CodeMonkey

Being a flyers fan is probably why you think hockey is boring to watch.

Every sport, and other things as well, give people a discount for pre-paying. That discount you are rationalizing as half price for exhibition games is simply the pre-payment discount. Your statement sounds like NFL spin to me.

In my opinion if a coach cannot evaluate players without preseason games then they are not much of a coach. Scrimmaging offense vs defense inside the same team should give them more than enough to evaluate players. If for some reason they feel the need to see their players against other teams (I have no idea why) then have teams come in for scrimmages like the Browns sometimes do to the Bills training camp or visa verse. The only reason for preseason games I see is to scam season ticket holders and maybe to give the facility people some live practice prior to opening day.

You guys and your smoke screens. Can't they just be thorough and talk to everyone worth considering?

It doesn't say enough to even be called speculation. Folks, nothing will happen until after Mr. Wilson passes (which I personally hope is a very long time from now). Any talk of who is lining up to buy, or backing Kelly, or any other wild ass speculation is nothing more than mental masturbation.

I guess it depends upon how desperate the fans are. I would have no interest and would not watch. As far as I am concerned they would not be the Bills. I guess for the people whose main interest is the "event" (tailgating etc.) it could work though.

What makes you think people collecting paychecks from the NFL KNOW who is going to be a great player? No one knows for sure, no matter how much time you put into it, amateur or professional. It's just that some people (generally professionals) make more educated and ultimately better guesses than the majority of us. The Bills could sure use one of those guys right now.

Nothing being done by either side, no idea where any money would come from for renovations, the Bills confident that the taxpayers won't be "unreasonable" (Read as won't balk at paying for whatever the Bills ask for), but the politicians are 99% confident a new lease deal will be made. Classic.

If you recall, Little Ben was never charged with a crime.

Interesting that as far as QBs go, he has Gabbert at 5 and Locker and Newton at 20 and 21 respectively. With an asterisk on Newton as a project. If I was a pessimist I'd say that seals it, the Bills pick Newton at #3

You guys are reaching quite a ways. I would hope that the Buffalo economy is not so bad that a significant number of businesses are going to downsize or go under because of 10 days a year. And tourism? The vast majority of season ticket holders live within a pretty tight (~100 miles) radius of the Ralph. They come to the tailgate, stay for the game, then go home. Tourism ... you guys kill me. You guys and lots of others love the tailgating, and going to the games. I get it, and that's a wonderful thing. Tailgating at the Ralph (hardcore drunks not withstanding) is a lot of fun. But please stop talking about tourism issues and companies going out of business if there is no football for a season. Besides, I can't imagine either the owners or players will let that happen. The owners are generally smart business people, they aren't going to easily let billions of potential dollars slip away. The players as a whole are smart enough as well. They will come to some agreement before the start of the season and it will be business as usual. The only disruption will be to OTAs and camp (if even that).

Eloquently put, as always.

It already has. But nowhere near critical mass yet.

"A lot" is a relative term. I believe that not anywhere near half (probably not even 25%) of adult Americans plan their weekends around football. To some, like you perhaps, it is more than a game. To me and others it is one form of entertainment and nothing more. This is clearly true.

That's very common anymore. I am a software contract worker for a fortune 500 company and 75% (maybe more actually) of my organization is contract. Easier for the company to hire and fire without worrying about any union or lawsuit bull ****.

Come on Phil, think about this a little. Even ignoring Toronto, you are talking about 10 days (including preseason) out of a 365 day year, or 2.74% of possible business days. You are trying to tell me businesses (and I am talking about businesses that decide peoples livelihoods, not someone allowing people to park on their lawns) need these extra 10 days or they will not "survive". You are being a tad over dramatic, don't you think? I'm not saying anyone should boycott, not boycott, go to the games, or not go to the games. It's (for the most part) a free country. But this local businesses going under angle is a bit much.

For better or for worse, this is clearly true.

It is just a game. One managed by billionaires and played by millionaires. But just a game.

I see a lot of fan outrage in this and other threads. So ... what are you outraged fans going to do about it? The answer for the vast majority is ultimately nothing. Most will whine, piss, and moan until some kind of deal happens then start kissing ass again. The players and owners know this well and bank on it.

This is absolutely the case for me as well. I watch very few non-Bills games. And when I do, the only way I can tolerate it is I have software to record shows and strip out the commercials. It doesn't kill all the wasted time between plays etc., but just no commercials makes the game significantly more watchable.

Occam's razor (a principle that suggests we should tend towards simpler theories until we can trade some simplicity for increased explanatory power) says they are considering Newton. My personal opinion is all this talk of smokescreens is a bit beyond Buddy and Chan.

Yes YES dammit the never ending bias by the officials against the Bills cannot go unavenged!!!!!

You may be right, I don't know. But regarding Buffalo drafting him, how can you possible use a pocket passer when you have no pocket? Seems like putting the cart before the horse to me.

Until cåblelady is a Jill they will never achieve their full potential

You are about as far off base as a person can be with this, amused or not. The primary goal of the project is to create a computer system capable of interacting with humans in what a human considers natural language. Jeopardy was seen as a good benchmark due to the nature of the answers, the speed in which the system would need to respond, and the vast and unpredictable scope of the knowledge required. Also, advanced technology is about the only thing the US has not lost it's edge in (yet). We are still the best at pushing the envelope and creating cutting edge technology. It is mainly the mass production of said technology that we have lost our edge in due to reasons too numerous to get into here. A sister project to Watson, also by IBM, is called Blue Gene which involves supercomputers mapping the human genome. Which, among other things, is expected to contribute heavily to ending the cancer and other wretched diseases that are killing not only Americans, but people in the other countries as well. Now had they developed Watson to out coach human NFL coaches, THEN I would be pissed at the waste of resources. Unless it would coach the Bills and out coach the satanic coach of the Pats of course