Too all the Ralph haters

[billsfreak]

In general, no one can dispute the fact that Ralph Wilson is one of the most incomptent and ineffectual owners in the league. Just look at the record. It is embarrassingly bad. He has made not only a lot of bad decisions, he has made a lot of perplexing and inexplicable decisions. Elevating his marketing guru (Brandon) to head the football operation was not only stupid, it was weird

 

Ralph Wilson has made arrangements on how his franchise is going to be disposed of when he passes. It is both odd and shameful that a 93 yr old man is not forthright about his intentions. You can speculate all you want about what the owner is going to do. Not being open about his intentions at this stage of his life says a lot to me about the owner. He doesn't care what anyone else thinks; he is going to do what he wants to do.

 

It is very unfair to categorize people who state the obvious about the caliber of ownership that they should be labled as "haters".

Exactly. I am one of Ralph's biggest critics on this board, and continue to think that he is one of if not the worst owner presently in the NFL. I have never been a "hater" of Ralph, and never will be. I like Ralph as a person, have met him once in Canton in 2002 and thought he was somewhat friendly. I appreciate all he has done for Buffalo, but do get tired of hearing "He kept the Bills in Buffalo", which he did and I am greatful for, but over the past 20 or so years that is about the only positive thing people keep bringing up over and over again with regards to his ability to be a successful owner in the NFL.

[dpberr]

The owners are going to be the last group in the room rushing a deal through as fast as possible. The large market teams saddled with debt have more to lose than the small market teams do this time around.

[rockpile]

In general, no one can dispute the fact that Ralph Wilson is one of the most incomptent and ineffectual owners in the league. Just look at the record. It is embarrassingly bad. He has made not only a lot of bad decisions, he has made a lot of perplexing and inexplicable decisions. Elevating his marketing guru (Brandon) to head the football operation was not only stupid, it was weird

Ralph Wilson has made arrangements on how his franchise is going to be disposed of when he passes. It is both odd and shameful that a 93 yr old man is not forthright about his intentions. You can speculate all you want about what the owner is going to do. Not being open about his intentions at this stage of his life says a lot to me about the owner. He doesn't care what anyone else thinks; he is going to do what he wants to do.

 

It is very unfair to categorize people who state the obvious about the caliber of ownership that they should be labled as "haters".

 

He is the owner. That gives him the right to do what he wants.

 

He does not need to care what I think, although it would be nice to think that in a general way he cares.

 

He does not owe me the details of his will just because I am a loyal fan of his football team (since 1964). From my admittedly franchise marketing ignorant position, I could speculate that publishing future business intentions for his properties could compromise the value of those assets to his survivors. I could speculate whatever I want.

 

I disagree with your opinion that "In general, no one can dispute the fact that Ralph Wilson is one of the most incomptent (sic) and ineffectual owners in the league" but you are entitled to it.

Your opinion is as valid as mine.

 

A brother of mine told me it is not good to hate.

 

rockpile

[yungmack]

He is the owner. That gives him the right to do what he wants.

 

He does not need to care what I think, although it would be nice to think that in a general way he cares.

 

He does not owe me the details of his will just because I am a loyal fan of his football team (since 1964). From my admittedly franchise marketing ignorant position, I could speculate that publishing future business intentions for his properties could compromise the value of those assets to his survivors. I could speculate whatever I want.

 

I disagree with your opinion that "In general, no one can dispute the fact that Ralph Wilson is one of the most incomptent (sic) and ineffectual owners in the league" but you are entitled to it.

Your opinion is as valid as mine.

 

A brother of mine told me it is not good to hate.

 

rockpile

Well said, Rockpile. But then, I expect nothing less from you.

[Hplarrm]

Please tell me how these players are going to do this. Are you proposing an entirely new league? Who's going to bankroll these franchises and how many franchises will there be? Where will these new teams play? Who will broadcast these games on what networks?

 

This has been attempted by far richer and far better positioned people than the current players and both the WFL and USFL couldn't compete. The NFL and it's group of useless, incompetent owners that are no longer essential would crush this new league of yours but only after the players and owners of the new league lost hundreds of millions of dollars.

 

Every star in the NFL could sign up in the new league tomorrow and it wouldn't be much more than a hiccup for the machine that is the NFL. Players come and go all the time. Manning, Brady, et al can quit today and the league will be just as popular as ever.

 

GO BILLS!!!

I actually have played with a few ideas at my usual nauseating length while I am half listening to conference calls waiting for my turn to talk. I have presented these as the players following a logical step after they grasped victory from the jaws of defeat after the owners kicked the butt of the old AFL-CIO style NFLPA in the mid 80s lockout.

 

The traditional union approach in fact was beaten so badly by the NFL owners that the players were willing to consider and ultimately be convinced that the decert strategy was the way to go.

 

In the face of this strategy, the NFL team owners ran kicking and screaming to demand that the union come back and agree to the CBA. The first go-round with this resulted in a salary cap which delivered far more dollars to the players than was ever imagined. It did this by in essence making the players partners with the NFL team owners. With the development of labor peace, the TV networks proved willing to part with billions of dollars in order to sell commercials for even more money to advertisers anxious to put their ads in front of the many eyeballs interested in the NFL.

 

In the last CBA renegotiation, Gene Upshaw was able to simply demand that the cap would be determined by total gross revenues rather than a designate gross. Further, he stated that the player share of the cap needed to start with a 6.

 

60.5% ended up being the final calculation of players share and arguably as they command well over 50% of the gross take the players became not only partners but majority partners in this enterprise.

 

The MFLPA has remade the NFL but it appears to me that they are actually going to faint of heart and not take a new approach which essentially dispenses with the current team owners as they add little of value to the final product which cannot be more economically efficently replaced.

 

I have dubbed this new creation the NewFL.

 

There are several potential sources of capital for a new effort:

 

1. The TV Networks- They are in fact the current major source of cash for the league. The NFL usually follows the cash and I only wish there was strong enough leadership to organize directing this cash more directly to the players and take the NFL owners who really are just a middleman adding little to the product which cannot be simply (conceptually that is though not easily in reality) be a more economically efficient source of capital.

 

2. Municipalities- These are tough times so generating capital for what many see as a luxury is likely tough politically to do. Nevertheless, municipalities provide a potential source of capital which actually is economically superior to the private market in a number of ways which is not just mere opinion but is measurable in terms of dollars and cents

 

a. Municipalities get better rates for loans than the private sector. Municipalities not only can borrow at a cheaper rate thant private sector efforts, but there is also the ability to self generate capital by selling bonds at a tax-free rate.

 

b. Municipalities do not need to turn a profit on their investments providing a 5-10% advantage (or more depending on how much money the private sector investment wants to and can make

 

In general the model for capitalizing a project would be something like the authority which was envisioned for building a new football stadium for the Jets.

 

3. New owners- One of the side effects of the massive shift in funding government from the days not too long ago when tax rates were higher (despite the whining of forces like the Tea Party about government sucking money from the private sector, the marginal tax rate used to be 70% on high earners and now the real rate is below 20% on the relatively low taxes on the rich modern regime. It is likely that new owners would be just as stupid as the current team owners, but a change would be good. Even in a small market like Buffalo there are several options for "new" owners like Pegula, Golisano, the Jacobs family and even a conglomerate led by Jim Kelly who might be enticed to replace the current economic drag which scrapes money off of football while adding little which cannot be replaced.

 

4.. The players themselves- one of the huge changes embodied in the CBA change is the creation of a ton of wealthy players. Again it would take smart leadership and unfortunately Upshaw is dead, but the players who now are operating as Brady, et al could front downpayments and look to large capital sources such as banks to provide the cashflow capital needed for the NewFL.

 

5. Something I have not thought of. Even in this economy, cash is always an issue but is not the problem in this society.

 

In addition, in terms of management structures rather than the cult of personality which brings us the Jerry Jones, the Dan Snyders and the Art Modells, it is clear from the GB Packer example that it is possible to manage a team which is successful both on and off the field without an owner.

 

I do doubt that unfortunately this will not happen. Though the players had the leadership in the 80s and 90s under Gene Upshaw to remake the league, I do not see that level of determination among the players today. Actually, though I think that the current NFL owners have routinely demonstrated they can be beaten in a economic fight, the difficulty for the players is that they have grown so fat and happy living off the huge changes in the game the last 20 years, I do not think they have the discipline to fine tune an attack on the owners. The owners appear to be so full of themselves and stupid that the players run the risk of actually killing the current owners rather than weakening them.

 

However, I am quite certain that if a talented tenth of the players had the balls to do it they could essentially replace the current owners.

 

If this happened we would have football now.

[JohnC]

He is the owner. That gives him the right to do what he wants.

 

He does not need to care what I think, although it would be nice to think that in a general way he cares.

 

He does not owe me the details of his will just because I am a loyal fan of his football team (since 1964). From my admittedly franchise marketing ignorant position, I could speculate that publishing future business intentions for his properties could compromise the value of those assets to his survivors. I could speculate whatever I want.

 

I disagree with your opinion that "In general, no one can dispute the fact that Ralph Wilson is one of the most incomptent (sic) and ineffectual owners in the league" but you are entitled to it.

Your opinion is as valid as mine.

 

A brother of mine told me it is not good to hate.

 

rockpile

 

I don't hate Ralph. Why do you make that assumption? If you think that under Ralph's ownershp the Bills are a very well run organization then your standards are very different from mine. If you can't make the judgment that the current owner is incompetent and ineffectual based on the team's longterm record then on what basis do you make a judgment on the caliber of his ownership?

[Hplarrm]

He is the owner. That gives him the right to do what he wants.

 

The fact he is the owner gives him the ability to do whatever he wants but not the RIGHT.

 

The entire free market system is based on the idea that good salesmen are not inordinately hindered by the government in making the sale. However, 50% of all companies go out of business within their first 5 years of incorporation specifically because they do not have a RIGHT to do whatever they want. The market gives abilities if you earn them but gives no one a RIGHT to succeed. It amazes me how in the entitlement culture people believe they have a RIGHT to do whatever they want.

 

 

He does not need to care what I think, although it would be nice to think that in a general way he cares.

 

 

If he decides to not care what the customer wants odds are that he will be out of business soon. The owners do not drive the economy, consumers drive the economy. This is where the old saying the customer is always right comes from. Those who forget this sooner or later end up without customers.

 

 

He does not owe me the details of his will just because I am a loyal fan of his football team (since 1964). From my admittedly franchise marketing ignorant position, I could speculate that publishing future business intentions for his properties could compromise the value of those assets to his survivors. I could speculate whatever I want.

 

 

 

I agree he does not owe you anything beyond him surviving or not based on him continuing to give the customer what they want.

 

However, in our free market based society, we value the individual. Merely because of the accumulation of old capital (often unearned and merely passed from one generation to he next who did nothing beside being lucky to get it) the rights on individuals are not allowed to be trampled in our society.

 

The NFL was forced by the decert in the 1980s by the courts protecting individuals to realize they needed the union to represent the players in order to ignore the rights of individuals through exercises like the draft.

 

The draft is basically a decision by employers to divide up and allocate individuals and force them to negotiate with one and only one team if they want to play NFL football. The plaintiffs in the Brady et al lawsuit have proposed as a remedy for these individuals that the NFL be forced to play by free market rules and negotiate with individual players for the best deal the market allows.

 

What the NFLPA is arguing that since the owners basically begged the NFLPA not to decertify after the mid 80s lockout so that it could restrain individual rights through mechanisms like the draft that this essentially made the players a partner with the NFL in colluding against the rights of college players.

 

You as fan do have zero rights to the details. However, the NFLPA maintains that as a court approved partner in the collusion denying the ability of individuals to pursue the free market should as partners see the books.

 

The NFL actually took a lower level of income than was offered to instead get lock-out insurance. The NFLPA is arguing that if the NFL is not willing to treat the players as a partner, that is fine and is their ability. However, they should not expect the NFLPA to collude in denying individuals their ability to participate in a free market unless they treat the NFLPA honestly an as a partner.

 

This whole fight is about whether one supports the free market (in which case one must support the Brady et al. ca;; for free market negotiation,

 

or one can support the currently negotiated CBA (at least until the owners exercised their contractual right to opt out) which offered up a not unreasonable middle ground (at least according to Paul Tagliaboo-boo and 30 of 32 o owners at the time) where yes the NFLPA agreed to join the NFL in restricting the rights of individuals to pursue the free market but in exchange the players certified rep got 60.5% of the total receipts,

 

or one can support the NFL owners position which essentially orders the NFLPA to represent the players and to collude with the owners to restrain individuals from operating in a free market by allocating them in a draft to one and only one team

 

(even worse, the NFL and NFLPA collude to bar adults 18-21 to sign contracts to play in the NFL.

 

It amazes me that an allegedly conservative appeals court has overturned a court of fact ruling which recognized that the NFL is actively ignoring the rights of individuals to negotiate in a free market.

I disagree with your opinion that "In general, no one can dispute the fact that Ralph Wilson is one of the most incompetent (sic) and ineffectual owners in the league" but you are entitled to it.

Your opinion is as valid as mine.

 

 

 

However, his opinion is actually supported by the fact that the Bills have failed to even qualify for the playoffs for over a decade. Blame Polian, Butler, TD, Marv, Wade Phillips,Mularkey or whomever you want, but the simple fact is only one man has had his hands of the throttle this whole time.

 

Even if you want to blame these others, they are only responsible for part of this record of failures and who hired all these idiots in the first place.

 

You are both entitled to an opinion but his is based on measureable facts and yours is demonstrably wrong.

[K-9]

I actually have played with a few ideas at my usual nauseating length while I am half listening to conference calls waiting for my turn to talk. I have presented these as the players following a logical step after they grasped victory from the jaws of defeat after the owners kicked the butt of the old AFL-CIO style NFLPA in the mid 80s lockout.

 

There was never a lockout in the 80s. The players chose to strike in '82 and '87. Not a small difference.

 

The traditional union approach in fact was beaten so badly by the NFL owners that the players were willing to consider and ultimately be convinced that the decert strategy was the way to go.

 

In the face of this strategy, the NFL team owners ran kicking and screaming to demand that the union come back and agree to the CBA. The first go-round with this resulted in a salary cap which delivered far more dollars to the players than was ever imagined. It did this by in essence making the players partners with the NFL team owners. With the development of labor peace, the TV networks proved willing to part with billions of dollars in order to sell commercials for even more money to advertisers anxious to put their ads in front of the many eyeballs interested in the NFL.

 

Partners in essence is a far cry from the legal use of the word. The fact the players aren't partners in the legal sense makes it easy for the owners to go on without them if they should ever choose to do.

 

In the last CBA renegotiation, Gene Upshaw was able to simply demand that the cap would be determined by total gross revenues rather than a designate gross. Further, he stated that the player share of the cap needed to start with a 6.

 

60.5% ended up being the final calculation of players share and arguably as they command well over 50% of the gross take the players became not only partners but majority partners in this enterprise.

 

The MFLPA has remade the NFL but it appears to me that they are actually going to faint of heart and not take a new approach which essentially dispenses with the current team owners as they add little of value to the final product which cannot be more economically efficently replaced.

 

I have dubbed this new creation the NewFL.

 

There are several potential sources of capital for a new effort:

 

1. The TV Networks- They are in fact the current major source of cash for the league. The NFL usually follows the cash and I only wish there was strong enough leadership to organize directing this cash more directly to the players and take the NFL owners who really are just a middleman adding little to the product which cannot be simply (conceptually that is though not easily in reality) be a more economically efficient source of capital.

 

Which networks? The networks currently contracted to pay the league? The networks that command the big advertising dollars and will have paid the league over $20 billion through 2011 and 2013 (ESPN)? ABC is the ONLY major candidate out there and they are poised to once again make the NFL a loss leader for them when the next bids go out to the networks.

 

2. Municipalities- These are tough times so generating capital for what many see as a luxury is likely tough politically to do. Nevertheless, municipalities provide a potential source of capital which actually is economically superior to the private market in a number of ways which is not just mere opinion but is measurable in terms of dollars and cents

 

a. Municipalities get better rates for loans than the private sector. Municipalities not only can borrow at a cheaper rate thant private sector efforts, but there is also the ability to self generate capital by selling bonds at a tax-free rate.

 

b. Municipalities do not need to turn a profit on their investments providing a 5-10% advantage (or more depending on how much money the private sector investment wants to and can make

 

In general the model for capitalizing a project would be something like the authority which was envisioned for building a new football stadium for the Jets.

 

What municipalities would be good candidates to provide viable facilities and the political will needed to float these bonds, etc.?

 

3. New owners- One of the side effects of the massive shift in funding government from the days not too long ago when tax rates were higher (despite the whining of forces like the Tea Party about government sucking money from the private sector, the marginal tax rate used to be 70% on high earners and now the real rate is below 20% on the relatively low taxes on the rich modern regime. It is likely that new owners would be just as stupid as the current team owners, but a change would be good. Even in a small market like Buffalo there are several options for "new" owners like Pegula, Golisano, the Jacobs family and even a conglomerate led by Jim Kelly who might be enticed to replace the current economic drag which scrapes money off of football while adding little which cannot be replaced.

 

Like I said earlier this has been tried twice in my lifetime by people far better equipped financially and politically than the current players. Pegula, Golisano, and Jacobs are great names but do you honestly think they'd be willing to gamble hundreds of millions on start-up costs to get a fledgling league off the ground and be able to sustain it until it becomes viable while competing against the very league that saw very successful businessmen lose their shirts in the WFL and USFL?

 

4.. The players themselves- one of the huge changes embodied in the CBA change is the creation of a ton of wealthy players. Again it would take smart leadership and unfortunately Upshaw is dead, but the players who now are operating as Brady, et al could front downpayments and look to large capital sources such as banks to provide the cashflow capital needed for the NewFL.

 

As big a disparity as there is between the wealth of the current owners and players, the disparity between the top stars and the rank and file players in the NFL is just as stark. There aren't enough of them to support the start-up costs required on a venture of this magnitude. What lending institutions are going to underwrite these hundreds of millions of dollars? Brady and Manning earning money in the NFL is one thing. Them risking it all on a speculative venture is quite another.

 

5. Something I have not thought of. Even in this economy, cash is always an issue but is not the problem in this society.

 

In addition, in terms of management structures rather than the cult of personality which brings us the Jerry Jones, the Dan Snyders and the Art Modells, it is clear from the GB Packer example that it is possible to manage a team which is successful both on and off the field without an owner.

 

The Packers very much have an owner in the stockholders that invest in them and in the board that hires and fires coaches and GMs. While public ownership is interesting I'm not sure this new league of yours would attract the number of investors required given the problems with getting this new league to a point of viability let alone in a position to provide dividends to investors.

 

I do doubt that unfortunately this will not happen. Though the players had the leadership in the 80s and 90s under Gene Upshaw to remake the league, I do not see that level of determination among the players today. Actually, though I think that the current NFL owners have routinely demonstrated they can be beaten in a economic fight, the difficulty for the players is that they have grown so fat and happy living off the huge changes in the game the last 20 years, I do not think they have the discipline to fine tune an attack on the owners. The owners appear to be so full of themselves and stupid that the players run the risk of actually killing the current owners rather than weakening them.

 

I doubt this happens as well. While the owners have shown they can be forced to make concessions that's a far cry from being beaten. They aren't stupid as they've seen the wisdom in making the changes necessary to expand the growth of the game. They've made it the most lucrative sports venue in America after all.

 

However, I am quite certain that if a talented tenth of the players had the balls to do it they could essentially replace the current owners.

 

If this happened we would have football now.

 

It would take far more than a talented tenth of the players. And if they started tomorrow it would take them a while to ramp up. But even if all the players suddenly defected and the NFL decided not to sue them for breach of contract, the NFL would hold another draft, sign free agents, and kick-off in the fall. They'd take in their billions and nobody would miss the current players after awhile if at all.

 

GO BILLS!!!

[JohnC]

However, his opinion is actually supported by the fact that the Bills have failed to even qualify for the playoffs for over a decade. Blame Polian, Butler, TD, Marv, Wade Phillips,Mularkey or whomever you want, but the simple fact is only one man has had his hands of the throttle this whole time.

 

Even if you want to blame these others, they are only responsible for part of this record of failures and who hired all these idiots in the first place.

 

You are both entitled to an opinion but his is based on measureable facts and yours is demonstrably wrong.

 

For those people who believe Ralph is a competent and effective owner tell me what your definition is of an incompetent and ineffective owner? I would be very interested to know. If it's not about the record then what is it about?

[Hplarrm]

There was never a lockout in the 80s. The players chose to strike in '82 and '87. Not a small difference.

 

Its long enough ago that my recollection of these halcyon days is clouded at best. My remembrance of this time was that the players were threatening to strike after the regular season was concluded which meant that they would have collected the lionshare of their money but the owners would not have collected the lionshare of their money which was tied to the heavily viewed playoffs. My memory (again faded) was that the owners launched a job action which allowed them to hire "replacement players". The NFLPA whose members were not getting paid at all took about three weeks to fold. It was in light of this historic demolition of the Ed Garvey led NFLPA which was demanding 52% of receipts as their opening bid that what I call the talented tenth (maybe it was a 5% or maybe 20% of NFL players got their fellow players to try the decert strategy which amazingly quickly got the owners to beg the NFLPA to comeback and agree to a CBA which provided as much as 70%+ of the designated gross.

 

Thats my general recollection of what happened though who locked out whom or what or struck strikes me as semantics.

 

 

Partners in essence is a far cry from the legal use of the word. The fact the players aren't partners in the legal sense makes it easy for the owners to go on without them if they should ever choose to do.

 

I agree which is why I used the in essence caveat. However, even though the legal language will be debated in court, I still think that in the real world this why the comparisons to what the owners of the steel plant around the corner allows its workers to see and what the NFL shares with its defacto partners the NFLPA are two different things.

 

Under America's market system, no power be it government or the wealthy are allowed to abridge the rights of the individual to generally live in a free market system.

 

The NFL and NFLPAs are in essence partner because in order to have a profitable and working pro football system the NFL uses a draft. The courts have protected the ability of individuals to live where they want and cut the best financial deal the can by saying that the NFL can only abridge individual rights by colluding together and having a draft IF the rules of the draft and of the game as a whole are negotiated between a certified bargaining agent of the players.

 

This is why the decert threat is so powerful. If the NFLPA decerts itself then the courts have generally said that a draft represents an unfair infringment on the the rights of the individual.

 

The NFLPA is not a traditional trade union (there is no draft and then assignment of auto or steel workers and it is silly to claim that because steelworkers have no right to demand to see Republic Steel's books then NFLPA members have no right.

 

NFLPA members demand to see the books because the NFL has time and again shown that rather than protecting the rights of workers they strategize and make deals to undercut them.

 

If the NFL wants to force individuals to negotiate with one and only one team and if the NFL wants to assign a place to live to athletes then it better work like a partner with the certified rep of the players. If the NFL does not want to be honest like one would be with a partner that is fine also but Brady et al. insist on having s true free market.

 

 

Which networks? The networks currently contracted to pay the league? The networks that command the big advertising dollars and will have paid the league over $20 billion through 2011 and 2013 (ESPN)? ABC is the ONLY major candidate out there and they are poised to once again make the NFL a loss leader for them when the next bids go out to the networks.

 

Its unclear, but part of the NFLPA leverage is the lack of clarity which comes with any new major attempt. My guess is that if the NFLPA were to attempt to start NewFL and did this by building teams around Brady et al that you would see the networks deal with the NFL contracts in a manner appropriate to the networks making profits. Specifically, my GUESS is that the failure of the NFL to provide a product due to the current lockout would be utilized by the networks to get away from the old contracts as quickly as they could. Even if the NFL used the lock-out insurance or old language to try to enforce the old deals, the house of cards of the NFL based on the significant indebtedness of many teams due to stadiums being built or basic operations is going to force the NFL to fold quickly as they did in the last two CBA negotiations.

 

2

What municipalities would be good candidates to provide viable facilities and the political will needed to float these bonds, etc.?

 

Enough to form a NewFL around or simply make the threat which causes the current NFL teams to fold like they did in the last two CBA negotiations.

 

3.

Like I said earlier this has been tried twice in my lifetime by people far better equipped financially and politically than the current players. Pegula, Golisano, and Jacobs are great names but do you honestly think they'd be willing to gamble hundreds of millions on start-up costs to get a fledgling league off the ground and be able to sustain it until it becomes viable while competing against the very league that saw very successful businessmen lose their shirts in the WFL and USFL?

 

As I said, you do not need this to work, you merely need to offer the threat. My guess is that Pegula, Golisano, Jacobs or whomever are more credible options than the Donald Trumps of the world and that actually one could find a half dozen Donald Trump wannabees to talk a good game in addition to these three other more credible alternatives.

 

 

4..

 

As big a disparity as there is between the wealth of the current owners and players, the disparity between the top stars and the rank and file players in the NFL is just as stark. There aren't enough of them to support the start-up costs required on a venture of this magnitude. What lending institutions are going to underwrite these hundreds of millions of dollars? Brady and Manning earning money in the NFL is one thing. Them risking it all on a speculative venture is quite another.

Its the golden rule. He who has the gold rules. The disparity between the wealth of Brady et al and the standard player is actually a good argument for why this could happen rather than why it won't.

 

 

5.

The Packers very much have an owner in the stockholders that invest in them and in the board that hires and fires coaches and GMs. While public ownership is interesting I'm not sure this new league of yours would attract the number of investors required given the problems with getting this new league to a point of viability let alone in a position to provide dividends to investors.

 

Again, I offer this not as a model for how things must be but as a model that there is a working alternative to the current owner cult of personality.

 

Overall, the reason why the owners folded like a badly built home in a tornado in the last CBA renegotiation is that ultimately the owners do not want a free market system and they need their PARTNERS in the NFLPA if they are going to have the current system which undercuts individual rights.

 

If the NFLPA hangs tough and puts out free market alternatives they can beat the crap out of the current owners.

[DrDawkinstein]

"Thank You" Ralph for keeping the team in Buffalo.

 

"Thank You" for not knowing how to field a winning team, after 50+ years of being in the business.

 

"Thank You" for making the bottom-line a priority over winning.

 

"Thank You" for not seeing to it that the Bills will stay in Buffalo after you try to take the team to the grave with you.

 

You're Welcome that we (generations of struggling Buffalonians) helped turn your $25,000 investment into a Billion Dollar asset, and future payout to your family.

[BillsfaninFl]

Ralph Wilson is not the devil. Nor is he devoted to the fans in Buffalo.

 

He is simply a guy who plunked down 25 grand in a wise investment. Buffalo wasn't his first choice, and he probably wouldn't have taken it second if he knew that it would be a declining population with less industry over the next five decades. So forget about claiming he has any loyalty to western New York.

 

The reality is that he may not have moved the team away because there was no juicy morsel out there just waiting to be picked off the vine. Indianapolis was a good move for the Baltimore Colts. Model then took the leftovers in Baltimore because he was fed up with trying (unsuccessfully) to fleece the Cleveland politicians.

 

So what football paradise was out there in recent years? Certainly not Los Angeles. Back when the Raiders ownership moved there (after the Rams bolted), they learned the hard way that a big population doesn't necessarily mean a huge pricey stadium with filled seats and an adoring local government. It wasn't cheap to move back to Oakland. Want evidence? Since then, the expansion teams were placed in "lesser" cities. Yes, the NFL wants a team in L.A., but they can't seem to lure a sucker to fund it. Toronto is the same as L.A., in that it is not a city filled with passionate NFL fans.

 

So it is questionable that any NFL team would seriously consider the financial risk of moving in recent years. And none have. Wilson is a rich man who made good decisions in his 40s and has been conservatively tending his investments ever since. He has not been a risk-taker for quite a while. That's the real reason why the Bills are still in Buffalo.

[Rico]

Ralph said it himself.

ha! you "suspect..."

 

yeah everything bad is jerry sullivan's fault. jerry sullivan is out to get the bills. unbelievable how having honest opinions about our mess of a team makes you the permanent bad guy among pollyanna buffalo fans.

 

ralph said himself in front of dozens and cameras and microphones that he didn't understand it. that (unfairly) made him a laughingstock, but he said it himself, not jerry Sullivan.

 

Thanks for keeping it real.

[Spiderweb]

He is the owner. That gives him the right to do what he wants.

 

He does not need to care what I think, although it would be nice to think that in a general way he cares.

 

He does not owe me the details of his will just because I am a loyal fan of his football team (since 1964). From my admittedly franchise marketing ignorant position, I could speculate that publishing future business intentions for his properties could compromise the value of those assets to his survivors. I could speculate whatever I want.

 

I disagree with your opinion that "In general, no one can dispute the fact that Ralph Wilson is one of the most incomptent (sic) and ineffectual owners in the league" but you are entitled to it.

Your opinion is as valid as mine.

 

A brother of mine told me it is not good to hate.

 

rockpile

 

[Doc]

"Thank You" Ralph for keeping the team in Buffalo.

 

"Thank You" for not knowing how to field a winning team, after 50+ years of being in the business.

 

"Thank You" for making the bottom-line a priority over winning.

 

"Thank You" for not seeing to it that the Bills will stay in Buffalo after you try to take the team to the grave with you.

 

You're Welcome that we (generations of struggling Buffalonians) helped turn your $25,000 investment into a Billion Dollar asset, and future payout to your family.

Without the first sentence, the rest all melts away. Which leads to the question: would you rather Buffalo had no team, or the Bills as they stand today?

Ralph Wilson is not the devil. Nor is he devoted to the fans in Buffalo.

 

He is simply a guy who plunked down 25 grand in a wise investment. Buffalo wasn't his first choice, and he probably wouldn't have taken it second if he knew that it would be a declining population with less industry over the next five decades. So forget about claiming he has any loyalty to western New York.

 

The reality is that he may not have moved the team away because there was no juicy morsel out there just waiting to be picked off the vine. Indianapolis was a good move for the Baltimore Colts. Model then took the leftovers in Baltimore because he was fed up with trying (unsuccessfully) to fleece the Cleveland politicians.

 

So what football paradise was out there in recent years? Certainly not Los Angeles. Back when the Raiders ownership moved there (after the Rams bolted), they learned the hard way that a big population doesn't necessarily mean a huge pricey stadium with filled seats and an adoring local government. It wasn't cheap to move back to Oakland. Want evidence? Since then, the expansion teams were placed in "lesser" cities. Yes, the NFL wants a team in L.A., but they can't seem to lure a sucker to fund it. Toronto is the same as L.A., in that it is not a city filled with passionate NFL fans.

 

So it is questionable that any NFL team would seriously consider the financial risk of moving in recent years. And none have. Wilson is a rich man who made good decisions in his 40s and has been conservatively tending his investments ever since. He has not been a risk-taker for quite a while. That's the real reason why the Bills are still in Buffalo.

It's not like he could have only chose one place to put the team. Several teams have moved from better markets than Buffalo in the past 30 years and Ralph had a crack at any of them, and the population and economy has been declining for at least that long. He's also voted "no" on every team relocation. And if Buffalo were to have lost the Bills, you can bet the NFL wouldn't have granted them an expansion team.

[JohnC]

Overall, the reason why the owners folded like a badly built home in a tornado in the last CBA renegotiation is that ultimately the owners do not want a free market system and they need their PARTNERS in the NFLPA if they are going to have the current system which undercuts individual rights.

 

If the NFLPA hangs tough and puts out free market alternatives they can beat the crap out of the current owners.

 

The system as it is presently constituted works for both sides of the table, owners and players. The players will never opt out of the current system to create their own business because as it stands the system works exceptionally well for them.

 

The players are in the process of negotiating a deal with the owners. They have little genuine interest in a protracted legal battle (even if in the long run the legal argument (anti-trust issue) favors them in an opt out strategy.)

 

From an academic legal argument sense you might have a solid basis for your view that the players can form their own business model without the owners. In the real world of business and cash in hand it makes absolutely no sense.

 

Most of the legal moves the players have instituted relate more to the issue of leverage in negotiations than it does to the legal merits. The same process and reasoning applies to the owners in their lockout strategy. Again, it comes down to maneuvering to get more leverage in the negotiations.

 

The bottom line is a deal is going to get done. There is not going to be a different paradigm for this already lucrative business model. There is absolutely no chance that your strongly held view on this issue is ever going to materialize.

[BillsfaninFl]

Without the first sentence, the rest all melts away. Which leads to the question: would you rather Buffalo had no team, or the Bills as they stand today?

 

It's not like he could have only chose one place to put the team. Several teams have moved from better markets than Buffalo in the past 30 years and Ralph had a crack at any of them, and the population and economy has been declining for at least that long. He's also voted "no" on every team relocation. And if Buffalo were to have lost the Bills, you can bet the NFL wouldn't have granted them an expansion team.

 

What is the most recent move you remember? And how is my statement about new franchises going to lesser cities incorrect? State your proof.

 

What financial moves has Ralph made in the last 30 years? He has not sold, bought or reorganized any of his major investments in that time according to my research.

 

However, I agree with your last statement. If Buffalo loses trhe Bills, it is unlikely that they would get another NFL team.

Edited June 22, 2011 by BillsfaninFl

[Doc]

What is the most recent move you remember? And how is my statement about new franchises going to lesser cities incorrect? State your proof.

 

What financial moves has Ralph made in the last 30 years? He has not sold, bought or reorganized any of his major investments in that time according to my research.

 

However, I agree with your last statement. If Buffalo loses trhe Bills, it is unlikely that they would get another NFL team.

Not sure what you're asking, but again, there have been several (not lesser, greater) cities than Buffalo that have received expansion/relocation teams that Ralph could have moved the team to, but hasn't. And again, he's voted "no" to every relocation. So he has shown loyalty to WNY. As for financial moves, I don't know what moves he's made, or what relevance it has to the discussion.

[rockpile]

I don't hate Ralph. Why do you make that assumption? If you think that under Ralph's ownershp the Bills are a very well run organization then your standards are very different from mine. If you can't make the judgment that the current owner is incompetent and ineffectual based on the team's longterm record then on what basis do you make a judgment on the caliber of his ownership?

 

John, the "hate" remark was in agreement with your statement " It is very unfair to categorize people who state the obvious about the caliber of ownership that they should be labled as "haters". Sorry if you read that as a personal shot (poor wording on my part). I do not think you hate RW. My brother, R.Rich always tells me it is not good to hate.

 

Also, I do not endorse or support anything about the quality or competency of RW as an owner. I just was saying he does not have to tell US squat about his plans. As the owner he can do whatever he wants.

 

A while ago, I started a thread that asked the question: what has RW done for Buffalo besides keep the Bills here? It was a football question in the football forum, and I was pummeled by the list of philanthropic things he has done for Buffalo.

 

No one wanted to address my question from a FOOTBALL and CHAMPIONSHIP angle. I think it was about three or four games into the 2010 season.

 

peace,

rockpile

[billsfreak]

Without the first sentence, the rest all melts away. Which leads to the question: would you rather Buffalo had no team, or the Bills as they stand today?

 

That is a really tough question. Of course we want the Bills in Buffalo, but think of it this way. Would you rather have a nice sports car in your driveway, that you dump tons of money into it, but it hardly if ever runs or would you just rather not have a car at all?