PDaDdy

That amount of money is the difference between resigning a probowler or trying to replace them with an undrafted free agent. That amount of money is the difference between bringing in an impact free agent and a guy that just holds a roster spot that will disappoint and be released in 2 or 3 years. Big picture man. That is the downside. Bucky Brookes sucked as a player. Ya. So what? What bearing does that have on his opinion as a football analyst? ....NONE!!!

I guess you could take exception with the tone or the writing style but I still think his assessment is right on the money. I think he relied on a little sensationalism to try to drive home a rather obvious point that people seem to be ignoring. I will honestly be shocked and happy if Merriman makes any significant contribution on the field. My best and wildest hope is that he is as good as a Chris Kelsay. A no name plugger that just occupies space but does not shine in any way. By the way. The Broncos are my 3rd favorite team now. Light in the pants Von Miller might have been ok too but Darues is the huge athletic presence that our undersized and slow defense needs. Buddy wasn't here to make the call but the thing with Ralph that kills me is that he took a few million dollar flier on a has been like Merriman but he won't pay an extra million to renegotiate and resign a proven probowler. Just doesn't make sense.

The planets must surely be aligned Billsfreak. We actually seem to agree 100% on something. It might also have been a PR move as much of a long long long shot signing to make it look like we can still get a "big name", if not big performance, player on occasion.

What in Merriman's performance in the last 3 years gives you optimism? Love your signature by the way. Dareus hasn't played a down yet but so far Carolina is my second favorite team.

I've been saying this since day one. I was honestly in doubt that he would ever play a regular season down for us. He may actually get on the field before getting cut but it is likely he will play and be ineffective. I can't believe that not many people think about it but what has Merriman done since his injuries and getting off the juice???? ABSOLUTELY NOTHING IN THE LAST 3 YEARS!!! He has been done for a long time. He and Buddy just haven't realized it yet.

Note I said "hopefully".

I think you made it up. Man somebody is bored. That makes no sense what so ever. We would weaken our secondary which is already in need of talent that can stay healthy. McKelvin is also hopefully starting to get a head for the game to go with his obvious physical skills. Although we were supposedly trying to trade back into the first round to get him, Tebow would just send the wrong message to and about Fitz. I wouldn't buy the sit on the bench and learn for a couple years BS. After Fitz's first INT the sector of the fans that are still looking for "the savior" would fire up the QB controversy machine and off we would go. Fitz has thrown the 2nd most TDs since Kelly in 1991 and he did it in only 13 games. Why plan his obsolescence by getting Tebow without seeing if he can build upon last year?

That's why I said it. LOL. No doubt. I understand a little bit that people can't get their heads around the idea that our "savior" could actually be somebodies cast off. I think the Saints are pretty OK with Drew Brees. I'm not saying Fitz is Drew Brees before anyone gets in a tizzy about it. I hate when people use the Tom Brady late round draft pick hall of fame QB exception as the rule for not using high draft picks to get franchise QBs but like that situation it's just an example. Maybe if we stop looking at Fitz as a stop gap measure and take the emotional risk of actually giving him our support in good games and in bad we could have what we have all been looking for for some time.

How can you be so certain that Fitz can't be that guy? In 13 games Fitz put up the second most TD's, 23, in the last TWENTY YEARS!!!! Bledsoe barely beat him in 2002 with 24 and Kelly put up 33 in 1991. Think about that. I mean really. Think about that! I think it puts Fitz into perspective historically. I know a lot of Bills fans have the "savior" mentality and are desperately searching for the next Peyton Manning but we need to be realistic. They advocate rolling the dice every couple years on a QB until we hit the lottery and find the next Peyton Manning, Tom Brady or Drew Brees. Fitz did a great job last year and in theory will be even better this year. Personally I like to use my highest draft picks on positions of need without reaching. Since any team, especially ours, has multiple needs you should always be able to find a great prospect to fill it with your first round pick. Yes ANY position can be upgraded but QB is not a position of need!

A 1st and a 3rd to supposedly upgrade based on Kolb's 2009 stats vs Fitz's 2010 coming off the bench in week 3 stats? No thanks! Let's not forget Fitz has not had a chance to be the starter for this team with a whole off season to prepare. Thanks to the lock out he still won't have the benefit of a full off season to prepare. I hope Fitz kicks ass this year so that in 2012 he might actually for the first time have the benefit of being the starter day 1 and we will truly see what this guy will or won't be.

Why would you try to get those guys killed behind our line?

Man it would be nice if that comes to fruition but I judge a #1 WR by one very very simple rule... A teams #1 WR gets double teamed. Defenses know who the biggest threat is and they game plan to take them away from you. Johnson got a lot of single coverage especially when Roscoe Parrish, believe it or not, was healthy and on the field. You can look at a significant drop off in production for Evans and Johnson after Parrish got hurt. Hopefully Johnson is: A) Considered enough of a threat to draw double coverage opening up the offense for all WRs B) Still productive with all the attention that he might draw in the 2012 season.

Lee Evans Stevie Johnson Marcus Easley Roscoe Parrish

There is a lot of work to do there. Agreed the system needs a lot of work to truly help make a difference. Good ideas man. Walking around money is right on. Let them own their image and make a couple more bucks that doesn't come out of the system. It could be a slippery slope I know as it might open up other avenues for boosters to funnel money into the system. Any sort of accounting could be a B word but I think that you could model it more like profit sharing. Players would get a little cut of the revenue up to a reasonable maximum kind of thing like the work study kind of compensation level.

There was some information in there. One question and answer pair that I thought was interesting and applies directly to my initial posts. Q: Why is it permissible for a university and the NCAA to make money from a player's memorabilia but not an active student-athlete? A: Oh, the $1 million (or billion) question. The NCAA believes that allowing an active student-athlete to sell his memorabilia would make it impossible to maintain a semblance of amateurism. Technically, the NCAA considers selling of awards or gifts a violation of its preferential benefit rules. It believes that memorabilia such as jerseys are owned by the individual university, not student-athletes. brabinowitz@dispatch.com I personally believe there is a loop hole. If I buy a Buffalo Bills Jersey it is now my property. I OWN IT! If I want to sell it as a used piece of merchandise with my signature on it who is to stop me? Now of course my signature would mean nothing on a Fred Jackson jersey and this "used" jersey wouldn't fetch much on eBay. If a player however purchased their own jersey, signed it and sold it as a used shirt that just happened to have their name on it why would the NCAA have any jurisdiction over that? To me the amateur status issue is BS since people are making billions off of these amateurs. I would hate to use a certain analogy that certain sensationalists would love to blow out of proportion but they have effectively declared their "workforce" to be intelligible for compensation thus guaranteeing themselves free, albeit "voluntary", labor. I put voluntary in quotes because they don't have to play but they don't really have any other viable competitive options.

So as a compensated employee you signed a contract giving away the right to your intellectual property? How does that relate to a student athlete that wants to play football? Remember not every one of these guys gets a free or even partially free ride. How is that fair for them? In the law and in america there is this concept of inalienable rights that can't be signed away. I happen to think that things like an individuals image and signature are not things that they coerced into signing away for nothing to be able to play a game. I hate to be that guy because I think the information is much more important than the source but you have revealed a bias in my opinion. You work for a university and quite possibly have an axe to grind or an agenda. Maybe you don't but it is interesting. Remember that you create intellectual property for the school. The athletes ARE the property so to speak. They are being prevented from selling themselves if you will. It's not an issue of legality because they aren't breaking the law. It's an issue of the NCAA making sure that they can squeeze every single cent out of their "business".

Heh good points in there but we definitely disagree on some and probably will always which is of course ok. You brought up a great point as well which I didn't even bother to because it is difficult to quantify. Regular students do let the sports team and campus feel influence their decision on where to go to school. There is this weird situation where college sports are "subsidized" if you will by student tuition and charitable donations. This is part of my discussion about how do they determine which teams make money and which don't? If you consider these subsidies as part of the income of the team all of these teams break even because the money to run them comes from tuition and donations. If you only look at the revenue the team generates vs operating costs then you can probably say a lot of teams ARE losing money. It's all in the accounting which is my point. Until we see those numbers and look at how they are accounting we really don't know anything. Even then it would be tough to make a blanket statement as teams that have high revenue probably budget very little to support that team where as teams that have very little revenue might budget quite a bit more. Remember there was college football for decades before it was televised. Nobody sent out reports saying these teams were losing money. It was just football you know what I mean? Now that the games are televised and it has become a big business.

Ok I'll play. Can you quote me the section of the article where the writer says that he got the financial information from the NCAA on the schools to make his determination??? All I see is him referencing an NCAA report that says a lot of those schools lost money without defining what expenses and income are included and did so without providing a single piece of financial information. I could issue a report saying I am a millionaire but until you see my financials it doesn't mean jack. I'm not trying to be a lawyer on this but I don't see that info anywhere. I do see where the article says that the NCAA's policy is to not divulge school financials. If that is their policy why would they divulge this information to some writer for the "Bright House Sports Network"? They would have to trust that this person kept this information secret or I would imagine risk hundreds of law suites. That just doesn't track for me. You are banging this side issue to death. What do you think about players being able to make their own money off of their own name, signatures, image, etc?

Thanks for the first hand info. I don't know that I am projecting anything because I honestly don't know anything. lol. I'm sure there are lots and lots of costs some of which may be associated with being an NCAA member that I don't know about because they don't open the books. I guess that was all I was saying. Your personal experience seems to point to this being a problem for the school you went to and who knows how many others. In hindsight I guess I really should have said NCAA College Football and Player Compensation to limit the discussion to football. Without a doubt I would imagine that other sports far and away would be losing money just due to the smaller revenues generated by lack of television rights, merchandise and ticket sales. Perhaps part of the problem with the football discussion is some of that money gets filtered into other sports that operate at a deficit. Further clouds the picture I guess.

Maybe when we get a 2 gap big body run plugger at NT and let Kyle Williams play DE penetrate and go nuts, which he is great at, we can stop people from running the ball down out throats. Well, that and LBs that can plug holes and make tackles behind or near the line of scrimmage.

Oh no doubt. I agree with you why those figures could be hidden. You could be right for all I know but without the proof we are guessing. It just has to do with taking something on the faith from an organization that isn't necessarily viewed in the highest regard or trustworthy even by the people who defend it to some extent. It's not just because it doesn't seem to jive with the beliefs and views of the NCAA I seem to be developing. I really am trying to learn something and am in no way an expert as I have stated many times. I wouldn't expect a fair and measured response from you so you gets what you get. I am trying to learn something here as stated above. Personally I like to learn from FACTS not from HEARSAY. I don't indiscriminately shoot down information because if would seem to disagree with my opinion. Unlike many if new information is proved to be valid I change my opinion. I would rather have the right answer than win an argument. This requires a person to always be ready to learn but be skeptical of new information that comes along until it can be validated. That is an important concept if you think about it. Man you are just a hateful jealous person of anyone who has talent and is treated differently than anyone else aren't you? "Coddling"? Sheesh. You would think these guys get manicures, pedicures and sponge baths from the cheerleaders, don't have to put in any work and just have to show up to receive the adulation of the masses. Were you one of the geeks who was jealous of the jocks in your school? Wow! .....I was both....but anyhow. I'm glad some information was found regarding the issue, one article, but it honestly is all opinion without many/any facts. I agree with some of the opinions at a high level but need to see facts to believe some others. That being said, again the focus is more on allowing the player to make their own money but I do feel that the universities should be a little more generous with these guys.

I looked at the article you provided and it seems like more NCAA shenanigans. The don't release profits or expenses for their programs but expect us to believe that only a handful of schools make a profit? What they hell are they spending money on? Their workforce plays for peanuts or nothing at all, they get TV money, merchandise money, ticket revenue and alumni contributions. Being a skeptic I don't believe a word of that article until I can see the whole picture and see what money is being counted where.

The NCAA limits practice hours I would imagine. How many hours do they have to spend in the play book outside of practice. Nutrition, additional conditioning etc I would also say are not counted in these 20 hours? I don't know about you but going to school full time and a 20 hour a week job is a real B word and a half. I've done it. It sucks! I don't think your scenario with the TV contracts dissapearing is a relevant one. They aren't going to go away and we all know it. The universities and the NCAA are making money hand over fist and SOME students get a full tuition ride. I wasn't even thinking about the fact, as one poster stated, that the cost to the student far exceeds the cost to the university. A $20,000 tuition free ride might only cost the university $10,000. Maybe less. If the universities gave the money to charity and ran college football as non profit organizations I would be 100% on board with your statements and beliefs. We however know this is not the case. The system is indeed broken. I don't think anyone here is advocating less school responsibilities but we are suggesting that NCAA restrictions regarding how the individual can make money are BS. How does a guy putting in 20hrs of practice and has a full time course load find the time to get a part time job? I don't know about you but I believe being successful at college football requires a LOT of dedication and focus. Do they have time to flip burgers at BK making $7 an hour and maintain the dedication and focus to play in front of 100,000 people on Saturday and keep a good GPA? These guys should be able to make their own money with fewer restrictions on how they do it not to mention be given even the smallest slice of the pie from the hundreds of millions of dollars made off of television rights, merchandise and ticket sales.

You bring up some good points in there that I agree with. As I stated before I'm not a college sports guy at all and don't know much about the NCAA other than the controversy you hear about. The whole thing just seemed wrong to me about how these "student athletes" are prevented from doing things that any other american citizen can do. I'm definitely learning more about how controlling the NCAA is.