along, the Sabres aggressively increased the pricing based on a sold out STH base. Once that bubble burst, it is a huge challenge to get it back at these prices in this area. Ticket prices are actually higher here in many price levels than they are in many large markets, including teams who have won recent Stanley Cups. I think the Sabres need to slash pricing, at least in some categories to get the base built, fill the building, make it fun, then build on that, again increase pricing.... and this time, act like they value their STH (I bailed in 2019 due to being neglected since Ted Black was sent packing for that snake Russ Brandon, I returned this season and it is a completely different animal).

I was a DTV subscriber for years. I did appreciate the ability to speak to a friendly person every year, and get my bill down to a reasonable amount, and also some free premium stations for a few months. AT&T took over and all the charm went away. They acted like all the other telecoms. They had me and would take whatever $ they could get away with. I looked at my bill. Im 'renting' about $40 in equipment alone every month, along with all sorts of other service fees for those. Plus the service itself. Why am I doing this? About 2015, we took the plunge and went all streaming. I'll never go back. I tried both Hulu Live and YouTube TV. YouTube TV is a little better, mainly due to the interface. We have Netflix, and my Verizon Phone plan includes Hulu, ESPN+, and Disney+. We do not have a TV subscription service at this time. I borrow my FIL's Spectrum password and can log into any of the apps to get content and live TV. My TV consumption has turned into a life of 'on-demand'. Its liberating in my busy life. Any of these services, you can just subscribe to, or cancel with the click of a button. No annoying retention, no contracts, no difficulty. You can also just log in and watch TV from any device you have. We did beef up our Spectrum Internet and purchased a good modem and router (so we dont have to lease them from Spectrum). We have had 3+ TVs, phones, tablets all on at once and never have we had any sort of internet issues. There are a few inconveniences. The Sabres/MSG is annoying. They need to get off that platform. You can only get it through Fubo TV I think. I watch it on the MSG Go app. Sports though are these telecoms' last grip on owning the monopoly, so I am not going to allow whoever owns MSG to bully me into paying Spectrum or Directv money. We watch much less live television like the News, but honestly, I don't see that as a bad thing at all.

I was always a fan of the ROFL

Tom Brady is undoubtedly the most successful QB of all time. I wouldn't consider him the best QB of all time. He never wowed me. Didn't have any real superlative attributes. Doesn't possess a crazy highlight reel. Just very well prepared, performed very well, and had ice in his veins at crunch time.

I also think these leagues need to start smaller and more regional. They always try to jump into these giant markets and act like a major pro sports league. Start modestly and build a following and an interesting product. Id so go 8 teams and play in one region. Honestly, I think the rust belt/midwest makes a lot of sense because the lack of things to do in the winter. Detroit, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Iowa (werent they successful?), Indianapolis, Chicago, Columbus, St Louis?

You would need a willing owner. I feel like pegula wouldn't be in the market for this. They already operate a lot of teams and there are complications with the current state of that arena. Also rumors they are looking at finding an equity investor as it is. Not to mention Kim's health. I can't see any other of the few big money players in this town going in on this either. The facility is not a nice one. It is in need of a lot of $ in upgrades and repairs.

Nightmare game.

Les Claypool's Fearless Flying Frog Brigade at the Town Ballroom May 30th. Sean Lennon will be playing with them. One of the sets will be a cover of Pink Floyd's Animals in its entirety. Run to get tickets for this show.

The Sabres are looking good and well on pace for what I had hoped for this season. They do need to close teams off, and that probably comes when they get an NHL starter caliber goaltender.

Im thinking No. I do think they will be a 10-11 win WC team. This (hopefully) will be their '1989' team who transitions into a solid and sustainable run. *Im not overly negative. I just think there are too many weak spots to effectively fix in an offseason and they will lose a step to hopefully gain one.

IMO the first part of the decade stuff will be played on classic rock and oldies stations for 100 years. Pearl Jam, Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins, Sublime, Primus, many of these things mentioned. However, a lot of the later decade stuff blended the genres and came out as that Metal/Rap garbage that effectively killed rock as we knew it. Maybe garbage is harsh, I like some hit songs from there time to time at a tailgate or something. But thinking Limp Bizkit, Korn, Disturbed, Linkin Park, POD, SUM 41, Incubus, Godsmack, Papa Roach, Saliva, etc. I hesitate to put Rage Against the Machine here because the lyrics and Tom Morello... it had quite a bit of substance. TRL also came in the later portion of the decade and created stuff with little substance like many of the aforementioned acts and Blink 182. The 90s almost feels like 2 decades. We had 1989-1996, then 1997-2003 or so.

I wonder if the Bengals game happened last year, we would have AJ Brown.

It is probably just this. When people hear '90s Rock', they immediately go to the Seattle scene in the early part of the decade, and these are the 'big 4' that had/have the most notoriety. The music was accessible to everybody and transcended a few genres. I know Pearl Jam has had releases post-2000, but these 4 are largely fully encapsulated in the 90s decade. If you have to pick 4 as a monument to '90s' rock, it is these 4.

13 seconds was way worse/ I was actually kind of thankful for the Cincy loss going down the way it did. It was much easier as a fan, I can admit when a team is just really better on a given day, and Cincinnati deserved every bit of what they have. They left no doubt who the better team was. This was like the first 'legit' loss that they just got outplayed since before Thanksgiving last year to Indianapolis. And only the 3rd one since KC won in Buffalo on that Monday afternoon or whatever in October during Covid with no fans (Indy, Pitt, KC AFCG). Any other loss has all sort of 'what if' plays, phantom PI calls, Hail Murray, whatever that just leaves you scratching your head and wondering what happened.

I had an ACL reconstruction and went through the whole gammit. IMO, CB would be by far the worst/hardest position in sports to return to. Just the speed you need to have as well as cutting around. Not just cutting, but reacting to others' movements. At least a WR, RB, etc could compensate if they don't totally 'trust' their knee as they are the ones typically dictating/knowing where they go. For me, it was about 18 months until the thing was out of my head, there was no 'sensation' in my knee, and I was as I was prior to the injury. The mental aspect was very tough. I would bet that White (as long as mentally he is all-in after his injury and the Hamlin situation) will be 100% by training camp.