ICanSleepWhenI'mDead

If there's a lot of folks in the other corner, just tell 'em: "Little guys get in groups, big guys single file!"

Good one! Maybe it was the same raptor that's been stalking Michael Buble: http://bubleraptor.tumblr.com/

Bleacher Report is often criticized here, but the article below appears to have been written by an agent who has represented injured players and is familiar with the IR and potential injury settlement process. It's a couple years old, so who knows if the 2011 CBA changed anything, but I learned a few things about the process when reading it - - some interesting insights from an agent's perspective: http://bleacherreport.com/articles/236279-negotiating-an-injury-settlement-by-jack-bechta

See post #24 above. The FCC rule specifically applies to "building regulations" - - you may have the right to ignore the building rule and get a satellite dish anyway (depending on the reason why the building bans dishes and where you would need to locate it to get a signal). Whoever runs your building won't like it, and it might not be worth the trouble to make a stink about it.

This link provides a different take. There's a lot of pure garbage in some articles at the same site, but this one appears to be supported by quotes from NFL management types (although it was written in 2005, so there have been two new CBAs signed since then - - numbers could have changed): http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/4020/do_nfl_teams_profit_from_the_playoffs_pg2.html?cat=3 Not sure if this applies to the Bills, because it's at least possible that they incur less playoff game day expenses than most teams because of their sweetheart lease with Erie County - - I haven't tried to figure that out. I also don't know if it's still true that the league keeps all playoff ticket revenue - - haven't tried to check that out either.

I suggest that you go back to your MBA friend, ask him to research the interplay between estate taxes and gift taxes (for gifts that exceed something like $11,000 per year to any particular donee - - $22,000 per year if given to that same donee jointly by a married couple) and get back to us with the details of how Ralph could distribute a significant portion of a billion dollars this way to avoid paying taxes. The threshold for gifts to any particular donee without triggering tax consequences may have gone up slightly from the $11,000/$22,000 per year that it once was, but if so, probably not by much. Tell your MBA friend to talk to an estate planner. Edit: Or have him read this: http://turbotax.intuit.com/tax-tools/tax-tips/Tax-Planning-and-Checklists/The-Gift-Tax/INF12036.html

It's not the 2011 version, but here's a link to the 2010 Buffalo Bills Media Guide - - 376 pages full of Bills facts, stats and history: http://issuu.com/mjefferis/docs/buffalo_bills.media_guide I haven't been able to find a 2011 version anywhere online with a google search, and my topic search here on TSW didn't pull up this 2010 version, either. My apologies if it was previously posted and my search missed it, but I thought others might enjoy it, as I did.

You may have the legal right to tell your HOA what they can do with their attempted ban. I'm not kidding. Read this: http://www.fcc.gov/guides/over-air-reception-devices-rule There's more at the link, but here's an excerpt: Now whether it's in your best interests to be a jerk about it with your HOA is a different question, but you might be able to show them the FCC regulation and persuade them to repeal the ban, or not enforce it.

I agree that it's worthless if at least 24 other owners don't EVENTUALLY approve it. But before the Bills-In-Toronto series deal was made (1) Ralph publicly stated that the team would be sold after he died, rather than left to a member of his family, and (2) the Toronto Businessmen publicly announced that they were seeking to obtain an NFL franchise for Toronto. In those circumstances, don't you think it's at least plausible that the negotiations between Ralph Wilson ("RW") and the Toronto Businessmen ("TB") went something like this: RW: You know, for the right price, I'd be willing to have the Bills play a game now and then in Toronto. TB: Sounds good Ralph - - we think that would help us show the NFL that the Toronto market will support an NFL team. RW: Owning an NFL team is pretty much a license to print money, fellas. We already pull lots of fans from Toronto to Orchard Park anyway, just think about how easy it will be for you guys to get those fans, and plenty more, to see an NFL game in Toronto. Roger Goodell won't be able to ignore you after that. TB: So how much we talkin' about for 1 game per year, eh? RW: $7 million per game - - I know that sounds a little high, but you'll thank me for doing this deal. TB: C'mon Ralph, we may be Canadians, but we ain't stupid. We're billionaires, too, ya know? We can't make a profit at $7 million per game, but maybe we can make this a win-win situation. A game a year is nice an' all, but what we really want is our own NFL team. How about if you sell us a 49% minority interest in the team now, with an option to buy the rest after you're gone. We know that you're planning to have your estate sell the team anyway some day. If you do that, we will give you $6 million per game. A deal like that worked out OK for Modell and Huizenga. RW: Are you freakin' kiddin' me! I'd have to file the deal papers with the league office and get the deal approved by the other owners, and that lapdog Goodell would let it leak somehow, sure as I'm breathin'. Plus then I gotta pay capital gains taxes on the 49% share I sell you guys, which would be pretty stupid because I'm gonna be payin' estate taxes not long after that anyway. And when word gets out, I'll have those TSW loons buyin' billboards, carryin' torches and pitchforks, and returnin' their season tickets. TB: Well, if your estate's gonna be sellin' the team anyway, how about if you just give us a right-of-first-refusal to match the highest bid that your estate gets for the team after you're gone, eh? Won't cost you nothin' - - your estate still gets the same price - - no extra capital gains taxes, and no need to file anything with the league office until after you're gone. It can just be our little secret for now. Heck, we could go as high as $7 million per game if you throw in the right-of-first refusal, because we'll make it up on the back end after you're gone. RW: I gotta check with Littmann about this. [RW leaves room for a while, then comes back] RW: I can't find a decent GM or head coach to save my life, but that Littmann's a keeper. $7 million, huh? Now, you fellas know that I can't guarantee that the other owners are gonna approve a future sale to a bunch of foreigners, right? ========================================== At this point, your theory is that the Toronto Businessmen, some of whom have already been shmoozing Goodell for a while and may have some preliminary indication that the other NFL owners don't really care where the revenue comes from, as long as it keeps comin', say - - TB: Oh well, never mind about the right-of-first-refusal thingy - - we'll just pay you the $7 million per game anyway.

Why would the league need to currently approve the granting of a right-of-first-refusal, if it created no immediate transfer of any ownership interest and might never be exercised at all? I agree that if anyone ever tried to EXERCISE a right-of-first-refusal to actually cause a present transfer of NFL team ownership, the league would have to approve the sale. That would be similar to what happened when Art Modell sold a minority interest in the Baltimore Ravens to Steve Bisciotti in 1999, and combined it with the grant of an option for Bisciotti to later buy Modell's remaining ownership interest in the team: http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1999-12-20/news/9912200039_1_bisciotti-art-modell-ravens In 2008, Wayne Huizenga agreed to sell 50% of the Miami Dolphins to Stephen Ross, and likewise combined it with an option to buy the remainder of the team at a future date. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/othersports/article-517728/Huizenga-sells-half-share-Miami-Dolphins.html But both of those transactions are significaantly different from a situation where no ownership interest has yet changed hands, and any actual transfer of any ownership interest would take place, if at all, only after Ralph dies at some point in the future. In that scenario, why would anyone need to file the agreement with the League office during Ralph's lifetime? Why not just keep it secret until after Ralph died and avoid the media firestorm that a leak would cause? It's certainly possible. Not sure exactly what "pining for the fjords" means, but assuming that it means "now that Ted Rogers is dead," I disagree with some of your conclusions. Toronto doesn't have a suitable stadium now, but jw says we shouldn't discount the "dig down" plan to expand the Rogers Center, and the current Toronto mayor is on record as favoring getting an NFL team. As for nobody associated with Rogers having the money or the interest, I've already posted links above showing that may be wrong. Phil Lind is pretty high up in the Rogers Communications food chain, and for a second time, here's a report of what he said in late 2010: http://sports.espn.g...tory?id=5768936 I don't naively think that corporate executives always tell the truth, but do you have any specific reason to think Lind lied or was misquoted about this? When Lind mentions the possibility of Rogers Communications "doing it itself with the Rogers family," don't you think he might be referring to the Rogers Control Trust funding the purchase, with Rogers Communications executives implementing the plan? You may be right about this, but it has no bearing one way or the other on whether a right-of-first-refusal was granted when the Bils-In-Toronto series deal was made.

Sometimes it's hard to evaluate sarcastic replies. Are you suggesting that the death of Ted Rogers eliminates even the possibility that a valid right-of-first-refusal to buy the Bills exists and could still be exercised? If so, that's wishful thinking. It may be that no such right-of-first-refusal was ever granted, but the Bills-In-Toronto series deal was completed before Ted Rogers died. If such a right was granted as part of that deal, it would not disappear just because Ted Rogers died, because a sole proprietorship is rarely a billionaire's choice for structuring his business. Likewise, Ralph Wilson is 1 businessman. If he died tomorrow, the Buffalo Bills stadium lease obligations to Erie County won't just disappear because Ralph died. It's no different for any right-of-first-refusal (if one was ever granted in the first place).

That's an interesting link - - thanks for posting it. But it uses an odd methodology for determining what qualifies as an "upset." If I am reading it correctly, it simply assumes that the team with the better end-of-season record was the favorite. Does that make sense? By that criterion, in the season that the Dolphins went from a 1 win season to winning the AFC East, any Dolphin win over the Patriots that year was NOT an upset. Seems to me like that quirk of the methodology might introduce enough error into the results to cast some doubt on the article's conclusions. If you used this article's methodology, and the Bills had an undefeated seasom this year, none of those wins would be counted as "upsets."

Hey jw! No attacks or sarcasm in this reply - - just a question: Is it your understanding that Ted Rogers made the visionary decision to go after bringing an NFL team to Toronto for some regular season games, and then later got Tanenbaum interested in some sort of participation in accomplishing that?

Fair enough. I think the Toronto Businessmen would have explored the idea during the negotiations leading up to the Bills-In-Toronto Series deal (especially since Larry Tanenbaum had previously used a right-of-first-refusal in his MLSE transactions), but you're in a far better position than me to predict how Ralph would have responded to the suggestion. I've still seen no quoted statements by Ralph that would be inconsistent with the granting of a right-of-first-refusal to the Toronto Businessmen, but because Ralph rarely talks about ownership succession, I suppose that's not surprising.

It's been a while since your above-quoted post. Although I think I responded to the rest of it, I never directly responded to your second point (bolded above). As I have pointed out elsewhere in this thread, we don't know exactly what persons or business entities were signatories to the Bills-In-Toronto deal, because unlike the Buffalo Bills stadium lease with Erie County, the Bills-In-Toronto series contract has never been made public, AFAIK. So let's just identify the interest on the Toronto side of the deal as the "Toronto Businessmen" for now, with the understanding that the actual people involved probably created or used some form of corporation, partnership, joint venture or other legal entity to carry out their objectives. So why would "Toronto Businessmen" continue to be involved in attempts to lure other NFL franchises to Toronto, if they had already received, as part of the Bills-In-Toronto Series deal, a right-of-first-refusal to buy the Bills exercisable upon Ralph's death? I can think of several reasons: 1. First, even if the "Toronto Businessmen" already had such a right-of-first-refusal, there would be no guarantee that they would be able to actually become owners of the Bills after Ralph's death, because: (a) A right-of-first-refusal is essentially a right to match the highest bid submitted by some other potential owner in the future. If somebody like Jerry Jones or Daniel Snyder (not those exact people, but one or more businessmen with a similar approach) made a crazy-high bid to buy the Bills after Ralph dies at some indefinite future date, the Toronto Businessmen might lack the desire or ability to match a crazy-high future offer. But the good thing about having a right-of-first-refusal, from the perspective of the Toronto Businessmen, is that it doesn't obligate them to do anything at all. If Spawn Of Daniel Snyder makes a crazy high bid to buy the Bills after Ralph's death, the Toronto Businessmen could simply decide not to exercise their right to match the crazy-high offer. They could just let Spawn Of Daniel Snyder buy the Buffalo Bills, and wait for an opportunity to buy some other NFL franchise to arise. (b) The ability of the Toronto Businessmen to get the required approval votes of at least 24 of the other 31 NFL owners might change. Let's say that when Ralph dies, other potential owners make bids to buy the Bills, but none of the offers come in crazy-high. So in this scenario, the Toronto Businessmen make a reasonable business decision to exercise their right-of-first-refusal to buy the Bills. Even then, the Toronto Businessmen would not be guaranteed of taking ownership of the franchise. What if the collective views of the NFL owners toward international expansion change between the time the Bills-In-Toronto Series deal was signed, and the time that Ralph eventually dies? At that indefinite future date, the Toronto Businessmen might find themselves only able to get 23 approval votes, and lose the opportunity to buy the Bills. Lots of factors could impact how the 31 other NFL owners vote on some future sale of the Bills. Maybe the other business interests of the Toronto Businessmen take a turn for the worse by the time Ralph dies, and even though the Toronto Businessmen can still raise the cash to buy the Bills, the other 31 NFL owners have doubts about whether the Toronto Businessmen would be as desireable as some other bidder who offered the exact same price. (c ) The political climate in Toronto might become less favorable in the future with respect to getting public funding or other assistance with respect to getting a suitable NFL stadium. I'm not saying that any such assistance is a sure thing now, but from the Toronto Businessmen's perspective, at least the present Toronto mayor and his councilman brother have both publicly supported the idea of bringing an NFL team to Toronto. If the "dig down" theory is plausible, and could be done at reasonable expense with private money, the Toronto Businessmen could expect the current Toronto mayor to grease the skids for obtaining whatever city approvals were required to put the "dig down" plan in motion. Whenever Ralph eventually dies, somebody else could be the mayor of Toronto, and might be more hostile to the idea of bringing in an NFL team. 2. Second, who knows how long the Toronto Businesssmen might have to wait for Ralph to die? AFAIK, back when the Bills-In-Toronto Series deal was negotiated, Ralph was in pretty good health for a man his age. It was certainly possible that the Toronto Businessmen might have to wait a decade or more before they could exercise their right-of-first-refusal, even if the potential obstacles I outlined in 1(a), 1(b) and 1(c ) above never arose. From the Toronto Businessmen's perspective, why wait a decade or more to bring an NFL team to Toronto if you don't have to? In summary, does any of this prove that Toronto Businessmen already have a right-of-first-refusal to buy the Bills after Ralph dies? Absolutely not. But if you understand how a right-of-first refusal works and analyze the situation, I think you can conclude that there are sensible reasons why the Toronto Businessmen would still make attempts to buy other NFL teams and move them to Toronto, rather than just waiting for Ralph to die at some indefinite future date and just hoping that none of the above-described obstacles (or others) arise in the interim.

LA stadiun update: http://espn.go.com/los-angeles/nfl/story/_/id/6900222/aeg-tim-leiweke-wants-legal-protection-los-angeles-stadium-plan

Hey crayonz! Think about this for a minute. An AP sportswriter publishes an article that he characterizes as shedding a "glimmer of light" on what is going on behind the curtain at the top of the Bills organization, and then makes comments here strongly implying that finances have become relatively more important to the organization - - but he doesn't actually cite specific sources for the information. Then NGU, who obviously has some sort of access to information that you would expect to be known only near the top of the Bills food chain, seems to try to deliberately provoke the sportswriter by continually, over and over, asserting that JW has absolutely no access to insider information, never has and never will. How would you expect jw to respond to this, especially if you followed this board enough to know that jw can have a bit of a temper at times? What could NGU possibly be trying to accomplish? And what happens next? JW, reputation predictably affronted, comes back with guarded examples of things he does know about, while leaving some of the details gray. So then NGU keeps baiting him, in a way that you think is out of character with NGU's previous posts. So why does NGU keep taunting jw about not having any inside information? Ask yourself this question - - if you were somewhere in the mid to upper ranges of the Bills food chain, and an AP article made it obvious that somebody, somewhere was telling the press things that you would prefer to remain hidden, how would you go about finding the leak? Can I prove this theory - - absolutely not - - but give me a different rational explanation for why NGU would choose this point in time to provoke JW by REPEATEDLY asserting, not merely that jw's story was inaccurate (indeed, NGU seems to have barely read the article), but that jw has no inside sources of information about how the Bills operate. I hope JW kept enough details hidden to protect his source(s), and suspect that he did.

It's always 5 o'clock somewhere. Jimmy Buffet even wrote a copyrighted song about this. Buddy should go there, use the Internet to see who the other teams cut, and then use the extra hour to decide who the Bills really should cut.

Thanks for the update - - I figured somebody here would be in a position to know both his historical attendance pattern and whether he followed it in the preseason this year.

I've never paid much attention to which games Ralph attended. With his ties to the Detroit area, my guess is that he has a history of attending the Detroit preseason game, but I'm just guessing. I saw most but not all of the telecast of this year's Lions game. Two questions: 1. In the recent past, has he attended the preseason game with Detroit? 2. Did he attend this year?

If you start with the constraint that the game against the Lions MUST be the 4th preseason game, then the odds of playing the Lions in any given preseason would be 1/28. But why do you start with that constraint? Maybe you assume that such a constraint applies because there is a recent historical pattern of the Bills often concluding their preseason with a game against the Lions - - but if you're factoring in a historical pattern, how is that "completely random," to use your own term? Did I ever tell you that my middle brother Darryl plays chess?

Hey Ralph, you don't have to trade anybody else to get way under the cap! Looky here, I can even do it with my eyes closed and one hand behind my back!

1. James Taylor reveals that the lyrics to the song "bad, bad Leroy Brown" are really about Levi Brown's dad, who was Ralph Wilson's secret love child with Eleanor Roosevelt - - turns out Kelsay knew about this some time ago; 2. Bud Adams flips a two-handed bird at the Bills bench in an AFC playoff game. In an ironic twist, he is then attacked by a peregrine falcon and loses his right eye; 3. Willis McGahee visits Travis Henry in prison during the Broncos' bye week, and then writes a best-selling expose of the Hamburg police department; 4. After the season, Buddy Nix drafts a dwarf in the 7th round from an obscure trade school in Alabama and explains - -"Our scout noticed this dwarf practicing without pads, and the wood shop instructor told us that none of the standard size pads would fit the guy, so he was making a custom set for him. We told the dwarf if he could add 60 pounds to get up to 105 pounds, we'd work him out. We were gonna sign him as a UDFA, but he got all the way up to 115, so we decided to just draft him." 5. This post gets flamed.

The link you posted says he's now in the last year of a contract that pays him an AVERAGE of $3.3 million/year. That doesn't mean he was scheduled to be paid $3.3 million in 2011. Here's a link to rotoworld's "player page" for Roscoe Parrish: http://www.rotoworld.com/player/nfl/3197/roscoe-parrish If you then click on "view contract details" near the top of the page, you get a pop-up that reads as follows: I don't know how accurate rotoworld typically is about contract details, and I don't know when the $500,000 roster bonus was due to be paid (could have already been paid). But if Rotoworld has the details right, if (I said IF) you wanted to get out from under 1 WR contract in 2011 to save money, you would save more by moving Evans than by moving Parrish.

If Michael Jackson was still with us, he could help you with that.