Low Positive

I always find conversing with Buffaloians on sports message boards to be a strange experience because they always use hockey as the point of comparison. I have to defend my love of hockey to midwesterners because they find it about as relevant as many of you find soccer. I would like to make a case for basketball here. When you learn the details of the game, there is as much of a chess match as in football with double screens, planned plays, motion, double teams, defensive rotation, etc... But the ball keeps moving and downtown is at a minimum. As someone who grew up in Buffalo, I never gave basketball much thought. It seemed as foreign as soccer. But spending 8 years in Bloomington, Indiana made me appreciate the game a lot.

First of all, I'm going to ignore the insult. And I never said that he was the answer. I believe that no coach would have been the answer. Unless that coach can block and/or read a defense, the Bills would continue to lose. Vince Lombardi could have maybe coached this team to 8-8.

First of all, that was far from their prime, but rather at the end of their careers. Secondly, if you are searching for a coach that can win without talent, you are not going to find one. You can lose with talent, but you cannot win without it. We all want to believe that hiring a name coach would solve the problems because that should have been easier than getting a major talent infusion. Should be easier after all to hire one person than replace multiple players. But it would not have made much of a difference. No coach could win many more than 6 games with this team as it now stands.

They'll lose tonight because it is that kind of a day for Buffalo sports. Also, remember last year when they sucked and everyone wanted "Linda" and Creamsicle fired?

The same thing that Vince Lombardi would do, lose. Luckily, the Bills don't have the worst roster in football. That honor belongs to the the Detroit Lions. Hey look at that, it can always be worse.

Well then call me an idiot. I'm not thrilled, but he has had some good seasons as OC and HC. Now, Cam Cameron would have made be really angry. But this has me more confused than anything.

We would have to wait a week or three and the negative press from that would kill Russ.

Every city has the disgruntled sports columnist. You should read Bob Kravitz's columns about the Colts in the Indianapolis Star. You would think that they were having a losing season. And when these guys get an actual losing team, they go to town. One time Kravitz actually admitted that he does not really watch pacers' games, but he still uses them as fodder for his columns all the time. The point is that his job is not to report, but rather to stir the pot. And the Bills pot right now is ripe for Sullivan's stirring. It almost stirs itself.

I think that the closest corollary to this situation (or at least the closest one that I can I think of) is Rick Pitino. After failure at the Knicks, goes on to UK where he has one of the best college jobs in the country. Then, gets the call from the Celtics and takes the job. All he did was to reconfirm the fact that he was a terrible NBA coach/GM. So you don't even have to speculate about him pulling a Calipari, ego would be enough to explain the move.