Bucky Gleason Leaving TBN After Requesting a Buyout - Jerry Sullivan and Now Tim Graham Out

[GunnerBill]

4 hours ago, 26CornerBlitz said:

 

 

And the fact you couldn't write Jerry..... other than that yea.... you will be missed. 

[IDBillzFan]

2 minutes ago, BobChalmers said:

Sully was a TROLL, not a journalist or even a legitimate columnist.

 

By which I mean HE DIDN'T BELIEVE THE BS HE WAS SPOUTING - he was just (constantly) trying to score more clicks by pissing people off - it didn't even matter to him if he contradicted himself within the same column.

 

It works, btw - up to a point - eventually as he was figured out, all he was doing was dragging down the reputation of the whole paper. 

 

Writers like Sully always kind of remind me of Shooter McGavin in "Happy Gilmore." In their prime, they were revered because there were not a lot of options. But when there ARE other options, they sometimes find themselves, out of desperation, trying to figure out how to hit a golf ball with a hockey stick.

 

I certainly remember the anticipation of sitting down with my newspaper because it was my only place to read the news. Hell, the arrival of "Shout!" damn near had me shut out everyone while I sat in my back yard reading it cover to cover.

 

 

When the internet opened portals to vast information at any time, some adapted and others, like Sullivan, were too late to respond and went after the low-hanging fruit: fans who love to be angry. Which is a lot like being alone in the woods with a golf ball and hockey stick.

 

 

[zonabb]

4 hours ago, Cheektowaga Chad said:

Honestly its got to be a tough job to do when the teams you cover lose and lose a lot

Then quit. I never, ever understand this mentality, whether talking about Sullivan or any person who has become disgruntled with their job. If you're so prideful, quit and take a job somewhere else. If you can of course. Nothing says you have no skills more than sticking around a job being miserable about it. Skilled people with confidence GTFO.

 

I have always maintained that Sullivan was a jealous, miserable curmudgeon because he was not writing at a top market paper. It wasn't that the teams sucked, he could have been stuck covering bad teams in a big market. But as a New Englander, he longed for the big banner newspaper and never got there. He was never good enough, even if you can ID a time you'd call his prime. He longer to write for the Boston Globe or Herald. But he sat in this tiny one-newspaper market and covered some bad teams, making him more miserable. He got divorced along the way, got crankier, his work was roundly dismissed by local sports fan. For me it was never about the criticism, for me it was about the tone and the condescension toward fans in this city he's not from. 

 

I ran into him once outside the media entrance of a stadium while we were waiting to get in. Late 1990s maybe. We bitched and complained the whole time that he wasn't being allowed in yet. He was arrogant and a loudmouth about it. And it stuck with me that this guy covers sports for a living and does so by the grace of teams giving him free access to their press boxes and free food/snacks for every game and this miserable SOB couldn't see the forest for the trees. Could anyone be more of an ungrateful crank doing a joke that's really frivolous and should be fun? 

 

Good riddance. Crawl back to NE and lurk in the shadows of some real columnists you could only dream would let you sharpen their pencils for them. Bucky I feel bad for, local guy, albeit turned into a crank. But Sullivan can GFH right into the unemployment line.

 

 

 

 

[Peter]

There were at least two remarkable things about Sully's tweet:

 

1) TBN realized that Sully was bad for business and told him so;

 

2) Sully tried to portray himself as a martyr for the readers.

 

Also, number 1 undermines 2 and it is not surprising that Sully's narcissism would lead him to believe that he is a martyr. 

 

The sad thing is that Sully is perfectly capable of writing great columns when he is not so filled with snark and condescension.  As examples, I would refer you to his columns about the Buffalo girl who died in the balloon accident in Virginia and those that he wrote regarding the Sochi winter Olympics.

 

Over the years, Sully, Bucky, and Harrington have become more and more snarky and very quick to tweet and write that someone should be fired, cut, drawn and quartered etc . . . and they typically have done so with the maximum amount of snark/sarcasm.  

 

Maybe . . . just maybe . . . after all that has happened with the Buffalo News, these guys will take a different and more measured (less snarky) approach to judging others.

 

Just my two cents.

[Kelly the Dog]

I was not a big fan of Sully personally. But the idea that he was this bitter curmudgeon is probably far from true. I know a bunch of writers in Buffalo to varying degrees and they all like him. They all say he's a funny guy and fun to drink with. Almost every younger writer at the News said he was very helpful as a mentor.

 

IMO, he just developed this persona for himself over many years, it worked for quite some time whether people loved or hated him, and then it stopped working and he wasn't able to change, adapt or write himself out of it. 

[bbb]

4 hours ago, PromoTheRobot said:

 

 

Sully and Bucky seemed to appoint themselves the deciders for WNY. From day one they had the knives out for the Pegulas. (From the day Terry visited the Buffalo News to introduce himself.) I never understood that.

 

Exactly, and I never understood it, either.

 

A few months ago, I was listening to the Tim Graham Show and they were talking about UB hoops and whether Buffalo sports fans will get behind them now.  And, Sully said - I don't have much regard for Buffalo sports fans.............Graham said Well, I don't think they have much regard for you, and let's go to a break.  That line was actually funny, but Sully himself was not joking. 

[JohnC]

1 hour ago, dneveu said:

I thought Tyler Dunne was pretty good but he never really got a chance to write more than a few articles before he left after a year of being basically an intern.  He seemed to have an interesting writing style, and actually wanted to write a feature about getting to know a player (he wrote the sammy article where sammy came off selfish), not just hot takes about who to fire and why everything's on fire.  His opinion's didn't come off as hating the actual team he covered.

 

The Sammy article totally got taken out of context, and Sammy seemed to blame Tyler on twitter which wasn't fair when its guys like Rodak quoting your article and essentially claiming it as their own.  

 

They both came off that they didn't like the teams that they covered, and didn't seem to cover what was actually happening on the field/ice, so much as arguing about what what doug whaley meant when he said this and when he fired rex, or whatever.  We caught you in a lie! We got you! - so what? 

 

None of it seemed to have anything to do with the actual players, the actual games, etc.  

Sullivan covered two teams that were generationally bad. Of course he was more of a scathing critic than a giddy cheerleader. When franchises are so bad for so long in a cap system which is supposed to promote parity did you expect him to extol the competencies of those running the respective franchises? Acid Jerry has covered a lot of sports for a long time.  He knows what a well run organization looks like, and he has been at the doorstep of franchises that were not only badly run but were weirdly run. With the Bills he watched the out of touch owner hire Levy, Brandon (as a short term rescue GM) and Nix followed by Whaley as GMs. You don't think that type of consecutive hires wouldn't make you a cynical observer? Then the new owner came into town and with a grand flourish he watched Rex being hired. Does anyone expect him or any credible reporter to give an opinion that this new ownership was bringing in a breath of fresh air and putting this bedraggled franchise on the right track?  

 

Where I agree with some critics of Sullivan was that he was not much a fan of pro football and hockey. His favorite sports were basketball and baseball. He seemed to be more animated when discussing his favored sports over his less favored sports. 

 

Where I give him credit compared to some of the other toads in the media was that he was not a fawning reporter. He was not afraid to stand up and be the critic in the room. Did he go too far or get too tiresome at that role? I honestly have to say yes. But in general, I liked him because he was willing not only to write the critical column but he was willing to stand up in the room, face to face, and ask his hard nosed questions. Many people are uncomfortable with that contrary display while I am not.  

[bbb]

3 minutes ago, JohnC said:

Sullivan covered two teams that were generationally bad.

 

He was negative since Day One.  I remember talking to my father about how negative this Sullivan guy is.  My father got Alzheimer's in 1992 and we wouldn't have had that conversation after that. 

[JohnC]

1 minute ago, bbb said:

 

He was negative since Day One.  I remember talking to my father about how negative this Sullivan guy is.  My father got Alzheimer's in 1992 and we wouldn't have had that conversation after that. 

During the major period of time when he covered the Bills the team was not only bad but poorly run. You don't have to be a sports columnist to recognize that. 

[Peter]

4 hours ago, PromoTheRobot said:

 

 

Sully and Bucky seemed to appoint themselves the deciders for WNY. From day one they had the knives out for the Pegulas. (From the day Terry visited the Buffalo News to introduce himself.) I never understood that.

 

I never understood their disdain for the Pegulas as well. Harrington has displayed the same condescension toward them.

 

I grew up in Buffalo and spent most of my adult life worried that the Bills were going to move elsewhere.  The Pegulas appeared out of freaking nowhere, bought the Sabres, saved the Bills from relocation forever, and transformed downtown.

 

And yet, these three guys from the Buffalo News took every seeming opportunity to gratuitously criticize them.

 

Let's not forget that Sully wrote an article attempting to claim that Terry was lucky to have his money and that he was a racist.  Bucky wrote an article (after LaFontaine left the Sabres) that Kim basically should not be responsible for anything more serious than choosing the color of the drapes.  Harrington essentially echoed this after Brandon left and Kim became president.

 

I dare say these guys became unglued and overstayed their welcome.

[Hapless Bills Fan]

2 hours ago, SDS said:

 I may be off base on this, but what is the typical shelf life of a specific reporter in a market? It seems to me that if you have been writing for 29 years in the same market you should probably be a rockstar revered journalist. I am not sure the two in question met that level of esteem. With their tenure either you are a local treasure or your voice probably needs to be refreshed. 

 

It's a fair point that anyone who is doing the same job for 29-30 yearas can get stale and become RIP (retired in place)

[Peter]

2 minutes ago, JohnC said:

During the major period of time when he covered the Bills the team was not only bad but poorly run. You don't have to be a sports columnist to recognize that. 

 

One of the first articles that I remember reading that Sully wrote was a "classic Sully" hit job on Bruce Smith.  The Bills happened to be pretty darn good then.

[Kelly the Dog]

1 minute ago, JohnC said:

During the major period of time when he covered the Bills the team was not only bad but poorly run. You don't have to be a sports columnist to recognize that. 

True in theory. But if he started out negative (i don't recall either way) then you cannot say that his negativity had anything to do with the performance of the teams.

[oldmanfan]

Columnists are paid to give opinions.  Such opinions are often critical.  Sullivan did, Gleason did.  And both were.  But there are two reasons I did not care for either:

 

1.  Writing style:  one can be critical without resorting to juvenile insults.  Both of these guys were snarky just because they thought it was somehow clever.  It wasn't; it was just juvenile.  That's not good writing, it was just for shock value.  Fielder was as critical of the Bills and Sabres as anyone, but did so without resorting to such antics.  Today Bob Kravitz here in Indy can tear the hide off of the Colts and Pacers but in a professional and articulate manner.

 

2.  Consistency:  others have commented on this but each would blast the teams for not doing X, but when they did X all of a sudden that was bad and they should have done Y.  Y of course would have been what the team did originally.  Too often they would be critical just to be critical and when proven wrong would never go back and admit so.  Gleason and the McCoy bar thing is an example.

 

I of course hope they find jobs; no reason to wish I'll for them.  But I doubt it will be writing; maybe for Bucky and less likely for Sullivan.  I imagine they'll be talking heads somewhere so they can scream all they want.

[Peter]

1 minute ago, oldmanfan said:

Columnists are paid to give opinions.  Such opinions are often critical.  Sullivan did, Gleason did.  And both were.  But there are two reasons I did not care for either:

 

1.  Writing style:  one can be critical without resorting to juvenile insults.  Both of these guys were snarky just because they thought it was somehow clever.  It wasn't; it was just juvenile.  That's not good writing, it was just for shock value.  Fielder was as critical of the Bills and Sabres as anyone, but did so without resorting to such antics.  Today Bob Kravitz here in Indy can tear the hide off of the Colts and Pacers but in a professional and articulate manner.

 

2.  Consistency:  others have commented on this but each would blast the teams for not doing X, but when they did X all of a sudden that was bad and they should have done Y.  Y of course would have been what the team did originally.  Too often they would be critical just to be critical and when proven wrong would never go back and admit so.  Gleason and the McCoy bar thing is an example.

 

I of course hope they find jobs; no reason to wish I'll for them.  But I doubt it will be writing; maybe for Bucky and less likely for Sullivan.  I imagine they'll be talking heads somewhere so they can scream all they want.

 

That's fine.  We also are allowed to have opinions about them.  As it turns out, the Buffalo News (as Sully admitted) did not think that he was good for business.

 

As an aside, I always thought it was ironic that these men of "opinions" were so thin skinned.  Twitter exposed them for what they are. 

 

To paraphrase Chris Berman:  No one circles the wagons like Buffalo News sports writers when one of their own is criticized on social media.

[JohnC]

1 minute ago, Kelly the Dog said:

True in theory. But if he started out negative (i don't recall either way) then you cannot say that his negativity had anything to do with the performance of the teams.

The problem with covering the Bills and Sabres (to a lesser extent) is not only were they not good for an extended period of time but they were poorly run organizations. That's not theory---it was the reality of covering these teams. The teams that he often covered were pro teams that had little to no chance of being serious teams. Covering teams that were mostly out of realistic contention before the season even started has to influence one's attitude when covering the teams. 

[26CornerBlitz]

http://www.trendingbuffalo.com/life/heres-proof-bucky-gleason-is-full-of-****/

 

 

Remember this? 

 

Bucky Gleason, June 23, 2013:

Bucky Gleason in today’s Buffalo News:

Edited May 29, 2018 by 26CornerBlitz

[Kelly the Dog]

2 minutes ago, JohnC said:

The problem with covering the Bills and Sabres (to a lesser extent) is not only were they not good for an extended period of time but they were poorly run organizations. That's not theory---it was the reality of covering these teams. The teams that he often covered were pro teams that had little to no chance of being serious teams. Covering teams that were mostly out of realistic contention before the season even started has to influence one's attitude when covering the teams. 

Of course. But that is avoiding the discussion and seminal point of this specific debate. By saying, in a discussion of Jerry's negativism, that during the majority of Jerry's tenure the Bills and Sabres were poor teams and poorly run orgs, you are implying that those two facts were a large portion of the reason for his negativism. But if he was negative from the get-go, while the teams were not poor and not poorly run, that negates the poorness in your reasoning. 

[oldmanfan]

7 minutes ago, 26CornerBlitz said:

http://www.trendingbuffalo.com/life/heres-proof-bucky-gleason-is-full-of-****/

 

 

Remember this? 

 

Bucky Gleason, June 23, 2013:

Bucky Gleason in today’s Buffalo News:

This is the lack of consistency I refer to above

[Punching Bag]

40 minutes ago, Peter said:

Over the years, Sully, Bucky, and Harrington have become more and more snarky and very quick to tweet and write that someone should be fired, cut, drawn and quartered etc . . . and they typically have done so with the maximum amount of snark/sarcasm.  

 

He was right about someone should be fired, cut, drawn and quartered - them and their disciples.

There disciples are as bad as Coach Dickerson's were.