buffalobillsfootball

http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.htm...=517836&p=2

http://national-football-league-nfl.suite1...move_to_toronto Oh, and check this out: The Buffalo Bills is the obvious victor in the battle of failing NFL franchises desperate for relocation.

Anything that help put pressure on Ralph & family to sell to a local owner vs. a Canadian/Out of town investor would help.

I'd really like to see this issue resolved before 5 years. If it means sharing the team, long term with TO - with most games played in Buffalo - then I'm fine with it. But why wait 5 years?

NFL in L.A. gets a new blueprint http://www.losangelesfootballstadium.com/ Roski plans 'major announcement' about NFL in L.A. Long live Ralph.

ignorance is bliss...

Call me a pessimist but its pretty easy to put the pieces together to this tragic story... The writing is on the wall: the Bills are as good as gone folks. Let' see: 1) Past ten years of under-achieving. 2) Bills hire a familiar face for PR reasons: Marv. 3) Marv departs 2 years later. Was it public that it was just a two year stint? (Honestly don't know.) 4) Ralph throws Buffalo under the bus two months ago in Toronto.. gives zero reassurance to Bills fans. 5) Bills front office rebuffs any talk about lease; extension and needs - per County Executive 6) Long-time Bills rival - Miami - chosen to play in Toronto - how is this not on purpose? Bills claim they had nothing to do with it. Personally, I'd rather them just jet now for Toronto and let the pain begin. It's a disgrace and I simply no longer have any respect for Ralph Wilson.

http://www.mlive.com/business/ambizdaily/b...55207283290.xml

http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/sp...a2-7ef9afaf9438 Let the games begin.

No credit here for Wilson's foresight... Link Again, hard to get sympathy for small market teams when they fail to maximize their sponsorship opportunities.

Ignorance is bliss... Is "lets_go_bills" Russ Brandon? I'm supposed to buy your logic when the Bills won't even discuss the lease with Erie County?

Is it just me or did Vic ignore his question? Odd.

Fans should be wary of Bills shuffle This sucks! The Buffalo Airport is showing that if you put cheap flights in, Canadians will come. If Ralph puts a winning product on the field, he could charge what he wants. People will pay for it... and as BUF Airport shows, so will Canadians.

I agree. Since each NFL franchise is so heavily subsidized by state and local governments, the NFL should rotate meetings, conferences, and drafts as often as possible to help boost local economies.

“I just wanted a deal that was fair.” PHOENIX — When Ralph C. Wilson Jr. voted against extending the collective-bargaining agreement last year, his decision was met with criticism, even ridicule. The Buffalo Bills owner said at the time that he didn’t understand all the particulars of the deal, which was passed by a 30-2 vote. “I don’t think anyone else understood it, either,” Wilson said. What he did understand was that an agreement without additional revenue sharing would threaten his small-market franchise’s chances of survival because it wouldn’t be able to compete with the National Football League’s spiraling labor costs. He went on a yearlong campaign to spread the message that financial balance between the small- and large-market teams was vital to the league. The overwhelming approval of an expanded revenue-sharing plan Monday shows that a lot of his fellow owners have gotten the message. “We looked over that ledge, and we didn’t like what we saw,” New England Patriots owner Robert K. Kraft said during an interview at the Arizona Biltmore Resort, where the NFL’s annual spring meetings are being held. “Ultimately, our job, our responsibility as owners, is doing what is best for the National Football League. This is not the best plan, but it is a plan that is in the best interests of all our teams.” Under the terms of the four-year revenue-sharing agreement, the 15 richest teams will contribute $430 million ($100 million in 2006 and $110 million from 2007 to 2009) to a pool from which the needy teams will draw. The $3.7 billion shared equally by the 32 teams from the league’s television contracts is not affected by the new pool. As many as 17 teams may get money from the pool, provided they meet the criteria to qualify for extra funds, including spending at least 65 percent of their revenues on player costs. If below that figure, a team can receive only enough money to get it back to 65 percent. Teams also must have gate revenue equal to at least 90 percent of the league average, and if a team has a new or substantially renovated stadium, it won’t be eligible to receive money over the length of the four-year agreement. Not every team is happy with the agreement, Wilson said. Some bigmoney teams believe they are paying too much. Small-market franchises such as Cincinnati and Jacksonville, which cast the only no votes, believe that the plan doesn’t go far enough. “Nobody is happy,” said Robert C. McNair, owner of the Houston Texans. “So, I guess, maybe it’s a good deal that way. The important thing is, the deal got done.” It is also important to note that the 15 large-market teams — among them, New England, Dallas, Houston, Washington and Denver — that have to put money into the revenue-sharing pool all voted in favor of the plan. “This is a strong testament to our teams’ willingness to do what is best for the league,” Bills Treasurer Jeffrey C. Littmann said. “This wasn’t about a win. This was about making our case.” Many of the owners said Wilson was a driving force behind this revenue- sharing plan getting approved. He lobbied owners and politicians to make sure his voice was heard. “Ralph is one of our most respected owners, so you listen when he has something to say,” Pittsburgh Steelers owner Daniel M. Rooney said. “He and his people were very much involved. He did a good job presenting his case.” “I’m certainly sympathetic to Ralph’s situation in Buffalo,” said Denver Broncos owner Patrick D. Bowlen. “From what I saw, he was pretty persuasive in, No. 1, keeping the team in Buffalo, and, No. 2, having some better revenue-sharing arrangements than we do. Ralph’s been around since Day One. So I think what he had to say and his input was very important.” Perhaps Wilson should feel vindicated now that so many owners see this issue from his perspective. But that was never his aim. “I wasn’t looking for vindication,” Wilson said. “I just wanted a deal that was fair.” His quest for a fair deal began shortly after the owners met to ratify the collective-bargaining agreement last March in Dallas. He thought owners felt rushed because they were facing a ratification deadline. Some owners saw it as the lesser of two evils — a flawed deal was better than no deal at all. But Wilson viewed it as giving up too much (60 percent of the gross revenues) to the players. More important, he felt that the Bills and other small-market teams would suffer without more revenue sharing. He enlisted the services of Sen. Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., who had meetings with the NFL’s former commissioner, Paul Tagliabue, and the current one, Roger Goodell, to help ensure the Bills’ long-term security in Buffalo. Before stepping down, Tagliabue named Wilson to a “qualifiers committee” of eight NFL owners to tackle the revenue-sharing issue. Littmann served on a revenue-sharing study group named by the commissioner. After months of conference calls, meetings and debates, the deal was struck. Had the new agreement not passed, Goodell would have had the authority to make the final ruling. But it didn’t come to that, and now the Bills and their small-market brethren can breathe a sigh of relief. “I’m not totally satisfied, but I’m happier with this plan,” Wilson said. “It took a lot of work to make this happen.”

Bengals against revenue plan BY MARK CURNUTTE | MCURNUTTE@ENQUIRER.COM PHOENIX -NFL owners voted 30-2 this morning - with the Bengals and Jacksonville Jaguars voting no -to adopt a four-year supplemental revenue sharing plan and terms of how teams qualify for it. The plan is intended to help the NFL maintain competitive balance among teams located in big markets and small markets alike. The amount of money the Bengals will receive and when has not been determined, Bengals president Mike Brown said after a meeting at the Arizona Biltmore. A list of “qualifiers” will reduce how much teams will receive. One qualifier is playing in a stadium that is less than 10 years old. Brown said the Bengals are hit with a 44 percent reduction in revenue sharing because Paul Brown Stadium is entering its eighth year of operation. “The qualifiers are a reduction in the subsidy, and in our case, this program will reduce any subsidy we would receive under the new program by exactly 44 percent,” he said. “Why that number is so exact … I don’t know. But that’s how it works out.” The plan is retroactive to 2006 and will continue through 2009, Houston Texans owner Bob McNair said. The vote last March in Dallas to extend the league’s collective bargaining agreement with the players’ union called for additional revenue sharing. “Nobody is happy,” McNair said. “Some (teams) think they are giving too much. Some (teams) think they are receiving too little. So, I guess, maybe it’s a good deal that way.” The top 15 revenue-producing teams – almost all of them in the NFL’s largest markets, such as Washington, Philadelphia, New York, Houston and Boston – will pay into the pool. Teams such as the Bengals, Buffalo, Jacksonville and Minnesota – which ranks last in team revenue – are among the 17 that will receive money. New England Patriots owner Bob Kraft called the agreement important and said owners must unify after becoming fractured last year during talks to extend the labor agreement. The issue is complicated, and more details will be available later today when NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell or one of his spokesmen addresses the media. Essentially, there is an undeniable growing rift in team revenue between teams in large and small markets in the NFL. The cause is increased unshared revenue streams generated by large-market teams with new stadiums – such as Washington, New England and Philadelphia. The growing gap in revenue threatens the competitive balance that has helped the NFL grow into the nation’s top spectator sport with revenues around $6 billion. Shared revenue is the major reason teams in small markets such as Cincinnati, Green Bay, Jacksonville, Kansas City and Buffalo have been able to compete with teams in large cities such as New York. Major League Baseball, by comparison, does not have extensive revenue sharing, and teams in many small markets – including Cincinnati – face a competitive disadvantage because of limited payroll. Brown said last month that the Bengals might not be able to compete well into the future unless core issues of revenue disparity were addressed. With his no vote and comments today, he said the measure is a short-term solution. “I don’t favor it. It’s a stopgap solution,” Brown said this morning. “We have deeper problems than qualifiers. We have problems with subsidies in the league.” Brown said teams in the NFL have been subsidized through stadium loans and grants to teams.

http://www.nfl.com/teams/story/NO/10089153 Saints staying in New Orleans through 2010 NFL.com wire reports BATON ROUGE, La. (March 26, 2007) -- The New Orleans Saints have come to an agreement with state officials that will keep the team in Louisiana through the 2010 season. Both sides agreed to toss out contract exit clauses that would have let the NFL team leave the state within the next four years. "For the foreseeable future, Louisiana's team will keep marching to victory right here," Gov. Kathleen Blanco said at the Governor's Mansion, announcing the latest developments in ongoing negotiations to keep the Saints in New Orleans. The contract had allowed the Saints to opt out of its current deal with the state by repaying about $70 million the state has provided in inducements to the team. But the Saints will drop that termination clause, and the state will eliminate its ability to opt out of the contract. Both sides agreed to continue negotiating on a long-term agreement that could keep the Saints in New Orleans beyond the current contract. Saints owner Tom Benson is "committed over the next four years to get a long-term deal done here and to stay here forever," said team spokesman Greg Bensel. The current $186.5 million contract with the Saints was negotiated in 2001 by former Gov. Mike Foster's administration and involves making annual payments to the team on top of other subsidies through 2010. Those state payments will continue. Blanco said she didn't agree to give the Saints any more money -- but ongoing upgrades to the Saints' home stadium, the New Orleans Superdome, will continue. Hurricane Katrina caused extensive damage to the Superdome in 2005. The state repaired the domed stadium and invested another $185 million into improvements and upgrades long sought by Benson. Benson was in Phoenix for the NFL owners' meeting and was not at the Governor's Mansion for the announcement of the contract changes.

Report: NFL settles revenue-sharing issue The National Football League committee assigned to create a system for needy teams to tap a new revenue-sharing pool has reached an agreement, sources told the SportsBusiness Journal. The deal comes as owners gather for the NFL's annual metting in Phoenix. The issue has been a major source of concern for the Buffalo Bills. Owner Ralph Wilson has questioned the long-term viability of the franchise in Buffalo without a settlement that is favorable to small-market teams such as the Bills. The committee has been struggling for months to arrive at a solution on how to distribute up to $900M over six years to low-revenue clubs. High-revenue clubs wanted more performance hurdles built into the system, while many teams in smaller markets complained they would be penalized for market size. Details of the decision of the eight-team committee, which includes the Bills, could not be determined. The full ownership must still approve the committee's recommendation, but it is very rare for the league to ignore a committee recommendation. If the committee's recommendation does not get the 24 owner votes necessary to win approval, then Commissioner Roger Goodell would decide the issue. However, that appears unnecessary now.

Link Go Bills

Free-Agent Salaries Are Soaring in N.F.L. By JUDY BATTISTA When Marv Levy was the coach of the Buffalo Bills in the 1980s and 90s, he never knew how much money his players made. He did not have an agent, and his own salary negotiations consisted of the Bills’ owner, Ralph Wilson, telling him what he would be paid. When Wilson asked Levy to be the Bills’ general manager last year, Levy, never comfortable with numbers, immediately told Wilson that someone else would have to negotiate player contracts. But even Levy could not miss one emerging trend in free agency this season: contracts that are bigger than ever. Flush with cash from a salary cap that ballooned to $109 million this season from $85.5 million in 2005 and faced with a thin class of free agents, N.F.L. teams have spent lavishly. That includes huge amounts of guaranteed money, much of it given to players who in past years would have been second-tier free agents at best. “It makes me blink,” Levy said in a telephone interview. “It certainly raises the risk ante.” One of the biggest shocks came from the Bills. They gave a guard who has never made a Pro Bowl, Derrick Dockery, a $49 million contract, including $18.5 million in guaranteed money. It was the richest contract in Bills history and nearly equaled a contract given by the Minnesota Vikings last season to Steve Hutchinson, widely regarded as the league’s best guard. And it came from a small-market franchise that does not have limitless cash to cover its mistakes. “It’s stunning you get paid that much money to play a game, but it’s a game that’s generating a lot of funds.” Levy said of the upswing in money. Teams have long offered lucrative contracts during free agency, but they usually go to big-name players. This year, the spoils so far have gone to players who were lucky enough to become free agents but were not so valuable to their current team that they received the franchise tag. Guard Leonard Davis, a career underachiever, received $18.75 million guaranteed from the Dallas Cowboys, their biggest bonus ever. The Denver Broncos gave $15 million in guaranteed money to tight end Daniel Graham, who is more of a blocker than a receiver. The list of free agents this year was thin for the same reason that so much money was available for them. The new collective-bargaining agreement resulted in a jump in the salary cap at the same time that the league’s lucrative television contracts gave every team enough money to keep its best players off the free-agent market. Teams used the franchise tag to hold onto one top player; for instance, the Indianapolis Colts made defensive end Dwight Freeney their franchise player. Teams must pay their franchise player the average of the five highest salaries at his position, usually less than that player would receive on the open market. When free agency began March 2, the pickings were slim, but most teams’ coffers were full. Teams had an average of about $15 million available, and some teams had much more. The San Francisco 49ers, in salary cap purgatory for several years, had nearly $40 million to spend. They gave cornerback Nate Clements $22.6 million guaranteed on a deal reportedly worth $80 million for eight years. That was more guaranteed money than a more talented cornerback, Denver’s Champ Bailey, received in his contract in 2004. “If anything is surprising, it’s the money handed to players that if everyone was a free agent, they wouldn’t get,” San Francisco Coach Mike Nolan said in a telephone interview. “Some of the guards who have signed are getting money of Hutchinson value, but they are not near him as a player. But teams had to pay more just to get a void filled. That’s the luck of the draw.” Patriots Coach Bill Belichick does not seem bothered by the large guarantees given this year. He compares them with large signing bonuses frequently given in the past to players with lower annual salaries as a way to spread the cost of the salary and bring it under the salary cap. “I really think it’s not as big of a deal as everybody is making it out to be, in relation to the expansion of the cap,” Belichick said in a telephone interview. “In the end, it’s just shuffling money around. It’s more accounting than it is a fundamental change.” Somebody will probably have to explain that to the players. One unintended consequence of the free-agency largess is the resentment it is likely to breed among players who were not due a new contract this year, but who must watch teammates — some of them lesser talents — cash far heftier checks. Nolan is already imagining the repair work needed in locker rooms. “It is a concern,” Nolan said. “They have agents, and agents will be in their ear. They see the numbers handed out. My thing is you’ll get a deal, but you’ve got to play out your deal. Maybe you’ll strike it rich. When your contract is up, you get an opportunity as a free agent. By last year’s numbers, you got a great deal. This year’s numbers, maybe it doesn’t look as great.”

Ground Broken for Springdale Baseball Stadium Thursday March 01, 2007 1:15pm Rich owns the NFL's Buffalo Bills Springdale (AP) - Ground has been broken for a new baseball stadium that will be built in Springdale, courtesy of a $50 million bond package narrowly approved by voters. Among those on hand for Wednesday's ceremony were Kansas City Royals owner David Glass and Wichita Wranglers owner Bob Rich. Rich's Class Double-A, Texas League team is to move from Wichita for the 2008 season. The Wranglers are an affiliate of Glass's Royals. Glass is a former Wal-Mart chief executive officer. Rich owns the NFL's Buffalo Bills and other minor-league franchises. The stadium is being built on former farmland. Officials predict the surrounding fields will soon give way to commercial development.

Financial gap widening between NFL's haves and have-nots By Mark Curnutte, The Cincinnati Enquirer LINK INDIANAPOLIS — Coaches, executives and scouts from all 32 NFL teams have gathered here this week for the annual scouting combine, the unofficial start of the new season, when clubs share the cost of getting an up-close look at the top draft-eligible college players. Teams with the worst records last season will have the first picks April 28. At 12:01 Friday morning, another session of veteran free agency — the process in which teams, governed by a uniform spending limit, can compete fairly on the open market for players — will begin. NFL draft and free-agency structures are just two practices that ensure competitive balance, the reason that teams from two small cities, Pittsburgh and Indianapolis, won the last two Super Bowls. But the management of the Cincinnati Bengals, Jacksonville Jaguars and several other small-market NFL teams are warning that the league's competitive balance is being threatened by tremendous growth in revenues that have resulted — in large part — from that level playing field. The likes of Bengals president Mike Brown and other team executives say that without internal economic reform, the NFL will slide into the Major League Baseball model of competitive imbalance. As baseball teams open spring training, more than half face almost impossible odds of winning the World Series. Teams in Kansas City, Pittsburgh, Milwaukee Tampa-St. Petersburg and Cincinnati have little chance of competing with the big-market teams in New York, Boston, Los Angeles and Chicago. "If you look at the baseball pattern, and what happened over there, and which would be the likely result here, over time you would begin to see some teams spending a multiple of what other teams are spending (for players)," Brown said. In other words, there might come a day within the next three or four years when small-market NFL teams like the Bengals are relegated to second-class citizenship. Salary cap Even though the NFL has a salary cap, the equal ceiling teams can spend for players, the current formula for determining the cap is helping to create the disparity, Brown said. Teams in top-third NFL markets, such as Boston, Washington, Dallas, Philadelphia, Chicago and New York, generate revenues on average of $256 million, according to Enquirer research. Teams in the middle third, such as Baltimore, Tampa and Seattle, have average revenues of roughly $199 million. In Cincinnati, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Jacksonville and Buffalo — the league's smallest markets — average per-team revenues are about $177 million. The average per-team revenue is $211 million, and each team is responsible for paying 57.5% of its revenues toward player costs, according to the collective bargaining agreement ratified 30-2 by owners in March 2006. And though each of the 32 teams share equally in the league's national television and sponsorship contracts — about $102 million per team — big-market teams are generating unshared revenue at such a pace that it is causing the salary cap to rise faster than small-market teams can handle. The higher rate of growth in unshared revenue generated by teams with new stadiums in larger markets has created disparity. A little more than a decade ago, Brown said, the revenue gap between NFL teams in big and small cities was less than $10 million. Now it's more than $100 million. And the problem with unshared revenue — such as money from luxury box revenue, stadium naming rights, marketing and sponsorships and local media — is that it all goes into the league-wide tally that is used to determine the salary cap. For example, Brown paid $5 million for the naming rights to Paul Brown Stadium before it opened in 2000. It went toward the $44 million the Bengals contributed for construction. Had a private company wanted the naming rights to the Cincinnati football stadium, the next $11.67 million would have gone to the Bengals. But in New York, the Jets and Giants expect to get a deal worth $25 million for their new shared stadium. In New England, Patriots owner Bob Kraft gets $100,000 to $300,000 for suite rental at Gillette Stadium. At the RCA Dome, Colts president Jim Irsay can get an average of $34,000 annually for a luxury box. "The new stadiums have produced a discrepancy between the top-revenue and bottom-revenue (teams)," Brown said. "That has put the teams in the large markets in prime position. They are doing very well. But the teams in the smaller markets, they are struggling because their cap costs have gone up while their revenues have not kept pace." The Bengals are paying roughly 68% of their revenue on players. Big-market teams are paying an average of 47%. For the Washington Redskins, the NFL's top-revenue team that has broken the $300 million mark, that percentage is even smaller. More money to spend The salary cap is $109 million for 2007. In 2005, it was $86 million. In addition, each NFL team is required to make a mandatory player benefit payment of $21 million each year. The unofficial cap for this season is $130 million. The average non-player expenses for an NFL team are almost $50 million. Large-market teams have additional money to spend on coaches, scouts and facilities. For example, in 2004, Jacksonville spent $3.31 million on assistant coaches. Owner Daniel Snyder's Redskins spent $5.22 million, according to the NFL Coaches Association. Brown points to himself and his daughter and son-in-law, Bengals vice presidents Katie Blackburn and Troy Blackburn, as the team's three-headed general manager. The future The Bengals are on solid financial footing — for now. But the future is precarious. "What is not in question is the Bengals' ability to compete over the next few years," Brown said. "What is in question is the Bengals' viability over the long term." Buffalo Bills owner Ralph Wilson — the other nay vote in March when owners decided to extend the collective bargaining agreement with the NFL Players Association — says his team was expected to lose $5 million-$10 million in 2006. The reason, Wilson told the Rochester Times-Union, was that 65 cents of every dollar goes to his players. The issue is expected to come to a head at the league meeting this March in Phoenix. Commissioner Roger Goodell acknowledged during his state-of-the-league address Feb. 2 in Miami — two days before the Super Bowl — that the issue must be addressed between owners and the union. One solution — a reduction in the players' take — is unlikely. More plausible is additional revenue-sharing among owners. A pool of $100 million in supplemental revenue-sharing is supposed to be available this calendar year. But owners have not agreed how to split it up, and Brown said big-market team owners are looking for ways to give up as little as possible. Large-market owners like New England's Kraft, Washington's Snyder and Dallas' Jerry Jones think they're getting the short end of the deal; on the other side, so do Brown, Jacksonville's Wayne Weaver and Buffalo's Wilson. And fans might see just a bunch of rich guys fighting over millions — nay, billions — of dollars with even richer guys. "Fans have the right to not want to understand the business side of it," Bengals VP Troy Blackburn said. "They have the right to follow their team with passion. They want it to be a fun part of their lives and not get bogged down in the nitty-gritty of it. But I do think fans want to make sure their team has the resources to field a winning team." The Cincinnati Enquirer is owned by Gannett, USA TODAY's parent company.

Swap Raptors for Bills? TheStar.com - Sports - Swap Raptors for Bills? Swap of home dates could be ideal deal February 22, 2007 Dave Perkins Rumours are flying around the Internet, sparked or at least exacerbated by comments made by running back Willie McGahee about moving the Buffalo Bills to Toronto. McGahee told Penthouse it should happen. This was merely his personal preference, yet a relatively simple comment to a one-hand magazine has morphed into something more serious. A Buffalo-area political website (www.PoliticsNY.net) takes it much further: It purports to quote Tom Golisano, who owns the Sabres, as saying the Bills are going to move to Toronto and assume another name. Buffalo would retain the name Bills (the way Cleveland kept the name Browns) and, upon construction of a downtown domed stadium, the Queen City, i.e. Golisano, would then be gifted with an expansion team and, sooner or later, a Super Bowl. Well. That's a lot to digest and since it has been the position here, for 30 years, that there won't be an NFL team in Toronto in this lifetime, at least, I'm buying none of this. But what's to stop a little intra-city cooperation between Buffalo and Toronto? Why couldn't Larry Tanenbaum "give" Buffalo a couple of Raptors games – say two of the 41 for a couple of years – and in return, Toronto could get that 2008 regular season non-U.S. NFL game for which Toronto is a frontrunner? Think about it. Tanenbaum, who rides the fastest horse in the gang known as Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment, is on record with Ted Rogers, who owns the Blue Jays and the stadium formerly known as SkyDome, as wanting an NFL team for Toronto if and when possible. So show some good faith here. Larry could let the Raps play a couple of games in Buffalo, maybe against the Knicks, who would doubtless sell out in New York state, and the Celtics or Detroit or somebody else. There are plenty of midweek crowds of 13,000 at the Air Canada Centre over the course of a long season. If anybody here missed a couple of games, they could be made optional for season-ticket holders. The Raps could develop a large potential U.S. market, one they don't actively harvest at all – and yes, I know, it's nuts to suggest MLSE ever leaves a dollar on any table anywhere. Buffalo has a good sports history, remember, and a handful of colleges, which suggests a basketball audience of some size, even though the Braves lasted only eight seasons in the NBA in the 1970s before becoming the Clippers. (By the way, the TorBuff Braves, as we called them, played 16 "home'' games in Toronto from 1971 to '75. So there's precedent.) Sure, the Raps would have costs they wouldn't have at the ACC, but market the games right in a nice 19,000-seat building and they shouldn't take too much of a hit. The Bills, meanwhile, also have a couple of games every December with rotten weather and 15,000 empty seats at Ralph Wilson Stadium. So pull one of those out of Buffalo in 2008 and move it the 100 miles to Rogers' stadium. Larry and Ted could sell the popcorn and get their foot in the NFL door. Plus, each city gets a little something, rather than the biggest bankroll doing all the talking. Goofy idea? Maybe. But it makes a lot more sense than that other one. WILL THE WORD BE GOOD? The word on the best words in baseball broadcasting comes today when the hall of fame announces its recipient of the 2007 Ford C. Frick Award. Blue Jays' Day One guy Tom Cheek, for the second year in succession since his passing in the fall of 2005, is on the 10-man short list for the honour. Cheek's many fans are well aware of his ample qualifications to have won the award by now, but that doesn't mean he's a slam dunk to nose out the likes of Tony Kubek, Dizzy Dean, Ken Harrelson, Bill King and five other worthies when the call is made in Cooperstown, N.Y. If it's not today, we'll look to next year for Cheek. Better late than never and it's already late.

BY EVAN WEINER March 22, 2007 The Business of Sport When National Football League owners arrive in Phoenix this weekend for their four-day annual meeting, they'll be looking to solve some of the league's persistent problems, including revenue sharing, building new stadiums for the San Francisco 49ers and the Minnesota Vikings, and perhaps addressing a rash of off-field arrests of NFL players, before hitting the links. Unlike previous years, there will be few discussions of "sexy" issues such as an eagerly awaited announcements of designated sites for upcoming Super Bowl contests. Although making instant replay permanent has surfaced as a topic. Still, the league has a number of economic issues to iron out and those should fill up the owners' agenda. A major issue is revenue sharing and how to rectify what smallmarket owners perceive as inequities in the current system. The topic will likely surface during the meeting but it appears NFL commissioner Roger Goodell is in no hurry to tackle the problem. Goodell and the league's 32 owners have yet to draft an agreement that would satisfy both ends of the spectrum — from big-market owners like Dallas's Jerry Jones, and Houston's Robert McNair to Buffalo's Ralph Wilson on the poorer side of the revenue tracks. Instead, Goodell and NFL owners are looking for someone to mediate the problem. Goodell initially sought the assistance of former commissioner Paul Tagliabue, but Tagliabue declined — and with good reason: He had addressed the issue and failed to reach a resolution during his last year in office. Since Goodell took the helm in September, Senator Schumer, a Democrat of New York, has weighed in. Schumer has used his office and considerable influence in backing Wilson, who contends that the proposed Collective Bargaining Agreement (it has not been ratified) could kill off smallmarket franchises like his Bills. Meanwhile, a select committee of owners has explored the revenue-sharing dilemma and concluded that the revenue playing field lacks balance, but beyond that, nothing has come to pass. Another item on the agenda — stadiums — could make for an interesting session because of a confluence of factors. For one, the league's stadium-building subsidy program, the G-3, is broke. There is no money left for the Yorks, owners of the 49ers; the Spanos family, owners of the San Diego Chargers, or Vikings owner Zygi Wilf, all of whom have new stadium projects on the table. (The Yorks have proposed a new facility in Santa Clara, Calif., while Alex Spanos has his eye on San Diego's suburbs, whether Oceanside, Chula Vista, or National City. Wilf intends to keep his interests close to home, with plans for a new facility near Minneapolis's Metrodome.) Replenishing funds in the G-3 program may have to be tied into a revenue-sharing formula, a move that may give rise to another contentious issue for NFL owners. Ironically, Jones is in the middle of this debate. Despite being an owner of a high-revenue franchise, Jones wants league money to help pay off his share of the Cowboys–Arlington, Texas, deal for a new Cowboys facility that will be erected in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. But funds in the subsidy program were depleted when the Giants and Jets received $300 million in loans toward the teams' New Jersey stadium project, and another $42.5 million went to the Kansas City Chiefs for upgrades at Arrowhead Stadium. NFL clubs typically repay G-3 loans with revenue garnered from the sale of club seats to visiting teams, once the new stadium or stadium renovation is complete. Additionally, the city of San Antonio has been relegated to the sidelines, having abandoned its search for an NFL (or Major League Baseball) franchise, which further limits the threat of relocation by the Yorks, Spanos, Wilf, or Saints owner Tom Benson. San Antonio and Bexar County, Texas, officials thought they were players in the stadium game until last week, when they were led to forfeit after neither NFL nor MLB officials expressed interest in the city. Perhaps San Antonio officials shouldn't have been surprised. The city's Alamodome was a stateof-the-art football facility when it opened in 1993 — but that was 14 years ago. Today, the multipurpose facility requires hundreds of millions of dollars in renovations. The San Antonio–Austin, Texas area is also a weak television market with a limited corporate base. The region's corporate community and rank-and-file ticket buyers already show their support for the NBA's Spurs. (San Antonio also has a baseball team in the Double A Texas League and an American Hockey League club.) A second major league franchise in San Antonio could result in a financial calamity for both the Spurs and the new team. There is just not enough of a market to sustain both. Even after Benson took his Saints from the Katrina-ravaged Superdome to play three games at the Alamodome, NFL officials remained convinced that San Antonio was simply not much of a market for pro football. Part of that reasoning may be attributable to Jerry Jones, whose Cowboys trained in San Antonio in 2002 and 2003 and will return this summer for training camp. Jones has signed a five-year deal with city officials, which grants him rent-free use of the Alamodome. San Antonio is part of the Dallas market and the league may be wary of cutting into McNair's Houston Texans revenue stream. Now that San Antonio officials have earmarked stadium upgrade monies for other local projects, it figures to cause some problems because the league does not have any other legitimate, uninhabited markets seeking teams — available markets that owners could have otherwise used as leverage in dealmaking. This weekend, the 32 owners will once again be brought up to speed on plans for Los Angeles, but there is nothing going on in the country's second-biggest market. L.A. will not even be among the cities discussed by the owners' Super Bowl selection committee. Dallas and Indianapolis want the Big Game, and the usual suspects will make bids — South Florida, Tampa, Houston, and Phoenix — but there will be no talk of Los Angeles since it remains a city without a state-of-the-art stadium. This will continue to weaken NFL owners' leverage in the stadium game. When other cities are thrown into the mix, deals can get done quickly, as demonstrated recently by the NHL's Pittsburgh Penguins owners, Mario Lemieux and Ron Burkle. Lemieux and Burkle used an offer from Kansas City and a visit with Las Vegas's Mayor Goodman as negotiating chips in talks with Pittsburgh, Allegheny County, and Pennsylvania officials, and finally landed a new arena. NFL owners are losing their leverage. The owners likely to address the increasing number of player arrests, but it's unclear what they could do without the support of the National Football League Players Association. The owners and the players union will need to work out a disciplinary agreement that allows management to deal with players' behavior. The balance of the sessions figure to deal with international growth — looking beyond 2007, including a pre-season game in Beijing and a regular season matchup in London— and with a look at how the NFL's day-to-day business fared in 2006. Once that's out of the way, securing the best tee time might be the most important decision an NFL owner makes next week in Phoenix.

My Turn: Moving Back East; Heading Back Home When I left my hometown, I swore I'd never come back. Seeing the world changed my mind. By Brian Castner Newsweek http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17662270/site/newsweek/ March 26, 2007 issue - The human-resources recruiter at the hospital in western New York was confused. "You live in Las Vegas now?" she asked. "Yes, that's right," my wife said. "And you're moving here?" It was not the first time my wife, an emergency-room nurse trying to set up interviews for a new job in a new city, has had to explain herself. Perhaps the time of year explains the recruiter's confusion—she was probably buried under a late-winter blizzard, dreaming of our sunny weather. Thousands of people move to Las Vegas each month. No one moves from the sun belt to the snow belt. No one, that is, except us. I'm also surprised about our coming move. Born and raised in Buffalo, N.Y., I spent my first 18 years trying to leave. My hometown was too small, too predictable and too boring, filled with similarly small, predictable, boring people. Each summer vacation, when we visited my father's family in Oregon, I dreamed of permanently moving out west. I was drawn to the sense of optimism and the broad Western landscapes. Back east I felt doomed to the opposite; gray, snowy winters that seemed to never end. My mother's family had lived in Buffalo for nearly 150 years, and no one ever escaped. When college came, I grabbed my chance, went to school in Milwaukee (far, but not too far), got married (to a girl from Michigan, not Buffalo), joined the Air Force and didn't look back. The few friends from high school I kept in touch with all moved away: to New York City, Boston, California. In the military I met many others from my hometown. All told the same story of the desire to escape. We joked that Buffalo was a better place to be from than to actually be. In the past eight years, I have lived in South Dakota, New Mexico and Nevada, and seen the world—Iraq, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kyrgyzstan. The strain of constant deployments has taken its toll on my family, and my Air Force career is now drawing to a close, which means we can decide for ourselves where to move. My wife and I made a list of priorities. After years of brown landscapes, we longed for trees, grass and water. We wanted to move east, and north; someplace with four seasons. We liked the idea of a university town, where we could get our Ph.D.'s and maybe teaching jobs later. Our new hometown needed to have affordable housing—the boom of Las Vegas had left us barely able to afford a too-small house there. Also on the list were good schools for our three sons, and easy access to their grandparents. Plus rolling hills for cross-country skiing for me; a body of water for kayaking and sailing for my wife. After eight years of following my job, we wanted to follow our life. As we brainstormed our list of towns to move to—Burlington, Washington, Albany, Minneapolis—nothing seemed quite right. Finally one day my wife said, "Stop being so stubborn. You know Buffalo has everything that we're looking for." But I worried I would be judged a failure for moving back. Did it mean I couldn't hack it on the "outside"? But the idea of making my old hometown my new address began growing on me. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that moving back will hold benefits far eclipsing our meager list. My sons will get the chance to grow up with not only their grandparents, but great-grandmother, great-great aunts and first, second and third cousins. They'll get to hear family stories about their grandfather, a firefighter, who put out a blaze in the church his grandfather built. My sons will go to my old high school. These ideas suddenly held meaning. Marriage, fatherhood and deployments to the worst areas of the world have given me a perspective I was too self-absorbed to see before. I took for granted a large supporting family and sense of community history most people don't have. I appreciate it only now. But I understand that I am not settling for an easier road, but rather making an active choice to believe in the place my immigrant ancestors poured their lives into. I am learning to be less defensive when admitting I am moving back home. I tell people we thought objectively, and Buffalo just happened to have all the things we were looking for. When I tell my high-school friends I am moving back, they say "good for you," as in "you're braver than I." When I tell my military friends from Buffalo, they say they have seen too much of the world to move back to that small, predictable, boring town. I tell them I have seen too much in this world not to move home. Castner lives in Las Vegas, Nev.