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This may be relevant. Peter King's column this week includes a tweet from Ron Pereira: "Btw, officials were shown many plays regarding illegal contact and defensive holding. How many Seahawk plays???. None." King interprets thus: "I found this interesting, that Pereira would see that the the league, which is team-blind when it comes to picking out plays to show the officials to illustrate what should and shouldn’t be called, couldn’t find Seahawks going over the line on defense. " Not sure that is the only conclusion to draw. http://mmqb.si.com/2014/07/21/buffalo-bills-training-camp-opens/3/ kj

He's a Ratt.

Wishing her a fast return to health, Astro.

"Marcell Dareus was placed on the Active/Non-Football Injury list on Saturday, shortly after the team's conditioning tests concluded. (Reserve offensive lineman J.J. 'Unga was placed on the same list, as well.) It's probably easy to assume that Dareus and 'Unga failed their conditioning tests, but that has not been confirmed, and the Bills did not disclose the reasoning for the move." http://www.buffalorumblings.com/2014/7/19/5918853/bills-training-camp-2014-leodis-mckelvin-activated-marcell-dareus-isnt Close enough for me. kj

http://mweb.cbssports.com/nfl/eye-on-football/24624016/patriots-first-year-dl-armond-armstead-retires? P*ts DL Armond Armstead, product of USC and the CFL, retires before his first NFL season begins. According to Armstead, it wasn't the grueling workouts, the pain, or the future surgeries that prompted the decision. It was the constant texts he received from head coach Bill Belichick throughout the offseason. kj

Personality aside (which is a big thing to set aside), Trump made his money largely through heavily leveraged investments in real estate--debt financing, including junk bonds for some projects. (Before leveraging his celebrity status in more recent years.) He became a gazillionaire by looking for properties he could turn around without a lot of his own cash. You cannot do this in the NFL. The max debt rules prevent this. His success in these ventures doesn't really transfer to the NFL and I think the owners would see this as another knock against him. And then there's that personality... kj

Ouch.

I don't think it is fair to label you a lemming, but it is also not fair to attribute my motives in calling BB a cheater to mere jealousy. That pushes right up against the border of civility, IMO. He cheated, he undermined the integrity of the game. You choose to look the other way. I do not. kj

He wins. And he cheats. Not mutually exclusive. His cheating wouldn't have impacted his dominance of the Bills (more reason to hate him, not less), but that doesn't mean he isn't a cheater and doesn't deserve that label and all that goes with it. Including a pile of asterisks and my everlasting derision. *** kj

Gee, that 10 point inspection would probably 30 things 'wrong' with your car, too.

Not any more.

So the rumors about Wall-E are not true?

My guess too.

To go with the advanced case of syphillis that has made him delusional.

I heard he tore it running to Brazil. He was going to go down and win another football game. kj

In other words, our 1st round pick knows what's what and what needs to be worked on. #bust In all serious (which will probably get me banned), thanks for sharing this. kj

Thanks for that. kj

Details on the league's G-4 loan program: http://newstadium.atlantafalcons.com/funding/g-4-stadium-financing/ Did the Bills tap that program for the current renovations? I don't think that is the case. 15 year payback from the league's (shared revenue) share of the gate. kj

I'll play: http://www.cbssports.com/nfl/eye-on-football/24595235/qb-coach-tom-house-tom-brady-issues-in-2013-mechanical P*ts QB coach has identified mechanical issues that he claims explain Brady's statistical off :season last year. Looking for a rebound this year. kj

Since I am not the one advocating for public financing, someone else will have to answer this. I'm just piggybacking on your point that stadiums have a poor ROI for taxpayers. kj

Always keep this in mind. Investing in publicly owned professional sports facilities is about something other than a good return for the taxpayers. I did some reading on jock taxes and I don't think they will ever generate that kind of revenue the way they are implemented now. Plus as Mr. WEO pointed out, they are already in place at the state level, so any increase would have to be small to be politically palatable. As implemented by NYS and in other jurisdictions, the tax is prorated based on the amount of the athlete's salary that was earned in that jurisdiction. So you have a tax rate multiplied by a salary, and then multiplied by the percentage of the athlete's work days spent in the jurisdiction. But it is not calculated based only on game days, but the athlete's entire work obligations (practices etc.). So you would never raise 10% of the salary cap from visiting athletes; more like 1%. The formula would look like this: Annual Salary * tax rate % * (days worked in jurisdiction/total days worked) Hotel taxes aren't going to contribute that much, either. I found a couple of things online documenting the hotel industry in the Buffalo region: Erie County had 9100 hotel rooms 2 years ago (http://buffalorising...s-some-numbers/) and booked 2.2 million room nights. Another website shows 15,000 rooms, I think for the region (http://www.cvent.com...777d75e54b.aspx). Not sure how old that data is. So pick a number reflecting recent development. 20,000? Let's be generous and use a 70% vacancy rate. 70% * 365 *20,000 = 5,110,000 room nights to tax. How much additional hotel tax can each room generate? Doubling the current rate--and what are the odds of that happening?--would probably get you in the neighborhood of $20MM annually in my scenario, which is pushing the inputs out as far as I can. The revenues if implemented would certainly be much lower than that. So we are a long, long way from being able to support bond payments on an $800MM stadium project. I am sympathetic to the idea that a stadium should be supported by revenues in the way you outline. I just don't see the dollars there to get us very far and I don't think it can happen without a big chunk of public money. Which brings me back to Mr. WEO's point. kj

Informed opinions are good. Thank you. And this is exactly the kind of public funding that should be used to build stadiums and that I would favor. It should not be a part of the local or state government's obligation to fund. As you say, the users or those who directly benefit pay for it. A couple of follow-ups, though: Have we seen this model used elsewhere, without major goosing from government funds? Is there enough cash flow here to cover the debt? Is the jock tax established law, or likely to be challenged? I remember that some state somewhere was moving away from a jock tax because of a legal challenge (sorry about my memory). kj

Maybe Goodell met with JBJ to tell him that there was no way he was getting the Bills in Toronto. kj

Are there Segway gangs yet? Sons of ... Clutter?