CodeMonkey

You should be OK with that too. Take your Bills hat off for just a minute and look objectively. The Bills have been completely irrelevant for the last 13 seasons (some would argue the majority of their existence). A completely new coaching staff ... again. Drafted some probable, but not proven yet, good players, but lost at least one good starter and to date one franchise tag holdout. Bills fans try to see the best, but they did when the Gailey staff came in as well. Then yet again before the start of last season with Wanny taking over the D. So Bills fans can't be taken seriously in this matter. Bottom line is the Bills should be ranked below the Jets until they prove otherwise, which hasn't happened yet because they haven't even started camp yet. At the end of preseason these lists start to carry a little weight because there is some basis in fact. Until then, these journalists are scrambling for something, anything, to write to keep food on the table. OK, now put your Bills hat back on. It's almost time for camp

A Rochester radio station organized a package for the away Phish game for years. Don't know if they still do or not, but there was never any problem for Bills fans down there. The Bills/fish rivalry is/was apparently only in Buffalo. Not a big deal in Miami.

You never know. After all, some team hired Chan Gailey as a HC a few years ago.

My family went nuts and got a bunch too and we have extras. Spillertime and Fluffhead let me know what you are doing as I had 2 each reserved for you as well. I have 9 extra (maybe more depending upon spillertime and fluffhead) for July 28 and 8 for August 5. We live in Rochester so I don't need any money. PM me your postal address and how many, first come first serve.

Superstar???

Yes, Friday July 12 at 9am. That Rochester D&C article was from today.

http://www.democratandchronicle.com/article/20130711/SPORTS03/307110027/Buffalo-Bills-training-camp-night-practice-tickets

I'm not sure that I disagree completely, but I doubt that its true. I did a very unscientific survey of myself and a few friends/coworkers, all Bills fans, no season ticket holders, most go to at least one game every couple years at the Ralph. Out of the 10 people (told you it was unscientific ) exactly zero said they have ever, or would even consider going to a game because it was blacked out. If they could not watch it live, they would watch the replay in a few days. About half said they record the game to watch later half the time anyway due to not wanting to spend a Sunday afternoon watching football. So I do not see blackouts generating significant last minute ticket sales. And most of the last minute sales would probably be from stubhub etc. and not the Bills ticket office anyway. However, an argument could be made, I suppose, that no blackout rule could cause some people on the fence about seasons to say the heck with it and watch on TV. But again, I would not expect that number to grow to be anything near significant. And a better cure for the apathetic TV viewer is to not suck as a team, not blackouts, anyway. Bottom line, the people that are going to go, are going to do so blackout or no blackout rule. And the ones who prefer to watch from their couch are going to do so, blackout or no blackout rule. The blackout rule just delays some people seeing the game for a few days, that's pretty much it.

FYI for those getting tickets for others. There is generally a limit to how many they will give you (5 or 6 I think). So I bring my kids and we go in one after the other to get more

Not even one day of training camp out from under the shadow of Sexy Rexy and he is the next HC candidate huh. Interesting topic indeed.

Thanks!

True. But Sanders would/could go straight ahead when he had to get a couple tough yards.. Spiller tends to want to bounce it outside at the first hint of resistance. It worked for him in college, but is far less effective in the NFL. He did seem to get a little better about that late last season however. Was it that Spiller would/could not get the tough inside yards, or was it that Gailey didn't want to let him try? Again, another interesting thing to see this regular season with the new staff.

Spillers 6 yards per carry last season is impressive. And based on that stat alone it would seem logical to keep him in on 3rd and short, red zone, etc. But IIRC that high YPC was mainly due to the beautiful long runs that he had. In between those long runs were a lot of no gain or small loss/gain. Gailey did not see Spiller as a 3rd and short guy, and so far in Spillers career anyway, I have to agree. Seeing Hacketts use of Spiller in those situations will indeed be interesting once the regular season starts,

If the game is blacked out it is also blacked out for DirectTV. I know that for a fact. But if you think about it, people are paying for the ticket and some of that money finds it's way into the pockets of the NFL owners. So they should not be blacked out at all.

But the thing is, the government has already thrown their weight into the situation by its concessions on the monopoly as well as government handouts in the form of tax breaks and stadium funding. Eliminate all of these things and i agree with you.

But AP will be in the HOF. He just needs to retire first.

I'd venture to say not from friends and family making him feel comfortable or giving him emotional security.

If you wish to send Sen McCain a message (I just did), you can do so here. http://www.mccain.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Contact.contactform

Wow, this is ass backwards even for the NFL owners ... Soo according to the owners, the blackout rule has increased fans ability to watch games on TV because the number of blacked out games has decreased? Seriously?? But I will tell you what ... if Sen. McCain gets rid of black outs I will retroactively vote for him for President

Nice weather and some red pinto tailgate wings at the kids day (night actually) game.

Yikes. I was not a believer in the "pussification of the NFL" theory until I read this post.

Not sure I buy your premise. Ticket sales money is dwarfed by the TV revenue. And Mr. Wilson doesn't even get all of the ticket revenue, it is shared with the visiting team. More butts in the seats means higher beer and hotdog sales I guess, but to a Billionaire like Mr. Wilson I can't imagine that money is more than a blip on his radar. The bottom line I think is that even if the blackout rule isn't making the owners much money, it certainly isn't costing them any, So they have no reason to get rid of it if they do not have to. And right now at least they do not have to. I hope McCain can change that, though I am not hopeful.

Anyone have any info on when the tickets are going to be available from Verizon for the first evening? I figure there has to be at least one Verizon employee here

Well said. I also wonder how effective the blackout rule is anyway. How many people that would watch the game on TV get a ticket (not from a scalper, but from the team) and go to blacked out games.? If I decided to go, which is unlikely in the extreme, I would get a ticket from a scalper or from stubhub. Never from the Bills. So it makes me wonder if the blackout rule has much of an impact on team ticket sales at all. There is a huge difference between watching low-def streamed video from a dedicated server and playing a real-time online game with other human players. If it is easy to get the wired connection to the laptop that will always be better. But my experience with streamed video, even near HD from places like netflix, is that wireless N is generally more than sufficient (caveat: assuming 10 other people aren't streaming video or playing online games via wireless while you are watching the streaming video ).

The HDMI has no bearing on your internet connection except that generally for throughput wired is better than wireless because it is faster and less prone to dropped packets, It can make a difference for things like netflix where it is trying to stream HD (or close to it) content. But for things like firstrow or Justin if you have wireless N it is fine as these servers don't try to push anything even close to HD down to you. But I use netflix with wireless N and the only issues I have are with netflix, not the wireless. The pauses while the buffering happens is generally due to the data coming from the server (firstrow, justin, or whatever), not your wireless (assuming you have a fairly modern wireless router and laptop). So hardwiring your laptop to the router is unlikely to affect the buffering issues. I have given up on the internet feeds. I guess I am too spoiled watching HD content. I wait and watch blacked out games during the next week or pull the network feed directly from a satellite (complicated and time consuming process to setup even if you are tech-savvy). Unless someone like firstrow starts streaming [near] HD content, which is highly unlikely, that's how it is likely to stay for me. Or until the government finally forces King Roger to drop the blackouts. As for getting the video to your TV once you have the HDMI connection, usually I set the HDMI out to be the second monitor on the laptop, set the resolution of that "monitor" (your TV in this case) to match the resolution of your TV, drag the browser that has firstrow or Hulu or whatever to that second monitor and press the "full screen" button on the video window (now on your TV) . In Windows, set the audio to go out the HDMI instead of the laptops speakers (assuming you want audio to come out of the TV and not the laptop). Open your beer and enjoy Hope this helps.