AKC

I caught "Buffalo Uncovered" this morning and it was refreshing to see a very, very positive show that included many of the historic contributions of the city. Travel Channel does not list a repeat airing of the show but it's something worth noting and watching, I'm bummed I didn't stick a tape in and I see no ability to purchase the show from them. Travel Channel- Buffalo Uncovered

Street and Smiths: Soft, reliable hands. Will extend his hands and catch the ball out away from his body. Shows good concentration and seldom drops a catchable ball. Adjusts well to the ball in the air.

We're shy one interior Tackle right now and unless Tim Anderson turns out to be a 3rd round phenom we're shy one QUALITY interior lineman to field a post-season quality DLine. Regardless of the accuracy of any trade talks about Simon, he'd definitely fit the rotation as the "quality" addition that could keep London Fletcher from being mauled over the course of the season. Bottom line- with no added help at DT before the season starts our offense might as well get some boondoggle lessons for the long spells they'll be enjoying on the sidelines.

Last offseason I told a buddy of mine who is a Staples regular and runs a Sports Bar with the Lakers being the big property that: The Lakers would not make the playoffs. The Heat would have the best record in the East. All based upon the fact that if you study W/L records the Lakers with ONLY Kobe have been stinking it up forever plus the observation that guys playing with Kobe virtually always suffer from dropped shoulders and slow feet due to his ball hogging and awful shot selection. He told me a month ago that he was beginning to see the same problems because he started watching the other players instead of Kobe and that while he at one time believed Kobe was "the best player in basketball" it was becoming very clear to him that Kobe did not inspire guys around him to play better like ALL the great players do. (BTW-he's a 42 year old from Chicago originally) Now I only have you to work on ;-)

My question is what year will O'Neal be so pathetic as a "star" that he will fail to carry his team to the playoffs- like Bryant did in his first season without O'Neal? One-star teams regularly make the NBA playoffs these days, I'm interested in what you see the time frame being for O'Neal to fall to the depths of the "unstars"?

The greatest concern going into the interview process was that Richard Speck was the favorite, but apparently that morning Greg chose a plunging neckline and REALLY gained the bosses attention!

Just using that measure- what would you predict would be the first season that the general slobbery of O'Neal will lead to his team to missing the playoffs?

I always figured Williams was hired because TD is a boob man.

Faith and hope can be admirable- but I have to say I don't see another year making any difference at all unless Buss is able to get O'Neal back! The bottom line on the Lakers from my seat is: Kobe Bryant=Scottie Pippen

If players can be tested for steriods shouldn't management be tested for traces of Tannis root? This would easily allow us to determine our GMs lineage and confirm or deny once and for all the concerns that he's the spawn of Beelzebub.

The first blessing of the Buss Meltdown, other than the virtual abscence of those awful Laker car flags that pop up only when they're winning, is that I haven't had to hear "Kobe's the best player in the NBA" even once this season from the fan base. He's been exposed- a great pure shooter who without a dominant player on the court with him brings the talent around him down because he simply will never learn adjust to the fact that the ball, like accolades, need to be distributed among all the players on the court. Jordan did both with genuineness; for Bryant they're tortured- not to mention infrequent- exercises. KTD- you could hit the Pick 6 at Santa Anita, buy the Lakers and win a championship as long as Jerry West was there to do the thinking. I don't for a minute believe West would have kicked O'Neal to the curb in favor of Alex English.

I've always believed the contemporary NBA has 7 or 8 other coaches of equal talent to Jackson, and nothing would make me happier than having this exposed by him taking the top spot on the Laker bench with Bryant as his star- I have to believe he's too smart to do it and he's simply positioning himself for a job elsewhere where he has a realistic chance to finally overtake Aurbach in coaching titles, a desire that burns deep within him.

About the time a Sports Franchise owner believes they actually understand the team they fund the blunders begin. When it's with a team who's won out their league or association the blunders are far more pronounced. After making what is now becoming clear to those who didn't recognize before that the Buss decisions of last off-season are one of the greatest blunders in sports history (throwing away a championship by trading away the most dominant player in a 5- player sport), the Short Buss now simply continues to exacerbate the problems by coddling the guy who caused it all to begin with. Kobe Bryant has proved to be little more than George Gervin with a couple rings, a guy who has no business as a team leader, simply as a role playing gunner who is a gifted shooter- just like George Gervin or World B. Free. All this season the local hacks in LA have reported the constant "me me me" quotes by Bryant saying things like "I just need to make sure my guys know how to get me the ball so I can score points" and offering snippets of Bryant refusing to listen to the coaching staff and running his own "Kobe Coaching" lectures during team practices. Now as the team is apparently asking Phil Jackson to come back to ostensibly bring some order to the team, Jackson has been forced to "interview" with Bryant before he can have the job! God I love Madness!

The calendar on my wall says it's 2005.......

The premise of the "phenom" absorbing enough of the necessary technique elements to come out and be effective at a higher level than he's ever faced brings to memory Michael Jordan hacking away at major league curve balls.

Of all the stories you might be able to feature with even a barely competent staff and editors, we end up with the NFL Network, ESPN and half the print media around the U.S. polluting the draft story with a guy who's done zero-zip-nada to deserve any positive attention at all.

Let me help to clarify things for you: The fact that day 1 of the 2005 draft for Bills fans was highlighted by the selection of two players whose COMBINED Wonderlic was only two points lower than Quasimodo scored on the same test might at the very minimum be invited as a point of conversation since we play in a division whose current champion is advertised as considering intelligence the penultimate indicator of draft desirability. You don't have to be a fan of the drafting style of our opponents, you don't have to applaud the success of the model they are supposed to promote (especially after they also take a moron on Day 1), but under all circumstances you should realize that among others in the fan community of our favorite team SOME might find the strategy of drafting morons a bit suspect. History has proven that morons can rightfully earn MVPs, Super Bowl Rings and HOF elections, but history has also proven that studying/adopting the contemporary successes in any field will virtually always offer insight into achieving competitiveness with those contemporaries. Let us hope our early picks become Pro Bowl Bills playing on a Super Bowl team- but even a Super Bowl win will never make them intelligent! BTW- the string title includes "Overrun by Idiots". Those types of references to our roster do little to forward the mission of our team ;-)

19! Yeah!!!!!

The good news about our divisional rival is they took a moron with a 15 Wonderlic at CB yesterday- the bad news is he's still smarter than the two lunkheads we picked up.

I couldn't compile a list of intellectually challenged positions without including TE. OC is another, in that case we appear to have done well. Inside LB and SS, or the players making your defensive calls, there's no question in my mind it's significant.

And we have a winner- good job bro! A center with a 33 Wonderlic- must have been a lot of carrot juice consumed overnight at OBD.

Well then Collins it is- there'd be some consistency about taking a numbskull who had already been drafted by another team!

There's a clear strategy developing from OBD and I'll piggyback on it to offer the most likely 4th round pick for us. We opened up with a guy named "Roscoe" who proudly sports a Wonderlic score of 10. We then moved to a posiiton rumored to require some amount of intellect and grabbed the 12 Wonderlic Kevin Everett. Clearly there's only one way we can go on this upward progression, somewhere along the lines of the old skit Dennis Wolfberg used to do in stand up- basically moving from imbecile to idiot along the trek. We obviously need someone with a 14 Womderlic to fill out the "Ship of Fools" Draft of '05- that lets us consider among others Chris Keoeatu, the big guard from Utah, or Nick Collins, the Corner from Bethune-Cookman. In both cases we would raise the intelligence bar by 2 points, and thus complete our apparent strategy for the '05 Draft.

Our two picks have a cumulative Wonderlic of 22. That's just slightly below the number you'd like just for a TE taking the test all on his lonesome.

Evidenced by the fact that without the best FG kicker in the league today the current version of the Patriots are nothing more than the current version of the Eagles- good regular season production and no rings.