Doc
-
Posts
66,085 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Content Type
Gallery
Profiles
Forums
Events
Posts posted by Doc
-
-
Hard to tell from just an above-waist shot, but I'd bet he's still in the mid-to-low 370 range. Should have just asked him, since he's been so open about his weight loss. And cute daughter, BTW.
-
The TV money "exploded" in the late eighties, eh? To some degree maybe. But here we are in 2011 and the NFL contracts have tripled in value since then while the NBA is going broke and the NHL only recently signed a major (sort of) network contract for an anemic $200 million per year.
The Giants/Jets stadium, which is the League's most expensive, was privatey funded. The G3 money is a private loan. The people of Arlington chose to fund Cowboys stadium with an increase in the hotel tax and other fees.
Actually the 2006 was foisted on the league by the players--isn't that what you used to say, anyway?
The league didn't look too "fractured" the last few seasons. When the new CBA is signed, wen will all forget about all this ghanshing of teeth.
There are people all across the country who root for and buy the merchandise of the Packers, Raiders, Steelers, Bears, Cowboys, Eagles, Redskins, NE---despite never having lived in those areas. Except for expatriots, there is unlikely a similar number of fans outside of Buffalo, SD and Indy who root for these teams. I think you knew exactly what I meant, despite your dramatic dismissal of my statement.
The NHL? LOL! The NBA TV contracts have increased at a large percentage since exploding in the late 80's. Sure it's not on the order of the NFL but it's sizable, and the owners losing money has to do with the lack of a hard cap and guaranteed contracts (wasteful spending), an image problem and a disturbing trend of top players moving to large markets (poor attendance). The NBA will have to adopt a system similar to what the NFL has or face harsh times.
It's true that the $1.6B New Meadowlands Stadium was built with private funds and $300M of G3 money. But how much did the owners of the Jets and Giants directly contribute? Who do you fancy would provide the private funds for a new stadium in Buffalo?
The league was far more unified in the days of the old guard. The original CBA, which worked great for 13 years, was crafted by the old guard. The new guard produced the 2006 debacle (and yes, it was foisted on the owners since the players weren't the ones voting to approve it). It wasn't even a few months before owners realized how bad a deal it was for them.
And my point was that the league is popular because of the "provincial teams" like the Colts and Chargers, as much as the big market teams. Attributing it solely to dynasties and/or the new guard is what I was dismissing.
-
While all of you that are gushing over how good ole Ralphie has been to Buffalo, and that he kept the team here....even tho he has put a Wal-mart-Costco K-mart product on the field, and more importantly on the sidelines during the majority of his ownership
What will you say about him once he passes and the team is sold to the highest bidder, just like Wilson stated it would. Then that person or group that buys the team decides they no longer wish to keep the team in such a small market, and they move to a different city.
What will you say then, will you still acclaim that "Ralph has been good" ?
I'm thinking that if that day comes, Ralph Wilson will be hated in Buffalo as much as Art Modell is hated in Cleveland. For those that don't recall, Modell moved his Cleveland Browns to Baltimore where he won a super bowl with his Ravens.
He never made such a claim. And there are reportedly several people interested in buying the Bills and keeping them in Buffalo. If the NFL owners decide to go with another group who ends up moving the team, that's hardly Ralph's fault. And even if a group that says it wants to keep the team in Buffalo buys the team and ends up moving it, that's also not Ralph's fault. The Buffalo market is what it is.
-
From what I've heard, and this may be false, the Catholic Church changed from allowing priests to be married men to requiring them to be celibate so that priests would leave their possessions to the Church after they died.
But yes, it's amazing how much ethics change when there's a need. Kind of like decriminalizing drugs because we need the tax revenue.
-
A perfect storm situation for sports entertainment. Heck, even figure skating revenue exploded.
I was looking at the numbers and asking myself "what happened around that time?" It was across the board.
-
Of course they would. They have a contract with the Bills for a game this year.
-
I work with a long time friend of Lights Out and he says that Merriman is healthy & ready to go.
Nice to hear, but meaningless. Unless he has personally interrogated Merriman's Achilles tendon and it's told him it won't be a problem.
-
The rules Mr. Ralph and the other owners operate under are quite different than the rules the drunken Irsay operated under when he and Mayflower moved the Colts in the middle of the night or Modell operated under when he moved to satisfy his own personal interests and the NFL got beaten by a bunch of idiot elected officials in Cleveland.
The rules are now that a team needs to get approval of 70+% if their fellow owners before a team can be sold or a major move takes place.
This happened because the NFL tends to always go where the money is and there is better profit for the teams as a whole and individually UNLESS a team screws its partners to serve their own individual interests. Irsay took a sweetheart deal for himself and forced his partners to live with the embarassment of the midnight move and deal with the upset of the TV networks which saw their planning screwed up by an NFL owner pursuing his own interests rather than that of the rest of the social compact.
The situation got really screwed up by Modell pursuing his own individual interests and the NFL was forced (mostly it appears by simply the threat of revocation of their limited anti-trust exemption. The NFL dealt with this by putting in place a rule which made large franchise changes subject to the approval of a greater than supermajority of the partners.
The league changed again when the threat of decertification forced the owners to treat the players essentially as a partner. The players ran with this threat and essentially dictated to the NFL terms which awarded the players on paper 60% of the total assets and arguably made them the majority partner.
Many folks make a flat-out mistake in assuming that the most important thing in the NFL team owners is their take at the gate. This mistake is understandable is that is how it used to be back in the 20th century. However. here in the 21st century the market is not one of small versus big markets but the lionshare of the money comes from realizing the market is the TV networks and the millions approaching billions they serve.
The local gate is important but is small dollars compared to the TV revenue.
The franchise being in Buffalo is simply worth more money to the other owners than a franchise in a larger market like LA because getting Mexico City and Toronto (and likely eventually eyeballs in Tokyo and Beijing to join a league with an original AFL team is worth more than splitting a franchise fee with 31 partners.
Ask yourself where is the money and where is the market and you will see the relative importance (or unimportance of the big market versus small market thang. It is an issue but really a small one compared to the real money.
You apparently didn't read my reply. Again, the TV money is the same for all owners. This is a non-issue, with the caveat that leaving the Buffalo market (I'm talking in the past when there were better markets) and going to a larger market would have gotten more money from the networks. So there likely have been suggestions by the other owners that Ralph move. And teams with new stadiums make more money in "local revenue" from club, luxury box, concessions, parking, advertising/private deals, naming rights, etc., On the order of tens of millions of dollars more. More is more, and if there is no increased debt-load, why wouldn't a guy whose only concern it he bottom line not move?
And if what "TheTruthHurts" says is true, i.e. that Ralph has voted "no" to every NFL move, then it proves that Ralph not having moved the team had nothing to do with financial considerations.
-
It took the "old guard" 20 years to get to a billion dollar TV deal. It took the old and new guard only 16 years to triple that.
Poppy rooster. TV money exploded for everyone around the late 80's. Look at the NBA (new guard owners there as well?) for proof of that. The new guard merely rode the coattails of what the old guard created and the game sells itself. They've done more to fracture the league, and foisted that 2006 CBA upon it.
The Bills, Chargers and the Colts are provincial teams with minimal national following.This statement is so removed from reality that it doesn't need a response.
What's "old guard" anyway? Squeezing the locals for half a billion for a new stadium? Sticking with a coach who couldn't build a SB dynasty from one of the most talented teams of the decade? OK, maybe Irsay IS old guard like that.How much did Jones squeeze Arlington for to get his palace built? What about McNair and Houston? Lerner and Cleveland? I think you fail to realize that outside of Kraft and Snyder, every other owner got a signicant contribution from his/her county for a new stadium, and they and Kraft got $150M in G3 money from the league.
-
Because he has prospered financially right where he is--to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. Few owners if any have a deal as sweet as his. His product, now matter how bad, has been recession proof. Erie county falls over itself to give him whatever he wants. The league would have paid him to move too?
Why on earth would he have left--to Cleveland?? Baltimore?? Indy?? Where's the money there?
Despite all of this, you think it makes "no sense" to stay in Buffalo financially? That is makes more sense move to some imaginary "better market"? Only a crappy team is preventing him from charging more money doc, not the recession.
They don't make money in Indy? Baltimore? Cleveland? (Houston? Tennessee? Jax I'll give you). Buffalo has a better economy? Surely you jest.
And I never said it makes "no sense to stay in Buffalo financially." I said he could have made more money elsewhere going to a city with a better economy and a stadium paid-for by the taxpayers, not $2.8M a year from the county to upkeep a 30-year old stadium in a lousy economy.
Kraft played Harford. Get over it.Get over what? I was ecstatic Kraft pulled out of that lousy deal for the state. I laughed at all the sucker Pats fans who went to buy season tickets, only to see the deal fall through.
-
We outsiders do not know enough about the specifics of Bills finances to make a clear case one way or the other as to whether it would have made fiscal sense to move the Bills. However, what this means is that those who make a drop-dead assumption that it would make fiscal sense to move are wrong as far as the certainty.
On the face of it I think WEO is probably correct that it would not make fiscal sense for the Bills to move in that the fact is that this has never happened and Mr. Ralph's history is that he knows and follows the bottomline. The fact that he has been public about committing to the team being here as long as he was alive provides a pretty good sense that it makes good fiscal sense for the Bills to be here.
The question comes as to when Ralph dies will it make good fiscal sense for the Bills to move?
I think the answer to this question is going to be determined by the decision-maker at that point and the the decision-makers in the NFL and Ralph historically have tended to go where the money tells them to go.
I think the mistake that many make is the assumption that the money will be found by moving the Bills. I think that calculus is probably wrong.
Yes the City of Buffalo and even the WNY/S.Ontario region is a small market. However, this view does not take into account that the real NFL market, the one which delivers boatloads of cash is the TV market.
Yes, the cash from ticket sales, beer and hot dogs, parking, etc is substantial, but it pales in size to the dollars taken from the true client the TV networks. Particularly as by rule any new owner (even one sold by the estate) must be approved by a vote of 70% of the owners this means that any new owner is not necessarily the deepest pocket (osana bin laden was the example I used to use til Barack Obama got him so maybe a character of similar ill repute to NFL owners like Rush Limbaugh) will not become owners even if they have the deepest pockets or make the highest bid because you are not an eligible owner without massive approval from the other NFL owners.
If you look at what is fiscally the best deal for the other NFL owners, though the transfer fee the new owner would pay to move to a larger market would be a large absolute amount, the individual owner splits it with 30 partners. This amount is chump change compared with the losses which come with a move from Buffalo.
1.You have to work hard to replace the 45,000 or so season ticket base. Perhaps you make that up even quickly with the excitement of moving to a new town. However, you have to make it up so you go from money in the bank to potential money in the bank.
2. In addition to having to replace the money in the bank of ticket sales you also have to build a new set of local advertisers and other cash streams you walk away from when you leave WNY.
3. The NFL strategy for expansion seems to be not to focus on the marginal gain for one individual owner of buying the Bills (or even a weaker franchise like Tampa Bay) but instead to get more eyeballs to collect money from the true cash cow the networks. The bad press of for weeks or years on end showing what he NFL did to Buffalo and Bills fans when they left Buffalo is not good advertising at all for expanding into new territory.
4. You might ask whether Toronto will even care about stiffing Buffalo when it has a new shiny franchise? A ppd question, but one answered by the fact it is silly to give away the Buffalo season ticket holders, advertisers, etc when you do not have to. The smart fiscal thing to do is set up a new franchise in Toronto all its own and sell tickets to its huge population base AND keep the Bills franchise. The area maintains separate Maple Leafs and Sabres franchises and though there are significant differences (stadium size and number of games for example between the two sports, it seems viable to keep both.
In fact, the smart fiscal move for the Bills is to get taxpayers to build a new smaller stadium and simply out of scarcity of tickets the Bills fill the new stadium and make the fans even more ravenous.
For these and several other reasons it probably makes little fiscal sense to move the Bills.
If Ralph truly only cared about the bottom line, he'd only spend to the minimum every year on players. He'd also have left long ago. That's because he has and would still have no team debt if he moved. He'd have had a new stadium built for him in his new city free-of-charge and the league would have paid him to move. That new stadium would have allowed him to charge more for tix, concessions, parking, luxury boxes, naming rights, advertising, and private deals which while they pale in comparison to TV money, are mostly "local revenue" that the owner gets to keep.
As for the TV money, removing Buffalo's tiny market and replacing it with another larger market would have led the owners to ask more money from the networks.
-
Would your opinion change if you knew that finals ended on 5/4?
If his contract stated he had to stay on-campus, no.
Look, I'm not saying that what he did wasn't commendable. I just understand the University's position and I think he'll land on his feet just fine.
-
The talk of a team moving to LA should start and end with Jax. No tradition and can't sellout games even with 20K seats tarped-over.
-
I was 1 at that time. But okay, 40 years ago Ralph talked openly about moving the team. I stand corrected.
-
If you want to keep changing the reasons for the increase in popularity, be my guest. But the dynastic runs of the 49ers, cowboys and the pats had the biggest impact over those 3 decades. People love or hate a dynasty--but they do tune in.
DeBartolo's father bought the team and gave it to him. He only got it only 9 years before Jones bought the Cowboys.
Irsay was inherited the team from his father, who was elderly and running the team into the ground (you know...). This got him a top draft pick in 98 and he picked Manning. Nothing wrong with that. Owners do screw up top picks, you know. ANd he was wise enough to hire the guy Ralph let get away. Irsay was nothing like "old guard" (Wilson, Mara, Rooney, Halas)--absolutely not.
Maybe the Colts will suck after Manning is gone. Who knows?--but it's not much of a point to make.
Look doc, I'm not the one claiming that the league's popularity/profits/whatever is mostly due to the new guard of owners. I mean, you even admitted that the TV contracts skyrocketed with the 1990-1993 contracts, whose negotiations predated Jerruh and his ilk. How can that be?
Moreover, where are the studies saying that dynasties primarily make the league popular versus rivalries? What about near-dynasties like the Broncos of the 80's, Bills of the 90's, and Chargers and to a degree, Colts, of the 00's?
And the point with guys like DeBartolo, Irsay, and Rooney, i.e. kids who inherited NFL teams from their super-rich dads and who did nothing to earn them, unlike Ralph, is that they were raised with old guard values.
-
Boy, that just gets classier and classier every time you type it.
The question is, why hasn't that poster been banned yet?
-
His job was to protect the Rice campus. HPD's job was to backup their officers. The University has every right to fire him for what he did, and there likely may have been other incidents that weren't reported. But again, he'll likely get a job with the HPD so don't feel too bad for him.
-
In retrospect, Kraft was never coming to Hartford. There's no way he would have risked alienating the Boston and upper NE markets. He played a perfect poker game to get what he wanted from MA officials who didn't have the stomach to call his bluff.
Whether Kraft would have moved to team to Hartford (had they had their **** together) is a matter of conjecture. The point was that Ralph never even so much as publicly dallied with another city, much less pulled-out of a deal with another city at the 11th hour.
There are only a handfuof people who believe Kraft would have moved to Hartford.
Anyway, Ralph was never going to move his team simply because it did not make financial sense to. He certainly would NOT have made more money by moving to Cleveland or Baltimore..or LA, obviously. It's a claim often made by guys here, but it makes no sense.
How do you figure it did not make financial sense to move the team out of Buffalo? That makes absolutely no sense.
-
Yes, revenue sharing and the cap led to all teams having a theoretical shot at a championship, hence increasing popularity. But "popularity" for the sake of this discussion, essentially is measured in TV reating and therefore TV contracts. The value of the contracts showed exponential increase from 1990 on (the 1990 TV money, before the salary cap, was double the value of the previous contracts). It cracked the billion doallr mark in 1994 and then doubled just 4 years later. Another billion was added in 2006.
Fox had little to do with the contract value (9000 mil to 1.1 billion)--they simply replaced CBS. ABC/ESPN was the game changer.
The winningest team from 99 to 2005 was NE. The value of the contracts increased by 50% during this period.
You couldn't be more wrong about Irsay. He became owner in 97--the youngest owner in the league. He brought in Polian and drafted Manning and James. The rest was history. His old man had little success in Indy and that team was going nowhere before he stroked and boxed.
Actually what led to the huge increase in the 1990-1993 TV contracts was Ted Turner (who is faulted for being the one who began the inflation of salaries in MLB) entering the NFL picture, the 16-game NFL season being played-out over 17 weeks, and 2 additional teams being added to the playoffs from each conference, meaning 2 more playoff games. After that, regardless of the teams, the league sold itself. If you want to credit the popularity increase to a team, give it to the 49'ers of the 1980's.
And as for Junior Irsay, don't confuse "young owner" with "new guard." His dad was responsible for everything he has, and he lucked-into Manning. Once he's gone, the team will be back to the basement again.
-
It was a reasonable firing. But don't feel too bad. He'll probably get a job quickly with the HPD.
-
Same logic that got us Obama.
DCTom FTW
Hardly. I had no idea how either candidate would perform as president. Now that I've seen Barry inaction, I don't want to see him in office again. He had a year with full control to do something meaningful, and all he did was spend like crazy and focus on socialized medicine that most people don't want and which will only make things worse.
And realistically, the only choices are a) vote for the Dem, b) vote for the Repub, or c) don't vote. Voting for a non-major party candidate is a waste of a vote since he/she will never win, and I'm not into making a symbolic gesture with so much at stake. So it's the lesser of two evils, or not voting at all, which is worse than voting, IMO.
-
What about slice and dice? Can he shake and bake? Rock and roll?
Duck and cover? Stop, drop, and roll?
-
Reading the headlines about potential teams moving to LA, made me reflect on Ralph and the criticisms he's taken over the past few years.
I find nothing more infuriating than hearing a scattering of boos when he's announced at a Bills game. Does anyone doubt that if it was all about the money, Ralph would have left a long time ago? Look at all the teams that have done it: Baltimore, Cleveland, LA, St Louis Cardinals. Everyone one of them more economically feasible than the city of Buffalo.
I love hearing the blogs about Ralph's cheapness in regards to paying players and that he's not interested in winning. First of all he could of left for the money, and secondly, the guy is in his mid 90's. Do we really think he's making the calls.
He's never spent even close to the minimum on players' salaries during the salary cap era. And as for moving, he's never gone even close to as far as Bob Kraft did with his deal with Hartford, that he backed-out on at the 11th hour.
-
The ONLY reason that the Bills were not mentioned in that article is because AIG was contacting teams now about a sale now. The Bills are not for sale at all now because of Ralph. I'm sure they contacted the Bills and were told the Bills are not for sale. That is why they are not a candidate now. Nothing has changed in that regard.
None of the other teams mentioned look to be for sale either. The Bills weren't mentioned because they are happy where they are. Not so of the other teams mentioned.
That said, I don't expect the Bills to relocate at all after Ralph passes, to LA or Toronto or anywhere else.I agree.
Kurt Warner says NFL players must give back money
in The Stadium Wall Archives
Posted
Wait, didn't you say that Ralph should foot the bill for a new stadium and railed against him for asking Erie County to pay $2.8M a year for the upkeep of its stadium? Yet "the people of Arlington chose to fund Cowboys stadium" to the tune of $325M and Johnson/Mara/Tisch possibly not contributing much (since the stadium is owned by the New Jersey Sports and Exhibition Authority) is okay? Typical.
Yes, I'd say "foist" is the proper word. I'm sure that a majority of the owners who voted for that 2006 CBA would say they were duped into agreeing to it, rather than admitting they were too stupid to understand what they were voting on, but went ahead and voted on it anyway. The best that could be said for it at the time is that it preserved labor peace. Well duh, if you give people what they want they'll be happy as clams. Yet a couple months later the owners all bemoaned it, 2 years later opted-out of it, and 5 years later locked-out the players. You really think they understood what they approved, despite all that time you claimed they had to read it? And don't give me "the situation changed." No owner has said AT ANY TIME that "it was a good deal...until the situation changed."
Yes playing hardball back then, before the players got a taste of 59.5% of total revenues, and before they got hundreds of millions of dollars more from the owners, would have been far better than doing it now. That is patently obvious.
SD and Indy don't have national fans? And non-new guard owned teams like GB, Pitt, and NO do, but it's the new guard that's reposonsible for the popularity/prosperity of the league? OK, doc, we're done here.