Archives for August 2009

‘”I wanted to go at them from every direction,” he said in “The Other League,” a 1970 book by Jack Horrigan and Mike Rathet that detailed the AFL’s 10-year history.’

‘”This is very cool. I’m excited to do a good job for him,” Berman said. “This is not about me. It’s his day. He deserves to have 20,000 fans stand up and cheer him.”‘

‘”When Stephanie was diagnosed, and I decided to stay at home with her, I remember going to the mailbox and there was a check for $10,000 made out to the Stephanie Spielman Fund for Breast Cancer Research from Ralph Wilson and the Bills. It was something I’ll never forget. He was one of the first to believe in what we were doing. Now we’ve raised more than $5 million."’

‘”I don’t believe, when you have a team in a city and you have very passionate fans, that you should move the team to a new city,” Wilson said. “And if you are going to move the team, the fans should know well in advance. I never got that far. … We always have had great support. That’s why I stayed.”‘

‘ The only original American Football League owner who kept his franchise in its original city since the AFL’s inception. … The only president in Buffalo Bills history. … Served on all major NFL committees during his tenure, including collective bargaining, revenue sharing, television contracts, the original AFL-NFL merger and realignment. … Chairman of Ralph C. Wilson Jr. Enterprises in Grosse Pointe Shores, Mich. … Family includes wife, Mary; daughters, Christy Wilson Hoffman and Edith Wilson. Another daughter, Linda Bogdan, was the NFL’s first and only female scout until her death in April.’

‘”(Wilson is) just a great guy. I met him when I was 9 years old,” Joe Horrigan said. “My dad went to New York to do PR for the AFL. We did that for 31⁄2 years, then went back to Buffalo. I was the team ballboy in ’68 and ’69. It was nepotism gone wild.”‘

‘”The attitude of the NFL then was very conservative,” said Alliance native Charlie King, who with his brother, Tony, became the first black siblings during the modern era to play professional football on the same team after Buffalo took Charlie in the 1965 redshirt draft and Tony in 1966. “The NFL wanted to run the ball. The AFL brought in quarterbacks to throw the ball. They ran reverses, used motion before the snap. The NFL was 3 yards and a cloud of dust. … It was great seeing the changes.”‘

‘The move comes as no surprise, since Goodell was the lone arbiter of the appeal and essentially reviewed his own verdict in sticking with the decision.’

‘The suspension lasts from September 5-28 and will cover the first three games of Buffalo’s 2009 regular season — including at New England, the home opener versus Tampa Bay and a home date with New Orleans. Lynch can participate in training camp and Buffalo’s preseason games before the suspension goes into effect.’

‘”I’m feeling a lot more comfortable now,” Fitzpatrick said. “I think it was good to get through the OTAs, digest the system a little bit, to have some off time to really go through the playbook and now coming out here with the reps I’m feeling a lot more comfortable.”‘

‘Lynch’s suspension begins on Sept. 5 and ends on Sept. 28, a day after the Bills play the New Orleans Saints in their third regular-season game.’

‘”It’s the league’s policy and we’re disappointed obviously,” said head coach Dick Jauron. “We’ll lose a real good football player for three games. Hopefully Marshawn will learn a great deal from it. He’s a guy that we have a lot of belief in and we really like this man on our team, but he’s paying a price.”‘

‘Asked why Buffalo was a better situation for him than Dallas, Owens fired back quickly. “This city has embraced me,” Owens said. “I’ve always said I never want to be somewhere I’m not wanted. Obviously that was the case in Dallas. To a lot of people this is not an ideal situation for me. But I’m here, and I’m making the most of it. I’m going to make the most of the situation.”‘

‘”It’s not the K-Gun,” said quarterbacks coach Alex Van Pelt, who worked in the K-Gun offense as a reserve signal caller behind Kelly in the mid-90’s. “It’s just something we decided to make a point of emphasis in our offense. It’s real easy to communicate in a huddle. It puts stress on an offense to communicate at the line of scrimmage, but it also stresses the defense to get a call in. So it’s something we’ve played around with in the offseason and carried over into camp.”‘

‘”Oh yeah, it’s a competition,” Florence said after a recent practice at St. John Fisher College. “Everybody’s out here trying to get a roster spot. It’s going to get a little aggressive out there and the two-minute drill’s a drill we’ve got to win to be able to finish ball games. We did pretty good finishing the drill today.”‘