yungmack

Great work, Astro. You're not missing practice tomorrow because of sore toes, are you?

Exactly.

Exactly correct.

We were discussing in another thread about the future of football & one of the things discussed was how even the kids of NFL players were moving away from the game. The names showing up here are an example of that.

Fourth overall, according to a crawl I saw this morning.

Huh? Have you confused him with another player?

There are two very good and experienced RBs who will be starting, plus a good TE (hopefully he's ready) plus one very good WR and a second year WR showing flashes of coming into his own, plus an unsettled OLine. Likely there will be three rookie WRs in the lineup, probably a rookie TE and who knows who will be holding down the line positions. So you have a somewhat inexperienced group built around some very good veterans. So do you entrust the QB position to a rookie? Or do you put Kolb behind center until your team gets a few games experience together under its belt? Do you want to take the chance of getting your first round pick hurt or take the risk that if things go badly with a bunch of newbies on the field and he winds up with his confidence undermined? I don't know who the starter will be but I think Marrone et al will begin the season with the guy they think gives them the best chance to win right off the bat. I believe right now that favors Kolb. If all goes as everyone (but Kolb) hopes, Manuel will shine between now and September and he'll be starting immediately, on his way to Rookie of the Year.

My word, such anger. You must be a delight to live with. "You won't get your pudding if you don't eat your meat."

Release Maria Gambrelli!

I recall someone raising this topic around here just a few months ago, and it covered several years of data. My memory is that the Bills consistently were scheduled against NE when NE was coming off a bye week, and never the other way around, with the obvious exception of the opening game (which, interestingly enough, is the one game where the Bills were competitive or actually won). I think everyone around here would agree that the team with more time to rest and more time to prepare has an advantage. And obviously the opponent is at a disadvantage. I think most of us would also agree that putting a balanced schedule together is a difficult (but not impossible) task. But if one team is consistently playing its chief divisional after that rival has gotten more rest and preparation time, it begins to appear that the league is going out of its way to help one team over the other. If this has been the pattern over several years, as in the case of the Bills, then I think it is more than fair for them to raise the question of fairness.

Yes he does. Amherst I think.

I don't think you disagree with me at all. In fact you make my case that kids aren't playing games on their own, and that the sports they play are driven by their parents enthusiasm. Which is why I think participation in those sports is in decline because it's an artificial situation in which it is the PARENTS enthusiasm that's driving it. Watch those same kids and see how many of them are still playing in high school, and how often they choose, on their own, to watch the major teams on television. Those are surer signs of where things will be in another generation. Let me also reiterate that I don't think those sports are in any danger of disappearing altogether. Hell, some people still play royal court tennis, squash and hurling.

I think the days of hugely popular team sports is drawing to an end. Sports seem to reflect the attitude of the larger society, and many studies (and my own observations) suggest that kids casually play less than they used to (the streets are empty of kids on their own wherever I go), are much more into their own world, fostered by technology, so that there is less impetus to join up in person with others. The people who get them out of the house playing soccer or lacrosse or hockey or baseball inevitable are the parents. Without the parents, I think most kids would be perfectly happy to hang around the house with their iPhones, their XBox and a Netflix stream, interacting via Twitter and Facebook. As these kids become parents, I wonder if they'll be dragging their children around to participate in team sports. It seems to me, and maybe you too, that the "sports" that most interest kids today are much more individualistic than team, whether its surfing, skateboarding, mountain biking, snowboarding, et al. And that they do much more on their own initiative than from adult encouragement. BTW, no surprise that we have a huge Latino immigrant population in Southern California, and naturally, soccer is the big sport in those communities. For years now, lots of really fine baseball fields have been more used for soccer than baseball. To the casual observer (me), it looks just like anywhere else in the US where kids play team sports: lots of moms and dads, aunts and uncles, etc. I have also noticed that as they get older, there are far, far fewer Latino kids playing soccer. My guess is that this is tracking the decline you see in interest in team sports by the American kids. A second BTW: a lot of kids playing high school football now come from immigrant Latino families. So, I guess to sum it up, my prediction is that all team sports are facing both a declining pool of American participants along with a concurrent decline in a fan base. I don't see them ever totally disappearing. But I think the days of the great "Mass Audience" are already passing away as has happened with the mass audience for individual television programs, entertainers popular across all sectors of the population, and the narrowing of the newspaper and magazine businesses from "general interest" to much more specific and exclusive readerships. As the Brad Pitt characters says in a recent movie, "If you live in America now, you're on your own."

The history of violent activities shows that it moves down the socio-economic scale over time as the cost-benefit ratio changes. Warfare was once the pastime of the "nobility" but you don't see those chaps rushing into battle with a lance any longer. Boxing was once a preserve of the "better class," required at Oxford and Cambridge (not by accident were its rules codified by the Marquis of Queensbury and not Joe the Cockney). Over time, it too moved down scale. For most of the modern history of boxing, the largest ethnic group participating was usually the lowest one socio-economically at that time. As that group "moved on up to the East Side," it was replaced by a new impoverished group. Football, too, was once an upper class pastime, practiced first at Yale and other Ivies by the sons of the elite. They still have football teams and, I believe, boxing teams as well. But we don't look to them for first round NFL players very often or for the next heavyweight champion. The same has happened with white kids over the last 30 years, with fewer of them playing serious football. That's now happening with many black kids as more families become solidly middle class: they put there kids into other sports. My guess is that pro football as we like it is headed to becoming a niche sport. As to the hotbeds, the sport would be a whole lot thinner without Florida, Texas and California. But around LA more and more kids are not turning out to play. I can't believe that's not true of the South as well, though I have no data at hand. I do notice that the tough white guys from rough backgrounds seem to have been replaced by black guys with that sort of biography, just like happened with boxing over the last century.

Actually, Sacto, it won't be the (as you call it) "Nanny State" (a term brought to currency by the morbidly obese Rush Limbaugh) that will -- and is already -- killing off football, it will be the parents who end it. Over the last generation or so, large numbers of kids have abandoned the game, their parents preferring soccer. For the kids who want a little tougher action, there's hockey and lacrosse, rough enough without the catastrophic injuries rightly or wrongly associated with football. We've even seen professional football players say they don't want their kids playing the game. The professional players of today are so much bigger, stronger and faster than even ten or fifteen years ago. Even the fat lineman is becoming a thing of the past, replaced by 6'5", 325 guys who are muscular, even "cut", and fast as all hell. If we project with Barney another 20 years into the future, we have to wonder how the human body will be able to withstand the kind of punishment that's inevitable as the players get even bigger, faster and stronger. The only way I can envision it is through changes in the rules, and those changes will no doubt "sissy-fy" the game to the point where fans lose interest. So the poobahs who oversee the game, from high school through the pros, can either let things get more violent, thus driving even more parents to keep their kids out of the sport, or they can make the game safer (more boring?), thus driving even more fans away. It seems to me, a guy who attended his first professional football game in 1949, who played the game, and who loves the game, that football as we have known it is heading for oblivion, right alongside other once enormously popular "sports" such as bare-knuckle boxing, bullfighting and the gladiator games. A final thought: an even more ominous sign for the NFL is the decline in interest as fans among young people today. I live in Los Angeles, a real hotbed of football. Every high school around me has a long list of guys who've gone on to NFL careers. My grandson and his friends all played Pop Warner and high school ball; some won collegiate scholarships. One of his friends has a shot at the NFL when he graduates. But here's the thing: none of them really follow the NFL. They're not watching the games on Sunday. It's just not that compelling to them. They much more enjoy mountain biking, surfing, rock climbing and the like. And the enthusiasm we have for football they have for technology. Check out the young people you know and I suspect you will find a similar change going on in your world. It's not unlike when I was young and we were all football crazy while the "old folks" like our parents were still crazy for baseball.

The NFL -- and now its crappy TV/PR network - has for decades been highly biased towards the NFC East. And there is also a long standing bias against teams from the AFL and the AAFC. I'll give you an example: For ten straight years, Paul Brown had his team in the championship game, winning five of them, including winning the Browns first year in the NFL. But if you watch the NFL network, you could be forgiven for thinking Vince Lombardi was the dominant coach of all time, and that the "greatest football games" ever played in the 1950s featured no other teams but the Giants, Green Bay and Philadelphia, with maybe the Cleveland/Los Angeles Rams thrown in occasionally with Da Bears.

What exactly are you talking about? And who are you talking about? Can you name maybe five or six of these characterless teams that are having great success? Here's my list of a few teams who have had substantial success in the last few years, the "pride of the NFL" franchises: Green Bay, New England, Pittsburgh, Giants, Baltimore, Indianapolis, New Orleans. How many of them are successful because they rely on poor citizens with great talent? There may be a player or two here and there whom you wouldn't want baby sitting your kids, but the huge majority of their players are not wicked evil scum. In fact, taking into consideration the age of most of them, and the tremendous 24/7 scrutiny on them, I'm more surprised by how few of them are off-center guys. It seems to me that most of the players on the good teams are both talented and pretty darn good human beings.

I know this doesn't surprise you, but it will break the hearts of the Geno-lover clique around here.

For those who are focusing on Legursky as a Guard signing, it might be that the Brain Trust views him more as a Center if (when?) Wood gets hurt again.

Glad to see Leonard Smith remembered. I am a huge fan of his.

I hadn't seen this 2001 video of Larry Felser talking about Lou Saban, and giving his picks for the best Bills at each position. I liked it and thought some of you would as well. This showed up in an email from "Tales From The American Football League," a great site for all things AFL. If you're interested, sign up for the free daily emails. Here's the link

It's the first week of June, the pads are still in a warehouse somewhere, not a single tackle or skull-rattling block has been made, so am I concerned about the O-line? Ah, no.

Well, I'm doomed then.

I watched Robey his entire SC career. He was this little guy who was improbably great to the point they couldn't keep him off the field. All the standard measureables (the stuff that the "analysts" claim can divine talent & success) seem to be against him, which might explain why he wasn't drafted even though, based on his career, he should have been. I think Robey is special and another gift the Bills got from the UFA signings.

It seems to me that that candidates should be guys who've been eligible to play for at least two seasons -- 3 is even better -- but have disappointed for one reason or another. So, to me, Troupe or Easley don't qualify as both have been continually injured. It looks like we'll finally get to see if they're real players but it won't be because of the coaching changes as much as it will be just getting healthy. Graham and Sanders are too new (and haven't done badly...they're just beginning). So to me it's either Carrington or Moats and I've chosen Moats because he initially seemed to be an emerging star. Then he faded a bit, then seemed to finally begin to contribute last year. It's just a guess at this point, but I think this new system will see him finally come into his own.