Ned Flanders

The Bills went 11-5 and I believe fell into a three (or was it five?) team tie for home-field and lost out on tiebreakers and had to go to San Diego. I firmly believe if they had home field, that team would have went to the Super Bowl. There were two losses to lowly Baltimore that came back to haunt them for home-field in 1980. I was at the one in OP, a game where Bert Jones sliced them up all day. It was a raw, overcast October day if I recall correctly.

I actually feel sorry for him...he never had the opportunity to have a Garbage Plate.

Well another training camp at SJF and another installment of always-excellent photos by Andy. Sort of a rite-of-August...(and late July). Thanks for another year of super pics!

Especially the nuts...

I'm still not over the 1980 playoff loss in San Diego...damn you Bill Simpson!

Mine arrived the other day, but haven't seen it yet. Was hoping that A Town, A Team, A Dream w/Tim Russert would be somewhere on the two discs but I guess it's not? Does anyone (Fezzer?) have this on DVD?

Blurb in the Washington Post this morning was titled: "Billy Mays Stained"

Me three...

Speaking of lost brothers, what ever happened to Richie Cunningham's brother Chuck?

Another example of why rookie sloting money should be part of the next CBA.

No. You pick 11, you should get an impact player. Period. The notion that Maybin is only a "situational" player makes his hold-out even more odd. Maybe he should take a cue from our president and "re-calibrate" his position.

That's probably the reason...tapes of these games may not even exist. I believe the first two Super Bowls were not kept by the networks and the only tape of these games is the one shot by NFL Films.

Had anyone ever had a bad time at a Valby event?

No crap-o-la...missing an entire week of your first training camp will come back to bite him. For what? An extra $50-100k? As so many have said, the next CBA REALLY needs to address rookie sloting salaries.

Having a four and six year old, I feel your pain. Sounds like the same people who ran this event, devised the rush defense last year...

As I said when the bootleg picture of Moorman was found, they got the stripes all wrong...blue stripe should be outlined in red, and red outlined in blue. Bills, Reebok, or both, got lazy here...they're much better than the current threads, but they shoulda got it right.

I was there and have many great memories...it was the day after Christmas and on Christmas Eve the Bills put out a call via the local media for people to come shovel snow out of the stands, $5/hour. Many showed up, most of them homeless and without the proper winter attire. Seeing men shoveling snow in not much more than a sweatshirt and jeans, Marv Levy went into the locker room and brought out all the Bills jackets, gloves and hats he could carry and gave them to the workers. True story. Also, on Inside the NFL the week following, the NFL Films clip started with Levy and Jets coach Bruce Coslett talking at mid-field before the game: Levy: "We won't have 30,000 people here today." Coslett: "Are you kidding? I just looked out at your parking lot, it's packed!" Levy: "These people are crazy." Classic

Andy's outstanding training camp pix are an annual treat for us out-of-towners....thanks my friend!

The Bills have been doing this type of "marketing" for years, and it really makes no sense. By declaring four games "sold out" early, they take the wind out of the sails for people/groups to attend these games (especially the TBD tailgator, which I hope to get to some year). It's flawed, deceptive and makes little financial sense. By opening tickets to the first four games, they must have gotten little increase in season ticket sales since declaring the first four games "sold out." What is more mystifying is that the media buys off on this every year and you see the D and C and the News run with the Bills' press release. The "sold out" policy is strictly to build on season ticket sales...maybe the buying public has finally caught on.

I've seen the HBO spots on him and it seemed to me like the guy took too many fastballs to the head...

Oh pleeeze...if the Yanks had swept the mighty Nats, you wouldn't care if it was Gilbert Gottfried doing the announcing. Granted, Dibble is dreadful and is more of a homer than Hawk Harrelson, but methinks thou dost protest too much.

I was saying the same thing in an earlier post about the white throwbacks...somebody got lazy here. And if it was Reebok, someone at OBD has to make the call and make it right. Somebody, either at Reebok or at OBD, had to see the prototype...and that person(s) most likely wasn't even born when the throwbacks were around and when handed a set of the 2009 version, probably said something like, "No big deal, no one will notice the stripe trim." Jeeziz, just get it right. Look at the detail in the San Diego throwbacks...the Bills jerseys need to be as accurate as possible.

I saw video from Iran, then saw video from LA last night right after the Lakers game...it's was hard to tell the two apart.

This really ticks me off...if it's Reebok to blame, a pox on their house. If it's the Bills, well...they've had enough poxes to deal with over the years. Anywho, somebody's being lazy here, and I don't don't like it!

Whoa! Didn't the red and blue stripes have outlines (blue on the red, red on the blue)? Don't tell me they got lazy and left out that detail...