Lori

He is. In fact, he was part of the medical staff at the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympic Games. Good luck with your own career choice ...

Depends on your definition of "excessively repetitive." Normally, for us to take action against anyone for crusading, they have to be either spamming the board with multiple threads on the same topic or posting their thoughts in every thread on Page 1. A quick check shows me that Bill has done neither. In addition to his weekly "a few thoughts ..." posts -- in reality, columns that quite a few posters here look forward to reading -- he's only created five threads since the season began, with titles that lead me to believe they do not refer to Bell. Hope that answers your question. If not, rather than muddying this thread, I'm willing to discuss it in greater depth in the Customer Service forum.

Then why did you bother reading it?

Heh, heh, heh. Baaaaaad things, man. As for Weis, if he can't beat Navy or UConn, what makes anyone think his "decided schematic advantage" could handle the Pats or Colts? (That's not meant as a slap at either UC or the USNA, by the way -- in fact, I enjoyed the heck out of both games. Just saying that with the facilities and recruiting advantages ND has over those schools, there's no good excuse for losing to them.)

That puts him one up on the Bills, who have now lost three straight games to Cleveland.

I can't, or I would. FWIW, CBS deliberately chose not to show the replay.

(raises hand) '87 Fiesta Bowl/national championship was my freshman year. You were saying?

Close, but not quite. Bill Austin counts.

Not quite the detached-observer status of a traditional beat reporter, if that's what you mean. It's actually been kind of interesting to see the blog evolve over the last year or so, and watch him develop a stronger "voice" as he started to become more familiar with the teams he's covering. He still combines elements of both jobs, but he's now more of a columnist than a beat guy, and definitely willing to share his opinion. JMO. And it's also interesting (to me, anyway) how much that rule has changed just in the last four years since it was the main topic of discussion at the Joyce Symposium: POLLOCK: Line between columnists and beat writers blurred

Sweet tea, keyboard. Keyboard, sweet tea. No. (But that was a rhetorical question, correct?) Okay, that's it. If I ever want to get this preview done, I'm-a have to pour myself a thimbleful of Mr. Jameson's finest just to get rid of that image scorched onto my retinas.

Maybin = redshirt sophomore AND missed all of training camp. Given that combo, why should anyone be surprised that this has turned into a lost season for him? Y'all know by now that I bleed Blue and White, but even I thought he should've stayed in school for another year. Maybe we find out what he's got next August. I doubt it happens before then.

There's a difference between reporting what Whitner said and "taking his word as gospel." Same with ANY quote.

Dunno about on the board, but I do seem to recall you using the word "doomed" to me the day they cut Langston Walker. And yeah, at this point, Edwards/Fitzpatrick = six of one, half-dozen of t'other. Add: a thought on Schobel. When you wrote that piece, I think most of us were surprised to see him actually speak out, since he doesn't normally say much. Guessing RCW had already made his decision by that point, but if he hadn't, I wonder if Schobel's reax -- including the "I can't say what I REALLY want to" line while eyeing the front-office types -- was the last straw.

Don't disagree with any of that.

There were people inside One Bills Drive privately questioning Edwards long before Owens got here. Just sayin'.

Yup. In fact, while I'm not sure about the NHL, there's been talk that anyone who takes a job with MLB.com or their network should lose their BBWAA card. Also, I'm not sure about JLC (or Schefter before him), but I do know that anyone who writes for a team-owned Web site is ineligible for PFWA membership.

T.O.? Really? Doesn't quite explain Lee Evans' obvious preference for Losman last season ...

Of course, the fact that BScott is apparently now one of the top three LBs on the team should be enough to give us all pause.

Who do you include in that general consensus? Sounds like these guys aren't signing up: Those whispers have been out there for a while now -- if the offense hadn't looked so brutal against Houston, I'm not so sure Edwards sees the field against Tennessee -- but it's not as easy as it might seem to get people to repeat those statements when they know their name will be attached to it in print. Why did Jasno break the Jauron firing? Because most print outlets still follow a code of ethics: more than one confirmed source, someone willing to go on the record, etc. Minus those restrictions, guys like JLC, Schefter, and Glazer can run with whatever they hear, as soon as they hear it, if they think they can trust their source ... but they can be (and have been) wrong, too. And I believe The Associated Press was the first outlet to have anything from Ralph. KTFABD, regarding your "less than zero" comment ... without publicly going into detail, the front office's duplicity re:the media was proven to me once and for all at the beginning of May. (And as far as Edwards' sell-by date, take a close look at the debacle in Miami.)

True dat. We haven't talked nearly enough about Mr. Overdorf here, and for once, I'm not being even a little sarcastic.

Not just the banner, the entire background. Black Thursday.

If I haven't said it lately, thanks for being here, John. Knowing what your last couple of days have been like, I have NO problem with you giving us a heads-up and someone else digging up the link. And to address the "cheap" thing on any potential coaching hire -- since it fits in this thread, I'll repeat what I told you: I'm not buying his "we paid TO" line. From all reports, he lowballed Butler at the same time the Bills had a chunk of their cap tied up in over-market contracts to average players. (Sam Rogers, anyone?) He grumbled about it (see: joking about having to sell a Monet to afford Andre Reed's contract), but he DID pay players...at least until it put them into cap jail, which brought us Donahoe. As Scott P notes, Knox was really the last time he went for a big-name HC.

Of all the lousy timing ... When I got the text, I was on the 219 just south of Springville, on my way to meet up with my folks for the Bonnies game in Rochester. Left the computer at home, because really, what news could come out on the Bills' day off, after Jauron had held his business-as-usual PC on Monday? Heh, heh. They did the same thing to me when they signed T.O. during SBU's WNIT game last spring -- got THAT text on the way out of the Reilly Center. Made for a very quick trip into Buffalo, and a flurry of e-mails on the CrackBerry as soon as I parked the car. Kept that up all the way to Rochacha (fortunately, someone else was driving), where I crossed paths with Pitoniak, who told me his post-firing column was already up on the front page. Sweeeet. I told him the news made me even more disappointed that Gruden had just signed the extension w/ESPN, and he replied with a grin, "Cowher's still out there, though." (If you haven't been reading his stuff -- and shame on you if you haven't -- that's who he's been beating the drum for all along.) We'd heard the speculation re:Fewell, but didn't get official word of the press conference until just before the game began -- which meant that both Pollock (doing the SBU column for the OTH) and Pitoniak (who worked the game for the AP) weren't going to get there. Dunno what they did, but I kept track of it through Sal M's Twitter feed while praying the BB's battery would last long enough to get back to Buffalo. Anyhoo. Considering that I haven't had a chance to check the board since the whole thing went down, some of this has probably been said a thousand times. Ah well. Although the move was inevitable, I'm a little surprised it happened when it did -- when RCW didn't whack Jauron going into the bye (the logical time to do it), I figured he'd probably limp to the end of the lamest of lame-duck seasons. But thinking back to him benching Edwards -- HIGHLY unusual for him, when we've all seen TE play worse and stay in the game -- and Sully's postgame column about him running out of other people to blame, I wondered if Ralph had come to the same conclusion: instead of trying to steer away from the iceberg, Cap'n DJ was still rearranging the deck chairs. Celebrate? Not really, for two reasons: Although his coaching drove me to distraction, and despite some personal issues I had with him and others in the front office (a story for another day, although a couple of you already know what I'm referring to), Jauron always seemed like a decent sort. Don't get me wrong, this NEEDED to happen ... but even though I probably could, I find no schadenfreude in the guy losing his job. And for them to get it right this time, this has to be merely the first step of many. Let's see what they do next.

And the band played on .... glug ...

Think my point echoes something Sully wrote toward the end of yesterday's column: "Jauron is coaching for his job. He doesn't have many more people to blame for this wreck of a season." He can still swap QBs, though, even if it's a deck-chairs-on-the-Titanic move. Pitoniak agrees with you; Fitzpatrick isn't the answer, so they may as well keep Edwards in the lineup. As for me? Yeah, probably the right idea ... but at this point, I'm not sure I care who they put back there.