Albany,n.y.

Three things you can count on: Death, Taxes & whenever a new coach is hired by the Cardinals, he promises to turn the team into a winner & a few years later is fired with a losing record.

In college you have somewhat of a master-slave relationship with your players. They have no money & NCAA rules make them slaves. Sure, they can leave after the season, but that year you have control over them. In the NFL, the players have tons of money and if you try to pull that master stuff, they'll just tune you out. If you really try to be a tyrant, not only won't they play for you, but the best ones will go to the owner & tell him to fire you. Tom Coughlin is an example of a guy who should be a college coach. His act may work short term in the NFL, but eventually the players just tune him out & the team has no other option than to fire him. At the right college he can pull that master crap for years.

I wouldn't put this on Marvin Lewis. He can't put his foot down when his bosses have & will continue to promote the drafting of talented "bargains". For many years before he got there and the philosophy remains today, the Bengals do not use the character issue when they are scouting & drafting players. Typical of this was the 2005 draft "theft" of 1st round talent Odell Thurman in the 2nd round. They got a good rookie year out of him before he totally self destructed. He was a walking time bomb that the smarter teams avoided. Year after year, teams like the Bengals & Dolphins get "steals" talentwise on draft day because they concentrate on the on field talent & eschew the off field evaluation. So on the Monday after the draft, the talking & writing heads give these teams high draft marks, not realizing that this year's steal is next year's inmate or drug suspendee. Then you get enough of these characters together and the team is called a disappointment when they don't respond well to adversity. Some of those losses come from missing the player who is suspended for that crucial game. Marv has it totally right that ability without character does not win.

Wait until you reach my age or older. They do provide escalators to the elderly & handicapped, but those ramps don't even follow a logical pattern. Compared to Giants Stadium the M&T has very poor upper deck access.

Wait until they realize the league has figured out Tony Romo and Dallas will be lucky to reach 500 next year.

Got back from the game about an hour ago. I couldn't believe there is no friggin escalator to the upper deck at the M&T. Getting to seats at the Ralph is so much easier than upper deck seats in Baltimore. They're going to give someone in Baltimore a heart attack with that stupid design. I saw a heavyset lady (who they would have let on the elevator) stuggling mightily on a ramp. The stadium is a little bit like Giants Stadium-all seats, but in NJ they had common sense to build ramps that make sense & escalators to all levels. I've never been to a stadium with a worse design to get to the upper deck seating!

They're not the voice of the Bills-sour grapes. I listened for a while & then turned it off & put the news on tv. I'm not a hockey fan & when they get into hockey, my streaming ends ASAP.

Because the Jets jumped out to a better record & the suits at CBS figured there is more interest in the Jets. Then the suits started figuring there was more interest in NE than the Bills. How they came to the conclusion that Miami/Indy would draw better than the Bills/Ravens is simply beyond rational comprehension. I'm one of the lucky ones, because I have season tickets & I'm going this weekend. So of the 16 games, I'll have been to 9, & I think we had home tv for the road games @ Jets, Miami, & Detroit, so I only had to go to a bar 4 times.

Since I just became a victim of flex scheduling, I realized that once a game is flexed at the Ralph, it will probably make December advanced single game sales to out of town people next to impossible. Since I drive to Buffalo & have seasons, it won't affect me, but I can see where many people won't buy tickets once they realize the effects of flex scheduling. From this point forward, I won't buy any tickets to games I'm not in complete control of my travel schedule. It won't be long before many others realize how dangerous buying late season games is when flex scheduling is an option. This has to hurt regional teams like the Bills.

This sucks when you have the last flight out of Baltimore @ 8:55 PM. I may or may not make the flight, depending on how long it takes me to get through security. I'm arriving at the airport @ 7:36 or 8:06, depending on which train from M&T to BWI I catch. I'll have no luggage, so I might make it. If not, I'll book a different flight, on a cheaper airline for 1/1 & stay near the airport on Sunday night. I'm never buying a ticket to a game I'm not driving to again, unless it's the Super Bowl where they can't change the time.

Is the time still the same with the game moved to 4:15?

The Jets have no chance-all my picks are tanking & I picked the Jets.

I've got a similarity: The 2nd to last time I went to the final game of the season when it was a road game was the season finale in Philadelphia 12/27/87. I'm going to the season finale in Baltimore next weekend. Buffalo Bills: 2007 Eastern Division Champions! The last time I went to a season finale on the road was 1989 vs the Jets. 1 year later we were AFC Champs Buffalo Bills: 2007 AFC Champions!

The positive news (for the other TEs on the roster) is he's now 4th string TE. Matt Murphy was on the field as the 3rd string TE, I don't recall Everett playing today. Even if he did, Murphy definitely got more playing time. Everett & Reyes are so gone by next year.

I was in the car & had a Bengals' station on when it happened. The Cincy announcers declared the Bengals losers right then & there before they attempted the on-side kick. Very reminiscent of a NO Saints game a year or 2 ago when Carney missed a game tying kick at the end.

If you put the game away, BEFORE THE 4th QUARTER, you win. That probably would have happened if Royal knows where he is in the end zone & doesn't have a foot go out of bounds.

It's amazing that the Bills have never hit on a coach who never was a pro head coach before coaching the Bills. Every successful head coach in team history had a prior head coaching job in the NFL or AFL.

What a surprise: A black kid getting screwed by the law in Georgia.

Try the Albany Teletheater. I haven't been there this season, but I hear they upgraded the TVs, which were pretty good last year. I now go to the Ravena bowling alley for the no home tv road games, but that's a little far from Guilderland. For the record, Petrino moved about 90 miles south and will be in Connecticut on Christmas Eve.

If JP continues to play well, yes.

People get paid to go to AA? Pass the brewski

Right on track, I had us 9-7. However, if you look up the rest of my picks, posted here before the season started, you can also find the 12-4 Dolphins, 1-15 Titans, 8-8 Chargers, 13-3 Panthers & 3-13 Saints.

Petrino had a ticket, got caught in a traffic jam and was almost sent away for arriving after the 3 minutes to half gate shutdown.* He sweet talked a woman at the gate who let him in and he arrived right before the 2 minute warning. It was not just the people at the will call window, the roads made people late too. *-he did waste time trying to take a "shortcut" to get out of traffic, that caused him about an hour delay getting to the game.

At the last Christmas Eve game (1995), the Bills were locked into their playoff spot & started Todd Collins against Houston. There weren't that many no-shows, but the stadium started emptying out at halftime. By the 4th quarter, Petrino & I moved to club level 1st row 50 yard line seats because the stadium was virtually empty. We saw Andre Reed make a record breaking catch. At that time, nobody thought the Bills would re-sign Andre and we thought we were seeing the end of a WR era.

From a selfish point of view, I hope they don't sell many more. I gave away my ticket & I'm getting too itchy not to go. So if they don't sell too many more, it should make the scalpers & holders of extra tickets almost willing to do what I did-give the tickets away.