Shaw66

Thanks. I'll go read it. And yes, I'd guessed that the Williams comment was an after-the-fact comment. It sounded that way. But that doesn't change what I said. Do you think a Buffalo Bill who sees that comment from Sullivan, whenever he made, will be less inclined to open up to Sullivan when he's interviewed? I do. I'm a football player, and he's a football writer. Why would I want to talk to him if he's going to make gratuitous negative comments in the press about my personality?

No, he shouldn't put it in print. Why not? A couple of reasons: 1. Sullivan's job is easier if he has access to the people he's writing about. Saying in print that Williams is difficult to interview isn't likely to make Williams want to talk to him in the future. That is, saying something like that, which really doesn't have anything to do with what kind of football player Williams, is likely to limit rather than increase his access to Williams. In fact, I believe that happened to Sullivan with a lot of the Bills, particularly the coaches. When he loses access, his columns suffer. The fact that Mario was a tough interview just means that it's a little harder to write about him than to write about someone who's an easy interview. His job is to write about the Bills, sometimes it's easier, sometimes it's tougher. The correct response is NOT to complain that the guy is a tough interview. The correct response is to work a little harder at developing a relationship with the guy so that he'll open up a little more. 2. It' simple character assassination. What's the point of saying Williams was difficult? The adage is "if you don't have anything nice to say about someone, don't say anything at all." Now, I know that it's different for a journalist, because his job is to speak the truth about the guy, nice or not. But there are limits to that. If you don't like how he plays football, sure, say it. If you ask around and you find that he's generally a nasty guy and has no friends on the team, sure, say it. What's the point of saying the guy's a lousy interview? Or a lousy dresser? Or a lousy bowler?

This is a perfect example. Without trying to demean the guy, I thought from his early days in Buffalo that Mario is not very bright. He just isn't. He was clearly uncomfortable in press conferences, interviews, etc. because he seemed to understand that it was easy to get caught saying something foolish and he didn't want to get caught. So he was cautious, and he never seemed to figure out how to say things that were particularly interesting or insightful without sounding stupid. I always gave him credit for being cautious. Sullivan complaining that Mario was difficult to cover was typical Sullivan. If Mario is a difficult interview and you want to write about him, then how about doing a little homework? How about getting comments about him from his coaches and teammates? How about figuring out who his best friend on the team is and spend some time interviewing him? Sullivan often struck as feeling entitled to have people simply GIVE him the meat he needed for his pieces, and if other guy didn't do that there was something wrong with the other guy. Whaley didn't give him what he wanted to write, so he savaged Whaley. Mostly, I long for old-fashioned columns, the kind people don't write much any more. Oddly, one of the best I've seen lately is the piece Chris Brown did about Harrison Phillips. Brown dug out some interesting comments from Phillips and people who know him, and he put together an interesting piece about the kind of guy Phillips is. I know Chris is only going to write nice upbeat stuff that makes the guy sound like an all-star, so the piece may have been more one-sided than a more balanced look, but at least it told a story that gave me some insight into the guy. There are plenty of stories - about Kyle, about McCarron, about Hyde - they all have stories. It takes work to flesh out those stories. It's much easier just to pick on a subject that you have an opinion about and give your opinion. All you need is something to start with. Sullivan didn't like Mario because Mario never gave him anything to start with, so he criticized Mario for THAT, as though as spoon feeding material to Sullivan was part of Mario's job description. One of the problem with modern journalism, including sports journalism, is that if you aren't writing about a problem, you're viewed as uninteresting. In Sullivan's case, he seemed to look for problems that weren't even there. Sports writers are always looking for the scoop, always making predictions, always looking to second guess management. Management makes hundreds of decisions every week, and they make some of them wrong. It's in the nature of managing any business. Sportswriters are these self-appointed experts who pick on this decision or that and blast management for having made it wrong, often before it's clear whether the decision was good or bad. But that isn't the point - whether the decision is good or bad doesn't really matter. What matters is whether the sum total of the decisions management makes is good or bad.

Bitter is a word I've used often to describe. I think you're exactly right about this. And, as I've said about the guy for a long, he's a really good writer. His columns are well constructed, and his writing is clear and engaging. The problem was that, for whatever reason, his attitude was venomous. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that his editors had tried to get him to adjust his attitude. Not that I'm a psychologist, but he seemed to me to have some internal anger that got the better of him.

Thurm - He was laid off in EXACTLY the same way senior writers have been laid off around the country for a couple of decades. He was told that his job description was changing dramatically in ways that made his job MUCH less attractive to him than his current job, and he was also told that a retirement package was available. He did the math, as hundreds of senior journalists have done around the country, and realized that the dollar value of the buyout offer plus what he could earn as a free-lance writer or working for another outlet was good enough to live on, so he took the buyout in order to continue to have a job that he liked. It's been happening for years all around the country. It's a simple matter of economics for the papers. The loss of the writer doesn't affect circulation nearly as much as the paper benefits from the compensation reduction, so the paper gives the writer a "choice" that really is no choice at all. I would tend to agree with you that my view might be skewed if I hadn't heard Sully discussing Terrell Owens late in his single season in Buffalo. Sullivan had been brutal to TO from the day he was signed, ripping him as a prima donna and "locker room cancer." Sullivan did it all season long, and it bothered me a lot because what he said was completely inconsistent with everything I heard and saw about TO. It was 100% made up. Terrell Owens had a press conference every week, almost all season long, and I listened to every one. He didn't have one objectionable press conference. He never threw anyone under the bus, including Trent Edwards, who didn't seem to understand that he was on the field with a Hall of Fame receiver. Sullivan and others would ask the other players to talk about TO in the locker room, and they uniformly said he was a great teammate - among the hardest workers on the team and a great guy to hang with. Notwithstanding all of that, Sullivan was all over Owens. Then, late in the season, I happened to hear him on WGR with, I think, Schoop and the Bulldog, and the discussion turned to TO. Sullivan went off on TO like TO'd been arrested for raping 13 year-old girls. The interviewers interrupted him and told him they thought his views were extreme and unsupported by the facts. That just sent Sullivan into greater, almost absurd accusations about how horrible TO was. I mean this without exaggeration - he sounded like someone who believed the Holocaust didn't happen. The interviewers kept trying to get him on track, and it became very clear that they believed they were talking to someone who, at least on this subject, had lost all connection with reality. That episode confirmed for me that Sullivan wasn't a responsible journalist; he was a man on a his own personal mission, driven by motives I didn't understand. He wasn't a well educated sports fan, watching sports and reacting to what he saw. He was a guy who for some reason lived to bash the Bills, and went out of his way to find reasons he could bash them. As I noted above, in recent press conferences it was completely clear that he would ask questions designed to create contradictions with what other representatives of the organization had said, so that then he could claim that the Bills were lying to the press. He simply was not a responsible journalist, at least not so far as the Bills were concerned.

I agree and disagree. Sure, it would be nice to have a totally free press, I suppose, but it's simply unrealistic to think that's every going to happen. You have to expect that people with power are going to exercise that power. If someone is saying bad things about me publicly and I have the power to stop it, am I going to decline to exercise that power because I want to promote the principle of a free press? Not likely. It's a give and take situation. The Pegulas stepped in not because they wanted everyone at the News to wear rose-colored glasses at Bills and Sabres games. They stepped in because some of the News writers were openly antagonistic toward the Bills, writing outrageous stuff. That is, the News had allowed its writers to go over the line to become more like the lunatic fringe than responsible journalists. When the Bills were in the process of moving away from Rex and Doug and installing McBeane as the new regime, in those four or five months, Sullivan and Gleason unjustifiably negative about the Bills, not only taking shots at what was happening but actively trying to create situations where they could bash the Bills. I heard it myself, listening to the press conferences. They already had called one of the Bills leadership, I believe it was Whaley, a "liar" in print, because they had some theory that something Whaley said was directly opposite something Anthony Lynn had said. What Lynn had said was in that Wednesday press conference before the last game. Lynn had been named interim head coach two days before, this was his first press conference, and Gleason and Sullivan literally ambushed him. It was unmerciful and inappropriate. Then, in later press conferences they repeatedly asked questions designed to generate responses that were inconsistent with things Bills' leadership had said or done in the preceding weeks or months. It was like they thought they were Woodward and Bernstein taking down the President. They behaved like they were investigative journalists on a mission. If I'm the Pegulas, I'm going to move to stop it. I'm going to begin restricting the News' access to coaches and the front office, which I believe they did. I'm going to begin giving exclusives to other outlets instead of the News, which I believe they did. Why would they give the News preferred access, just because they were the home town paper, if everything they did was going to be prejudged and attacked by the paper? So, yes, people with money are going use it to control how they're covered. It isn't the problem you suggest, however, because it's one thing to use power to try to control unfair coverage, it's another to try to use power to cover up the truth. The President of the United States doesn't have the power to hide the truth, and the Pegulas don't either. There's enough press, and there are enough people writing who can't be influenced by power (the explosion of bloggers is a great development in that regard), that the truth simply can't be hidden forever. The simple fact is that the power of the press, like everyone else's power is limited. Wealth's power is limited by the press's ability to expose wrong-doing, and the press's power is limited by the wealth that makes the press powerful in the first place. Checks and balances. The News had gone over the line, was exercising the power of the press in a way that was unfair and inappropriate, and the Pegulas helped the leadership at the News understand that. That's not a bad thing.

Although I agree that it's likely that the deal was driven by the factors you list - skill set, picks and filling the receiver hole left by Watkins and Woods, I would be amazed if Darby's involvement in this incident didn't contribute to McBeane's thinking. McBeane want guys who are focused on the right things all the time, not just during team activities, and Darby's focus on other things probably made the decision easier.

No, you don't understand. His editors had three columns a week to fill and Sullivan was the guy they had to fill those columns. When the publisher called the editor and said you have to cut costs, the editor said cut Sullivan because he is expensive. It wasn't about whether the editor liked what Sullivan wrote. And the publisher gave the editor a push by saying that Sullivan was pissing off important people.

I doubt the decision was based on the quarter. Probably based on projections.

I didn't understand that. Thanks. In any case, I have no doubt that the Pegulas made their feelings known to the News. They weren't going to tolerate being called a dumpster fire.

Correct. That's why I said "entitled." He's free to say and write whatever he wants, just as you and I are. That freedom, however, does not mean that he's entitled to have anyone publish it. Sullivan has complained that he was "silenced" for business reasons. I believe he's correct. He's not a stupid guy. He's worked in the newspaper business for years, and I am absolutely certain that he's understood for all that time that the publishers of newspapers respond to business realities on a daily basis. It's not news. He seems to think that he was entitled to be insulated from those realities. Sorry, Jerry, it doesn't work that way for you or anyone else. Never has, never will. If he wants a guaranteed gig, he'll have to buy his own newspaper. I never read anything other than their Bills stuff. And even Sullivan's Bills stuff was well written. The guy can write. His writing revealed some deep-seated anger he had about the Bills. He took swings at the Bills every chance he got. He was bitter. He couldn't find any joy in his experience of the Bills, and if there's no joy, what's the point?

This is well put. What bothers me most about Sully is his sense of entitlement. He thinks he's entitled to write whatever he wants and someone will publish it. I write whatever I want. But I know that the moderators here can delete it in a heartbeat. I can live with that reality. Sully apparently never understood it.

People need to recognize that economics and economics alone is BY FAR the biggest reason Sullivan is gone. WEO's explanation above is exactly correct. The News wanted to cut expenses, and they did what newspapers all over the country have done for years: Let their most expensive writers choose either a buyout or a reassignment that is unattractive to the writers professionally. It's happened for years. In Sully's case, there was a second economic reason. While the News was trying to grow revenue to improve their numbers, they discovered they were going to LOSE revenue because of Sully's ceaseless rants. For the news, it was simple math: Keep Sully, lose $250,000 a year. Lose Sully, lose what, maybe $10,000 in subscribers? That lost subscriber revenue they make up in savings by being rid of Sully's salary. It's simple economics. Sully was probably gone anyway, but being an ass in his opinions about the Bills sealed his fate. Exactly. If the News wants a guy to bash the Bills, they can hire one for half the price of Sully. And in this case they get the added benefit of keeping the Pegulas happy. Win-win. Sully's history.

That's a great report. Thanks for posting. A lot of whining from the guys who took buyouts. This sort of thing has been happening at newspapers all over the country for years, and if they were surprised, then I'd say they foolishly ignored the facts of life in the 21st Century newspaper business. The best writers have been taking buyouts from the Hartford Courant for years, and it was obvious that they took the buyouts because otherwise they would have been reassigned to positions they didn't want. They aren't buyouts, they are layoffs, and as has happened in businesses (not just newspapers) for the past 30 years, the highest paid workers are the ones most likely to get laid off. Sullivan, of course, led the parade of those who foolishly ignored reality. He has been incapable of seeing that his "opinion" is so one-sided, so contrary to simple fact, so biased that powerful people would begin to complain about it. It's one thing to be a critic, it's another to be a maniacal bomb-thrower. I've been saying for a year that the Pegulas would flex their muscles to get Sullivan to return to reasonable criticism or to be silenced altogether, so I'm not surprised to learn that in fact they did deliver the message to the News publishers. Sullivan talks about it in this piece as though he believes he was entitled to write whatever he wanted without consequences. If that's what he thought, then he's just plain stupid. If that's what he wants, then he needs to be a tenured professor somewhere, not a journalist. Do I like it? No. I'd rather have more reporting and columns about the Bills than less, even Sully's columns. Am I surprised it happened? No, and no one else should have been surprised, either.

Probably plenty of people here weren't around for the Raiders game. It wasn't just that Rashad scored a late TD and the Raiders missed a field goal on the final play. Rashad scored the go-ahead TD with under 2 minutes left. The Bills' defense held and got the ball left. The Bills just need to run out the clock. The Raiders stripped the ball from the Bills' fullback (James Braxton?) and returned it 65 yards to retake the lead. So the Bills drove AGAIN with Rashad getting his SECOND TD in the last two minutes. My wife fell asleep with ten minutes left. I couldn't sleep for two hours. Cowboys games was probably the best game I've ever seen live, and I was at Super Bowl XXV. The crowd was absolutely electric. The stadium was shaking. The Bills defense was unprepared to win the game on the final plays. They literally GAVE the Cowboys two sideline completions to set up the losing field goal. Still, the game was unbelievable.

Good point. Costs too much to unloads him in an already difficult cap year.

Quite cool. Thanks. I don't trust amateur experts like this, but his analysis is right on. It's particularly interesting that he noticed that both Gaines and White were confused on the play. Also cool that Ryan trusted the play design and believed that Hyde would run himself out of the play. He threw to th spot that Hyde shoukd have vacated. Also cool to watch 52 bite on the play fake then turn and find the guy cutting to the left sideline. Ryan was supposed to throw to that guy.

I thought so, too, but it isn't about that. I have to keep reminding myself. As I wrote in my other post, it's about effort and commitment. I think you know all you need to know when you read the the article about Phillips on BuffaloBills.com. It's linked in another thread. Or read about Trent Murphy. Or look at the article quoting McCoy about Allen and how studious he is. McB have made it totally clear in what they've said, and it's backed up completely when you look at the players they've added to the team. If you aren't driven, maniacally driven to get better every day, they just aren't interested in you.

I always say you're better off to keep talent too long than to let it go too soon. However, McB aren't about talent, at least not first. As you note, they're about effort and commitment first, and if you don't show it and show it quickly, they don't waste time on you. Every single holdover from the last regime should have gotten that message when first Watkins and then Dareus left town. The message - we don't care how talented you are, we care about your effort and your commitment to what we're doing.

I agree. I'm expecting a passing game with well-designed routes and disciplined route running, as well as a QB who knows the routes and isn't afraid to throw it. Benjamin is one of those open-when-he's-covered receivers. The QBs will always have a target.

Total rebuild. McB know exactly what kinds of players they want, and they didn't find many of them on the roster that Doug and Rex built.

That's wrong, but it sounds good. Tomlinson - 1815, 1474, 1110, 730, 914 - looks like slowing down to me Thurman Thomas - slowed down - his yards per attempt and yards per reception stayed more or less the same throughout his career, but the number of touches decline. Emmit Smith - 1397, 1203, 1021, 975, injured, 937. What cliff? Frank Gore - 1128, 1106, 967, 1025, 961 - still going after 13 seasons. Some fall off quickly, some don't.

Absolutely right. The receivers will run the routes; the QBs have to make the plays.

You know, I'm keeping my mouth shut with all my football friends in New Englandn- it's Pats and Giants territory - but I'm excited. I'm a big believer in McD, more than any coach in a long while. I talked myself into Gailey and even Rex, but McD is different. He really seems to know what he is doing. The right players are responding to him in the right ways. Kyle coming back was a sign that McD is doing the right things. The kind of guys they're signing and drafting is another sign. This team is hungry.

Hey Corner. Thanks for the link. Great article. McD wants intense. This guy is intense.