Kirby Jackson

This is what I was going to say. Good teams play with swagger and an edge in 2019. That’s that chip on their shoulder.

The GMFB crew loves the Bills. I have a theory on it. The Bills are the trendiest fan base because of social media. We come across as “cool.” Our fans, players, quirks, etc... all make us connect with that generation. I’m 38 and kind of on the edge of that age but I think if you are between like 16-40 you kind of love us. You love our passion and energy. If you are Bill Cowher or Boomer you just don’t “get it.” If you notice the people that love us they are all in that sort of age bracket (Schein, GMFB, Michael Robinson, etc).

Y’all, I’m just kind of floating right now. Yesterday was absolutely incredible!! This team, this coach, this QB, just feel blessed

At Texas Live, a lot of Bills fans

Interesting thought JMF!! McMahon may actually encourage it. He certainly wants people talking about it.

I tend to agree on all counts. The draft is LOADED at WR. You’ll get a great player there. I just don’t think Clowney leaves Seattle. I think we will chase him. I’m advocating Shaq AND an elite pass rusher. They have plenty of money and still have years before paying Allen. I’d sign Clowney, Shaq, Spain, extend Tre, extend Poyer, extend Milano, cut Murphy, cut Kroft, draft WR I think that team will be really good. They can do all of those things IMO.

Interesting point and a great one!!

I think that resurrecting this is potentially viable because they don’t have the same competition. They could play it in the spring/summer and not compete with too many other options. I’d probably try to do it primarily in England as the NFL has already planted its roots. Maybe something like 4 teams there and 4 scattered throughout Europe? It will never compete with college or anything but would be a good growth engine for the NFL. That’s basically what the NBA did with the dream team. They globalized the game. Football will never gain that level of traction but internationally is the best growth option. It makes some sense. It makes way more sense than another US minor league.

That’s what I try to tell him!! He could go run a sales department tomorrow and have a nice life. He may not have all the power and decision making but will have a lot. Don’t worry about having your hand in everything; worry about stabilizing. That’s part of the reason that all of these Gypsies in sports bounce around so much. At this point he’s worked for something like 8 teams/schools. That’s not for me

It won’t be free. That’s my point. The NCAA has already changed the rules on name, image and likeness. The NFL can’t spend like these universities for a high school kid. If you are Chase Young coming out of high school, in a free market, you’ll make WAY more at OSU than in the minors. The boosters will be giving you $5M deals to advertise cars. The NFL just isn’t going to throw equivalent money at guys because the minor league can never generate the revenue of the NCAA. It’s a broken plan. That’s why every league has failed (and that’s before the NCAA allowed guys to earn). It has no chance

As soon as this happened the NCAA would further loosen their rules. A minor league will never compete with the NCAA in football. No one grows up dreaming of playing for the Orlando Predators. These kids, especially in the south, grow up dreaming of playing at Alabama, LSU and Florida. That’s even above the NFL in a lot of cases. It just won’t work.

I hope it does. He’s stubborn though. He was a VP in the NBA, NHL and in the SEC for years. For a variety of reasons he moved on from those places. He’s a super smart dude and knows a lot of people. He just worries too much about his title and power. The reality is, it doesn’t matter if some calls you “intern” if they are going to pay you $150k. He always looks for both power and money. That’s how you end up in the arena league instead of the NBA. My advice has been to sacrifice some authority for stability. That advice holds true too for anyone that wants to break into sports. It’s hard to go from the minor leagues to the big leagues. I’d recommend getting your foot in the door anyway you can with one of the 120 or so pro teams (MSL isn’t bad either). Go in and grind and you’ll have a chance to move up.

He’s worked in sports for over 20 years. He didn’t need this.

Baylor is 9. OU will have wins against Baylor, Baylor, Texas, Iowa State and Oklahoma State. That’s 5 ranked wins and a conference title. I don’t know how the committee can put in a team with 1 ranked win and no conference title? It just isn’t going to happen. I think Alabama would be OU. I think OU is more deserving of the spot. I guess it comes down to that (again that assumes 2 more ranked wins for OU). I haven’t seen enough of Utah. They play too late. Admittedly, I have a very low opinion of the PAC so I don’t make time for any of those teams. I saw them once and they lost. This just feels like the year that Bama is going to be out. It’s the perfect storm. They lost, at home, to the one elite opponent that they played. The next best team that they played (Auburn) was ranked 15 at the time. That’s a good win but it is not going to push them over the top IMO. It will all play out in the next few weeks too. There are a bunch of ranked vs. ranked matchups left. I doubt that it goes chalk all the way through.

I think that it’s the former. There is only so much football that you can love. I use myself as the litmus test and while it seems like such a small sample size it makes sense. I love football. I probably dedicate 20 hours a week to watching or talking football. That’s a lot!! I’ve only missed 2 Bills games in my life that I can remember. I watch every OSU game and probably another 3 games a weekend (outside of Bills and Bucks). I’ve attended zero arena league games in my life. Twice, I’ve lived in cities with teams. I couldn’t name a single guy. If they can’t attract someone like me how in the hell are they going to be able to sustain??? At the core I think that’s the issue. They can’t establish a foundation. Even if they had 10,000 diehards in each market these leagues could probably make it. The problem is they just can’t get the floor high enough because of the other football out there.

One of my best friends was the president of one of the teams. I tried to talk him out of ever taking the job knowing that this would happen. He’s so stubborn though. He said that he was able to get jobs for like 9 of his 15 full-time employees which I thought was pretty good. Minor league football just doesn’t work.

The story is written on JG. Outside of a Super Bowl appearance this year he’s done.

Yeah, it was a gamble which is why they gave themselves this out. They should take it. Murphy just isn’t good. He doesn’t rush the passer and he’s a total liability vs. the run. I’m disappointed in him. When they got him I expected like an 8 sack guy that was solid all-around. Ironically, that’s kind of the player that Shaq actually is. Re-signing him raises the floor for the Bills. The worst case scenario would be Hughes/Shaq/Johnson/Yarborough (or whatever). That’s no worse than what we have right now. I think that they are going to chase a pass rusher though. Ideally they’d love Clowney but realistically think it’s a tier down or Yeter Gross-Mattos in the draft.

I had him at $8M. I can’t see him signing for less than Murphy did 2 years ago. Cut Murphy and save $7.2M in cap space and hand it to Shaq. It feels like a pretty easy solution. Sign or draft a big time pass rusher too. That gives you FA/Hughes/Shaq/Darryl Johnson (or whomever). That’s an upgrade to where we are today.

I think it looks a lot like the contract Murphy signed last year. He got 3 years and $22.5M with $10.375M guaranteed. Shaq may get a little more than that with the cap always rising. I’m thinking like 3 years, $24M, $12M guaranteed.

I’m not sure. Usually it’s pretty organized but it may get thrown off with the holiday. Feel free to pm me though and we can catch up.

I scrolled back a few pages and didn’t see this (although I thought there was a thread). If so, mods feel free to merge. Who will be attending tomorrow? If so, are there plans before? We have a group of like 10ish but only about half are actual Bills fans. The others will be pretty indifferent. I was just trying to see if there is some sort of pre-game plans?

Oh, I have no issue playing this Alabama team. I’ve been saying all year that they weren’t the same team. I predicted a double digit win by LSU and without that 85 yard TD with a minute to go it would have been. Now, I think that they are better than an average Auburn team. They need to win convincingly to have any shot. They don’t have any good wins and won’t play for a conference titles. When you put their resume side-by-side with OU, OU has the superior resume (assuming they win out). They will have beaten the team ranked 9 twice. They will have wins over a ranked Iowa State, a ranked Oklahoma State and a ranked, at the time UT. They will have a conference championship as well. It’s going to be tough, if not impossible, for Alabama with 1 ranked win (and Auburn may fall out of the rankings with a bad loss) and no conference championship. I don’t think that’s a controversial opinion at all. I’m fact, every expert on that show last night said that. Utah is the other team that has an argument. I just don’t see enough quality wins because the PAC isn’t very good. They have been really tough though. I think OU jumps them both with a win in Bedlam and conference championship win over Baylor.

I’ve been talking about this all week. For as easy as the Bills schedule has been they have played a few pretty good teams in absolute, must-win, games. That definitely makes it tougher.

And when they do (Chandler Jones, Richard Seymour) they trade them before they walk.