GrudginglyPessimistic

The Bill of Rights prevents GOVERNMENT from passing a law which prevents speech. It does not apply at all in this case in which and individual (LJ) has agreed to act as an ambassador for a corporation and follow certain rules governing his speech and behavior since he is a known employee of that corporation. If LJ does not want his speech encumbered as a good American (or even if he is a bad American as long as he does not break any laws) he is totally within his rights not to sign a contract that restricts his speech (subject to rules of appeal and arbitration agreed to by his agent the NFLPA in the CBA). Methinks this is an example of the confusion often seen in activities like the reaction against the health care revision proposals being pushed right now by the Dumbocrats against the Repuboidiots. Individual citizens must always be on guard against the excesses of the government, but also must be on guard against the excesses of corporations like the insurers. Personally I (like something around 60-70% of the country) want a public OPTION not because I want the GUBERMINT to take care of me but because I trust neither the corporations like the insurance cartel nor the guvmint to have sole control over something as basic as health care. Just as we individuals are best protected when there is a check and balance between government and corporations on health care there is a check and balance in this case between the majority partners the NFLPA (which under the current CBA get 60.5% of the total gross receipts) and the team owners which are allowed by the law to violate normal antitrust provisions with the NFLPA on issues such as this. Larry Johnson agreed through his designated agent the NFLPA to give the team owners the right to censure his speech in exchange for dollars. Its simply the American way and if you don't love it you are free to leave it.

People do have a right to have any opinion they want and also to say so short of the threats which you already conceded should not be covered by your overly broad statement. Other utterings which may not be direct threats but can clearly lead to harm like shouting fire in a crowded theater are also generally seen as speech subject to sanction. However, in this case there are also arguments I find compelling: 1. Just as Johnson has a right to speak out, so too do those who object to his speech have a right to speak out in protest against it. Both are the American way. Listeners also have a legal right to organize peacefully against his speech if they choose. Thus if someone were to open a website against Johnson's attitude toward the sexual orientation of some or even attempt to organize public protests or boycotts against NFL products, I think they have a perfect right to do so. I would not join in or be a part of such protests as I think Johnson is at worst sophomoric but Johnson has a right to say stuff and folks have a right to protest peacefully. 2. Johnson also has the ability to sell his right to free speech to a third party and that is what he has done. He is paid big bucks and decided to give to the NFL certain autjority to decide whether he is being a good ambassador for the games. The NFL (and its majority partner the NFLPA) make big bucks playing the game and even fostering controversy over the game (who should start, who should get in the HOF etc). I have no problem with the NFL exercising the authority LJ gave to them in exchange for his right to aay what he wants. If LJ instead wants to use his right as an American to say pretty much whatever he wants and wants it so badly he is wiilling to give up his contract that is fine with me (in fact great as I really was impressed that Pat Tillman loved his country so much he was willing to give up the multi-millions and ultimately I was so sad he gave up his life for you and me). Tillman had a real cause and my guess is that LJ does not and if he believes so strongly in his words about this issue that he would forgo millions of bucks he is a fool IMHO. However, overall I also do not feel comfortable when folks are hassled over mere speech, but I think it is clear that if you say it in public you should be person enough to be ready for public comment,

One of the things which really helped the results produced by Fitzy is that some of his passes were so badly thrown that even the defenders playing close to the receivers were out of position for a ball that seemed to begging to be intercepted. In particular when he came in against the Jets, AVP simplified his playcalling for a QB who had practiced all week with the B players and a couple of times Jets defenders were clearly jumping the routes. Fortunately (and ironically) Fitz was so off target with his throws no one had a shot at them. I for one was not surprised to see Fitzy rack up a no INT game as quite often he simply does not throw well enough for anyone to catch the ball.

Moving beyond the era of mediocrity embodied in three straight 7-9 finishes is an essential thing, but can you be serious about not wanting to see changes in the overarching leadership that made these 3 mediocre results the tail end of an 0 for the decade performance. Talk about rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. Firing Jauron does absolutely nothing for a team if the result is we simply go to a new version of the same type of leadership which saw: 1. The firing of Polian apparently over some personal slight after he led the way to assembling the great team of the 90s. 2. Personally making a handshake agreement with Jimbo to reward him in his next FA contract which clearly was a total misread of what he had left as a player and led to a continuing series of miscues at QB as we futilely search for the next Jimbo. 3. Had a totally toxic relationship with Butler leading to him leaving us twisting in the wind when he flew the coop to SD. 4. Also had a toxic relationship with Wade who did deserve to be canned when he publicly gave up though we were mathematically still in but made a personal error in refusing to pay what he owed Wade for this canning and lost to an arbiter as most said he would for this transgression. 5. Hired TD out of desperation after he mismanaged the Butler/Philips situation which was not a bad idea unless you hired him and failed to manage his obviously bruised ego from getting run out of Pitts by Cowher which led him to hire the not ready for primetime GW. Mr. Ralph then oversaw TD bollicksing up the QB/HC situations leading to his firing and Mr. Ralph having to turn to the too old Marv as his next GM 6. Now we have no real GM and are surprised when the lack of GM team vision which Polian demonstrated is not there at all and things get bollicksed with the Peters/OL situation and with the entire offense when Jauron has shown no talent for offense management even in his one very good year. Canning Jauron is a necessity but in no way a priority if the same goofy hiring and management which led to Jauron being hired in the first place is going to happen again. Its hard to fire the owner under any case or to even advocate it given the great things Mr. Ralph has done in keeping the team here and the fear it will go when he dies. However, at the very least one needs to advocate getting a real GM in here to hire the next coach or one is simply endorsing the majority of a record of failure that Jauron was involved in significantly less than a majority of the time it was created. Firing Jauron is likely necessary but in no way shape or form a priority because it is not anywhere near sufficient to curing what ails the Bills.

A lot of the negativity is a pretty natural expression at frustration at being 0 for a decade under Mr. Ralph's team ownership. I think its most virulent form is stoked by the local media where folks like WGR and the Buffalo News and Sully make more nickles by yelling loudly to do things like fire Jauron (who does deserve to go for anyone who wants more than a 7-9 record) and then simply chose to ignore the fact he can only be actually blamed for a third of this record of mission not accomplished. My sense is that if the media leadership around this team set a more real world standard of holding fault for real things but also remembering praise for real things (Mr. Ralph kept the team here when there was more money to be made elsewhere) but also honest about the real problems (he has exercised his capitalistic right to make decisions simply wrong handshake deal with Kelly leading to the neverending chase for the next Jimbo, his mismanagement of relationships with Polian/Butler/TD, etc). Instead of an honest fair and balanced read on things, instead its gets replaced by loud negativity on Jauron and other things that will not solve the problem.

WRONG! WRONG! WRONG! This has not been Owens MO. In all three of the teams he has been with the TO MO has been to be gain the favor of a chunk of the lockeroom by being a stand-up guy initially and to gain the adoration of many fans with his likely HOF level play. It has then occurred in his second or later years that he divides the team with his antics. If you want to make judgments about TO based on his MO then you should at least get the facts right about how he has operated at each stop in his previous career. If anything, TO has even more incentive to be seen as a good scout for the Bills and his teammates since this is almost certainly a one year stop for him and he will look to acquire one last big contract. If there are any links you can provide or quotes you can site of TO throwing his fellow Bills under the bus then please site them for us. The worse he has said from what I have seen is when Sully and the media were doing everything they could to bait TO into saying Edwards sucked he would merely recite that he and his teammates ran the plays that were called. Even Jauron was harsher on Edwards who did not do the job that week and Edwards was harsher on himself that his play did not cut it. Like many of his NFL brethren TO is a preening idiot. Even worse like many of his pro sport huckster comrades from Bill Veeck sending a midget to the plate to TO and his Sharpie he is also a shameless self-promoter. However, it would seem that if someone wants to credibly indict TO then in the past complainants could easily find evidence of this in reality. In this case however, it has totally been part of the TO MO to be a good guy in his first year and amidst the blather of Sully or folks like you who seem to begging for something to indict him and are quite willing to manufacture their version of reality from everything they see on the field these protesters just come off as whiners as about the only thing TO is doing right now is laying low as he has little to point to in terms of showy accomplishments.

I think this view is shortsighted in that from this fan's perspective, TO's being there was a big part of the limited success we had in this game. Specifically, while part of the success was on a great throw by Firtzpatrick to thread the needle on a dt of Evans coming off the line, on several other plays like the straight fly pattern long pass to Evans it was Owens drawing a dt on the other side of the field which allowed Evans to run free with single coverage. Its incredibly difficult to read the amount of effort a player is making generally and really impossible to know what the specific play call was on a particular down and distance. Worry about TO is such a side point right now as this O has much larger issues it needs to address in order to be judged even semi-adequate. The march backward in the shadows of our own goal post leading to a safety was one of the worst pieces of offensive football I have seen in a long time. This sequence concerned me far more than TO and any lack of effort on plays like the horribly underthrown ball by Fitz on and Owens fly pattern at one point in the game. Even on this play where I certainly felt TO did not show advertised playmaking ability, it was the poor throw by Fitz that drew my greater attention. There is no great defense of TO and his play in this game, but I really do not think he needs one when one has any perspective on us getting a win on the road with the overall offensive anemia this team has.

I think we fans need to understand that Ralph is not getting sucked in by some Svengali or circumstances here it is him that is the one that is sucking everybody else in on this one, Jauron certainly deserves to be canned after three straight mediocre 7-9 records (which bizarrely he might hit 4 years in a row the way the W/Ls are shaking out this season) but like it or not its tough to blame him for more than a third of our 0 for a decade non-playoff run. Mr. Ralph owns the team (and under the capitalistic practices of US society and the more socialistic operation of the NFL where the workers have wrestled the owners for a significant majority of the gross receipts with the threat they will actually force the owners to compete in a free market unless they agree to a CBA which restrains individual rights) he has the right to monkey around with the football product even though he has a demonstrated record of screwing up the football product. Mr. Ralph deserves great praise from us for keeping the Bills in our small market when he was almost certainly getting lucrative offers to sell the team or pull Modell and move elsewhere. However, right along with this deserved praise needs to come a completely true assessment that he has directly made decision from his handshake deal with Jimbo which set us on the path of QB screw-up after QB screw-up. Further he has been partner to toxic relationship after toxic relationship with Polian (all signs point to Ralph firing him after he acquired the corps of the 90s winners), with Butler (who left us twisting in the win with Mr. Ralph personally mismanaging his rehiring or replacement), with Wade (who he personally lost an arbitration battle with when he deservedly canned him for publicly surrendering when we had a mathmatic chance but he illegally refused to be pay him), with TD (who was a good hire but needed to checked and balanced after Cowher ran him out of town), and with sorry situations with GW and Mularkey. Mr. Ralph ain't getting sucked in here he is simply sucking big time.

This whole thing is completely not a problem (after two wins on the road in a row a lot of the positions and units are not a problem but this usually lasts until prep starts for the next opponent which actually should have begun for some non field coaches last week and for the braintrust in earnest tonight when they get home or on the plane and for the players in the shower tonight or tomorrow and in earnest when they drive to practice after a likely day off tomorrow). Particularly since Whitner has had a recent history of injury, the two winning games and relatively solid play of Byrd/Wilson means that rather than rushing our pre-season starters back you probably give them an extra week of inaction to heal or at the very least you bring them back slowly with the understanding by all that they are gonna see action as subs first and as their recovery continues then they start. I think this team is committed to Whitner starting unless he is demonstrably hurt. My sense of the other starter is that we had Byrd pegged for the starting FS job as a centerfielder anyway. He is so hot right now and so young as a rookie I think you let him keep the starter job and encourage demand that he keep it up. Wilson is told he is the first man off the bench either way and will get a ton of PT in any case. Scott I am afraid who earned his job through surprisingly solid play after injuries to Whitner and other safeties has now lost his job to surprisingly solid play by Byrd and Wilson and his injury and he will have to crawl back into a job slowly. Whitner is my starter, but the team has the advantage of bringing him back slowly and he has the personal disadvantage that if Byrd continues to be a stud next year we choose the captains a bit differently and if he screws up upon his return Wilson is standing over his shoulder. This is not a problem at all for us.

No one is saying its a bad thing that he is tacking runners, what folks are saying is that he gets the chance to tackles so many folks because opposing OCs feel that they can get a good chunk of yards before Ellison drags them down and they choose to make his side a target of running plays or passing plays to a man he is covering because they think he is a good target to exploit. Further that he is a better target to exploit than going after Kawika Mitchell when he was around, UDFA Ashlee Palmer, or FA pick-up Draft (who they feebly actually went after a lot today). One way to perhaps see this differently is to consider London Fletcher who folks also note is in the top 5 in the NFL in this category this year and always led the Bills in tackles. Do you see that it must mean different things when it is your MLB leading the league in tackles or an OLB like Elliison leading the league? At least with Fletch one without knowing anything but the basics of football can see that the MLB has responsibilities from sideline to sideline and should be high in the number of tackles simply due to the area of coverage he takes at MLB. Add to this for Fletcher that he really does run like a demon and truly gets in on plays from sideline to sideline AND also has deep middle cover duty in the Tampa 2 style D the Bills ran as well as the traditional short pass coverage duty of the LB. Ellison on the other hand has amassed his tackle numbers covering 1/3 to 1/2 the field at most traditionally. Logically you have to see that either Ellison is ranging all over the field from his OLB spot or opposing OCs are sending the ball his way an awful lot. Perhaps if the OLB on the oppositeside from him Ray Lewis, it might be believable thar Ellison is a great player who sees a lot of action as there is an even greater player on the other side. However, the virtual revolving door of partner LBs would seem to be an indicator that opposing OCs still seek out Ellison and give him lots of chances. Given that the Bills have been lousy in rush defense overall, the fact that Ellison is playing such a central role is troubling issue for this fan and I would need to be convinced that he is doing an adequate job and if not for him it would be worse. The tackles stat is a long long way from making that case.

While I am not surprised that there is a near unanimous sentiment that Jauron is quite unlikely to achieve anything more than the mediocre 7-9 records he has led the team to for three years (and it will even take a lot of good luck for the team to even get up to 7-9 this year). I have been pleasantly surprised that a surprising # of posters seem to recognize that firing Jauron though a necessary part of improving is way far from sufficient to cure what ills this team. Like it or not it is hard to blame Jauron for almost 2/3 of our 0 for a decade playoff run. Its impossible in our capitalist system to fire the team owner and when he does go to his greater reward we run an awful risk of losing the franchise, but I am pleasantly surprised that a fair number of posters seem to recognize that though firing Jauron might feel good it is merely rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic in terms of changing this team for the better. There is still a lot of work to be done by posters to make the calls for Jauron's ouster be more than mere whining by training our sites on not simply replacing Jauron with the next Mike Mularkey, Gregg Williams or inadequate clone, but instead replacing Jauron with someone who has demonstrated success building an SB winning team before like a Shanahan, Cowher, Holmgren or even a Gruden to replace non-GM Brandon and if this leader chooses to be HC as well that would be great. It will take the media led by Sully and WGR a while to catch up with fans as the make too many dimes simply firing away at fish in a barrel Jauron, but I see nice stirrings from a lot of the posts that have simply moved beyond the Jauron distraction and are talking seriously about how this team can be improved. I find this pleasant in very bad times.

My belief is that the Panthers have failed to demonstrate consistent play this season and play well enough to beat the very worst in the NFL. The Bills are bad and in fact very bad, but their tendency leading to three straight 7-9 records is to be mediocre in the end rather than Tampa Bay, or this years Deadskins like. The Bills will likely lose this game on the road, but if you have to face an opponent on the road, the Panthers are the type of team you are looking for.

In today's NFL it has been proven on any given Sunday any team is perfectly capable of screwing up and their opponent (seeming regardless of skill level) can end up scoring more points. While it is quite intelligent to have grave doubts about the Bills, this Carolina team has stormed to its two victories against a horrendous DeadSkins team (which even lost to a Detroit team which never wins) and against Tampa Bay which is 0-6 so far. Even if the Bills were facing the Pats (whom they at least lost a competitive game to in NE) the Bills would have an any given Sunday chance which saw an even better Pats team lost to a horrendous Dolphins team. Given Carolina's lackluster record one would be pretty dumb to write this game off as a definite L.

Agreed! Controversy pretty strongly says there is an argument over which QB is capable of doing the job of leading the Bills to the playoff. The classic controversy was that there were those who credibly believed Flutie not only could be the QB of a Bills team which made the playoffs (fact is he did this) but there was a controversy as to how deep the team would go into the playoffs under his leadership vs. how far the team would go under RJ being the QB. As RJ in fact left the field with the lead and it took the HomeRun Throw-up to beat the Bills one could credibly argue RJ was the man. In this case, it is really hard for anyone to credibly argue that either Edwards or Fitz is gonna lead this team to even a playoff berth much less that the team is even a remote threat to go deep in the playoffs. My sense is that of the various QB debates in the past, the worst debate as to who might lead the team into the playoffs was the lowpoint of the AVP cs. TC debate. There was a point after the Bills got shellacked by the Pats at home against NE in what I believe was the 98 or 97 season that TC could ot credibly be called a savior and AVP was revealed to be an awesome relief guy but not a difficult starter to defend that was the previous low point. Right now no one can credibly claim Edwards has the staying power to last a whole season and Fitz is not a credible choice to be a consistent winner in this league. I think after that Pats game it was pretty clear neither AVP nor TC was a credible case of being the savior. To some extent, it is the same as the argument is pretty clear in both cases that there was no savior.

Carolina- Always tough to go on the road, but at 2-3 with the Panthers wins coming against pretty bad teams (TB and Deadskins) the Panthers game is a conceivable win for us as their best hope is not that they are good enough to winbut we will prove to be bad enough to lose. Houston- This team is finally shaping up but despite our goshawful showing against the Browns, a win by us at home is clearly conceivable. Bye Titans- Surprisingly bad this year. The main rule in the NFL has to be one week at a time so looking ahead and predicting outcomes is foolish. However, we are fans and there is no charge for being foolish so the weird thing to me is that I can feel so bad about this team but winning each of the next few weeks is certainly a possibility.

was that he threw the ball so badly at least 3 times that NYJ players who seemed well positioned to get INTs were unable to make the play. He looked better than Edwards did in his horrendous performance against the Browns, but then being better than squat can still be only slightly better squat.

Sure Mr. Ralph can try to sail anything he wants. However, it strongly appears to be the contractual agreement signed by everyone who bought a franchise in the NFL that they can only complete the cell of the team to someone who gains the votes of 75% of the owners. Like Limbaugh, he had a right as a Merican to try to buy his way into the league, but Rams partnership applicant head Dave Checketts knew for sure that Rushbo having big bucks did not give him a right to become a team owner. Different situation but same rule. The highest bidder has the right to try to buy the Bills but Mr. Ralph almost certainly agreed that any potential buyer for the team must achieve approval by 75% of the NFL team owners. The NFL team owners demonstrated this week that they can be moved around by a strongly worded letter from the majority partners on the NFL (under the current CBA the players get 60.5% of the total gross receipts and are clearly a partner and arguably the majority partner in this enterprise). The fight over Modell taking the highest bid to move to Balt also shows that the NFL can be pushed around by seemingly ineffectual government of a city measured as being poorer than Buffalo (Clevelburg finished second to Detroit but beat out Buffalo in a recent ranking of the poorest US City. My GUESS is that when Mr. Ralph gets called to the great beyond, unless a lot of time has passed and we have recovered from the economic meltdown that it may well be the NFL itself that pays out the Wilson family for their estate tax.

Nope

What the post inarticulately says is that those who claim that the team automatically goes to the highest bidder are wrong. The original post meanderingly states what you say that the team would go to the highest bidder APPROVED by the NFL. This is different from the highest bidder as some flat-out claim as your reading substantiates the notion that approval by a 75% vote of the owners is an essential part of a winning bid. One might have the highest bid in the Mr. Ralph estate auction but then the NFL may choose as you state to give approval to a different bid and Mr. Ralph's estate is likely obligated by the contract which Mr. Ralph signed to get the original franchise to only be able to sale (or is it cell or sail) to a team approved by the other owners. This sounds like a legal scenario to me, though likely it does not even get to this point as the NFL can almost certainly conjure up accounting reasons to disapprove any sale done by the auction before it even gets to the contractual offer stage. As many have pointed out, even if a rich cat like Golisano is worth over a billion, it is not like he has that level of cash simply sitting around in a checking account for him to write a check for roughly a billion to the Mr. Ralph estate. Virtually any rich cat is going to go to some of the huge money lenders in society and borrow the ready cash. It may well be quite unlikely that he will be able to swing such a deal if when the money lenders check in with the NFL as part of their due diligence if the word comes back the NFL owners are unlikely to come up with 75% approval of the highest bidder and another bidder who might be second highest would be approved by the NFL. I think the bottom-line remains that the NFL team owners will maintain a veto over any potential owner. As we saw from the St. Louis Rams situation this week, a stern letter from the NFLPA and the typical glooming on histrionic so Al Sharpton proved to be enough to move the Rushmeister out. What amazes me are that some are so certain that the Bills will go at auction to the highest bidder no, if, ands or buts, when not only is this scenario not a sure thing, but nobody but Mr. Ralph knows for sure what his will even says.

In our grandmother's NFL, the market was the local municipality. In today's NFL the market is actually a bunch of eyeballs watching TV so the TV nets view it as a good thing to deliver $ to the to create a product they can sell commercials around. The market (and thus the real $ for an NFL team owner) is found in expanding the product to Mexico City, Toronto, Berlin, Tokyo and other places. The local market is not a non-factor, but in an NFL where 2/3 of the revenue comes from the TV nets, it is a mistake for folks not to realize that being a small market in terms of stadium sales is a far less significant part of the $ than it used to be. With a fuller understanding of the real market the value of the Bills lies much more in its connection to tradition which offered by its being in the league you are selling to the new eyeballs. In addition, the negatives associated with a move if it leads to threats to the NFL's limited antitrust exemption make it a move to be put off as long as possible. I am not saying that is a stone cold certainty that it will happen a particular way. Its just simply not as straightforward as many posters argue.

One thing that is funny about several threads (as I have seen this point stated as fact in several different threads I am starting a new one to make a point about reality) is that some posters keep insisting its Mr. Ralph's team and his will clearly says )an/or the law forces him to) sell the team to the highest bidder regardless of what anyone else thinks. My sense (and to some extent this is an opinion based on staight-forward observation rather than seeing the actual contract Ralph signed when he bought the franchise so I happy to be PROVEN wrong by someone linking to the actual contract- though I suspect others will merely have their own fact-free opinions about this) is that: When Ralph bought the franchise from the AFL long ago for mere pennies in modern dollars, he agreed contractually be buy the franchise subject to the rules of the AFL. When the AFL merged with the NFL, Mr. Ralph's ownership by his agreement became subject to the rules of ownership of the NFL. Under current NFL rules Mr. Ralph or his estate cannot simply sale the team to the highest bidder regardless of what anyone else thinks. The NFL retains the right to veto any sale of a team unless 75% of the current ownership approves by vote of this new owner. If Mr. Ralph's will were to state that the franchise he owns under NFL rules will simply be sold to the highest bidder, this is all well and good as long as his fellow owners vote to approve such a sale, otherwise it is null and void and then off we go to the courts for them to decide with power or equity and stare decisis how ownership is to be determined. If you are looking for an example of this look no further than last week where we saw the NFL do just what us cynics expect would happen. The owners looked at where the money was and the money lies with the TV networks which currently provide over 2/3 of current NFL revenue. The networks have little interest in large conflict that a row with the broader public, or with the owner's partners in the NFLPA would cause, Tagliaboo-boo made this clear to the owners in negotiations over the last CBA. Owners that instead put their faith in the old George Halas style NFL where the team owners simply did as they wanted were beaten in a 30-2 vote. We saw in the unequal battle over Limbaugh that a mere letter from the NFLPA was enough to get the bid team's organizer Dave Checketts to show Limbaugh the door as part of the bidding team as there was no way they were gonna score 75% of the owners with Limbaugh controversy weighing down the bid. If Mr. Ralph's estate simply sold to the highest bidder and this bidder turned out to be the modern equivalent of Adolf Hitler (or actually was someone controversial be it Limbaugh or Madonna or PETA) this owner would fail to get 75% support and the deal would be null and void. If Mr. Ralph's fellow team owners judge it not be in their business interests to fight through the NFLPA, through threats to their partial exemption from antitrust laws or whatever, the deal would not go through as auctioned and the whole thing would end up in the courts.

Its hard for folks to deny the reality: 1. There are bigger problems leading to poor performance than a Lynch v. Jackson debate 2. Jackson is by far the better performer this year, but Lynch is by far younger as this year is less and less a question this debate would be more about future years. 3. You clearly need two credible RBs in today's NFL and any debate between Lynch or Jax is just a fantasy about who the new #2 would be. The mass of these issues and other thoughts simply make any debate pretty esoteric even for TSW.

I think this is also incorrect. What others want does in fact matter legally, contractually, and by past practice. Ralph has purchased the franchise from the AFL for the original small (by today's standards) with the agreement that he would abide by the rules of the AFL in terms of ownership of the franchise. These rules were amended with the agreement contractually of Mr. Ralph when the AFL joined the NFL in a merger. Under these rules and by agreement by Mr. Ralph when the team is sold 75% of the other owners MUST vote to agree with this choice or the sale is null and void. It does not matter if Ralph auction the team off to the highest bidder if that bidder cannot win approval of 75% of the other NFL owners. We have seen several examples occur where this approval may not be simple to obtain that someone or some group will get it simply by being the high bidder. Specifically, A. Just this week, objections from the NFLPA to having Rush Limbaugh be part of the ownership team bidding to buy the Rams resulted in the Dave Checketts group to jettison Limbaugh as part of the package. As many folks have noted the rule in the NFL is generally the golden rule (HE WHO HAS THE GOLD RULES). In this case the gold is not in the hands of some rich individual or group, the gold or real money is in the hands of the TV networks who happily are shipping 2/3 of the total NFL cash receipts to the league in exchange for a product they can sell car, beer and other ads around. If there is anything controversial about the high bidder which is gonna cause a significant NFL stakeholder like the networks, the NFLPA or a significant enough portion of the other owners to have a hissy fit that controversial figure or group will not get approval to be an owner, no matter what they bid. B. When Modell moved the Browns to Baltimore for big bucks for him, even a bunch of lightweights like Cleveland political leaders (it is one of two cities which along with Detroit is shown to be poorer than Buffalo), this City was able to pry another franchise out of the NFL despite Portland, LA, and other towns offering far bigger bucks to the NFL to set up a new franchise. The answer appeared to be that Ohio political figures offered a credible threat to endanger the partial exemption from antitrust laws the NFL and NFLPA use to employ the un-American tack of denying individual adults the ability to sell their skills to the highest bidder. In the rest of the sports world, kids as young as 16 are allowed to sell their skills to pro sports teams in baseball, hockey and other team sports. Parents of kids even younger get to sell their wares as "amateurs" in extreme sports, golf or other activities. Not only are parents denied their seeming human right of selling legal goods to the highest bidder, but even adults are denied this right in the NFL draft where men are restricted entry until their graduating class reaches 21. It is clear that Mr. Ralph will not be able to simply sell his team to the highest bidder as Mr. Ralph gave up this right without check when he bought a team.

While keeping two contradictory thoughts in your head at the same time is NOT a guarantee of genius, the inability to keep two contradictory notions in one's head is a fairly typical indication of foolishness. The idea that Marv not cutting it in his two year stint as GM in an attempt to try to rescue Mr. Ralph from his foolish giving the keys to the Bill hot rod without some adult supervision in no way cancels out the virtually impossible to equal accomplishments he had has HC of the Bills during the early 90s. Yes, he certainly never won the Big Show, but in this fans mind, it is actually way more difficult to get to four SBs in a row than to win the game once. It also took a lot of dumb luck to get back and also dumb luck to not get a win in 4 shots. It took a virtually impossible assemblage of talent (mostly thanks to Polian), dogged determination by a group of talented though painfully flawed at times athletes to pull off this feat. However, pull it off they did and under the salary cap I think it will be hard to assemble such a group and hold it together in the future. Marv was in over his head as an older man GMing for a flawed owner. His loyalty makes him a lousy pundit even if he is a good guy, but his HC work is not invalidated for this fan because he did not cut it as a GM.