Gordio

Noone has answered my question of what team is going to be willing to give Manning a check for $28 million when he has not played in over a year & just had neck surgery in the summer. If Manning is on an NFL roster in March that team is going to have to give Manning that bonus. I doubt any team is going to be willing to do that including the Colts. That is why I think he will end up getting cut sometime in Febuary.

There is noway that Indy is going to pony up & cut Manning a check for $28 Million in March when Luck is sitting right there to be had. They are going to end up cutting Manning because my guess is no team would be willing to take on Manning contract either. I can't say I would blame Indy for this.

Yeah that is a great idea isn't it? Here is a crazy idea. Why don't we get a guy with a proven track record that you know has had experience running a NFL franchise before. It just might be crazy enough to work.

Donahoe to me was the guy that always wanted to make a decision somewhere out in left field just to prove that he was smarter then everybody else. His drafts killed this franchise & definately started the wheels in motion to the product we have on the field today. Say what you want about the Mike Williams pick but every magazine that year I fuggin read said Mckinney was the pick. Williams was the 2nd best tackle in the draft & even worse he was a right tackle. Now Mckinney has not turned out to be the pro bowler everybody thought he was going to be but certainly has had a better career then Big Mike. The WM pick. A luxury pick this team could not afford & one of the most arrogant picks that I have ever seen a Bills GM make. Could of had Steinbach. Trading up for Losman. Idiotic. This guy was arguably the 4th best QB in the draft, had an attitude problem that dated all the way back to his days at UCLA, played in a spread offense, scored about as low as you can possibly score on his wonderlic test, was a project & should of never been taken that high. With the pick we gave Dallas for this moron we could of had D Ware. Great. Oh yeah & Matt Schaub was taken by Atlanta in the 3rd round that same year. The bottomline here throughout about this lost decade is nothing is going to change until there is a change of ownership. Unfortunately for us, a change in ownership might mean us losing the bills. Kind of stuck between a rock & a hard place.

I like this but would tweak it a little. Season starts Labor day weekend as it does & each team can play no more then 11 games in regular season. All seasons end the week before Thanksgiving & all league has a conference championship game Thanksgiving Weekend. They could promote the hell out of this with the winner of each conference championship game gets an automatic bid. That will give you 11 teams( I believe there are currently 11 conferences). You then take 3 wild cards based on whatever teams are left BCS ranking is highest. You then seed them according to BCS/computer ranking with the 1st 2 seeds getting a bye. First week of December you play the first round 3 vs 14, 4 vs 13 etc.. with the higher seed hosting the game with one contingency, you need to be conference champ to host the 1st round. I believe that would ensure fan support for the first round games. Take this year, Stanford gets in as a wild card not too sure how their student body how eager they would be to fill there place up if they hosted Arkansas St of the sun belt. But you better believe Ark St will have no problem filling that place up. If any higher seed bitches about this, simply win your conference & you will be at least guaranted being home for the first round. 2nd round you will have 8 teams(1st 2 teams with the bye & the 6 winners from the first round) Reseed them & the higher seed(no matter if their conference champ or not) gets to be home this week. After this weekend, what you are left with is 4 teams, you take those 4 teams & rotate the BCS bowls who host them. You will have 3 games each year(2 semifinal games & the final game) for 3 BCS bowls. Unfortunately one BCS bowl will be left out each year but what can you do? You play the semifinal games New Years day * the NC the following week. Every team that gets knocked out by the 2nd round are now eligible for the remaining bowls with the one BCS bowl that gets left out in a particular year with the first 2 pick of teams that they want to play, that way you keep the precious bowl tradition alive. This really does not extend the season by much & please don't cme back with the argument that acedemics should be the number one priority. Noone argues about the NCAA Tourney, which if the team makes the final four the players are pretty much out of town for a month. My way, noone could argue, noone could say well the little guy did not get a shot & my guess is those 3 weeks of the conference championship games & the 1st 2 rounds of the playoffs would be as big if not bigger then the NFL Playoffs. Everybody would make an absolute fortune which when all is said & done, the most important thing to these greedy univerity presidents.

Well you see Alabama had a couple things going for it. First, they started out the season ranked #2 so they had a little room for a loss there where as some team that started out unranked or #24 or so would probably not be able to recover from any loss. They pass the eyeball test. By that I mean I think anyone that has watched college football all year could agree that they definately have the look of the #2 team in the country. They did lose to LSU at home but keep in mind they probably would of won if their FG kicker would of done his job that day. In the end I would of liked to see a different matchup, whether it be Boise St/Ok St/Stanford but keep in mind all these teams had their chances to seal their bid & failed to do so also. Okl St lost to a 29 point underdog, Boise St lost at home on a last second FG & Stanford in only their 2nd tough game of the year(they beat USC) got blown out at home against Oregon. So all these teams had their chances. A simple solution to this would be the plus 1 theory that you mentioned. Play all the major bowl games New years Day, pit #1 in the BCS vs #4 & #2 vs #3 & have the winners meet the following week. Have the existing Bowls rotate who hosts what with maybe a provision that if their is a Pac 10 or Big 10 team in the top 4 the Rose Bowl automatically gets that game & also have the BCS Bowls rotate the championship game. So in this scenerio, LSU would play Stanford in the Rose Bowl & Alabama would play Oklahom St in the Sugar Bowl. Winners of that week would meet in the Orange Bowl a week later. I don't understand what the downside of this would be. Bowls like the Orange Bowl, who continuosly to sell that game out because they usually have to take a crappy team from the Big East/ACC would have to be all for that since every few years they would be guaranteed top flight matchups. The networks would pay a ton for this & the season would not even last longer then it does now. Also, the NC would have a better chance to be a better game since the teams playing would also of played the week before instead of not playing for 6 weeks & iot would not take the teams 2 quarters to get back their timing. The only arguement I could think of is it would render the rest of the bowls meaningless but how is that differ from what it is now.

Good news, they open up @ 11am Christmas Eve. They have the NFL Ticket also so with the games being played on Saturday that week they should have all the games on.

I am going to Quaker Steak tomorrow at noon to watch the college football games. I will ask for you & post back Monday if they will be open or not early. I am going to the one on Transit by the Eastern Hills Mall.

College girls are nice but for this board I think your better off pointing thurmal to the bars that have the middle aged heffers that have all the guys outweighed by 30 pounds.

Exactly. I know it is tough for the simpletons on this board to understand but this team is lacking NFL talent. If you get a chance to grab a guy like D Jackson you do it. He would open up the underneath stuff for everybody else & we would have a true deep threat. & if you have to pay him some serious cash who honestly cares. Would you rather have it go towards fielding a better product or into Ebenezer Wilson's pocket. The Bills are $30 million dollars under the cap, a figure that they are going to have to hit in the next few years as league mandates. I got a better idea, let's rip up Kelsay's contract & give him a new $40 million extension. Then maybe everybody would be happy.

Take it easy, I half posted it because I knew it would get a rise out of you. I have 2 friends that live out in California. I have been out there numerous times. I know it is a great place to live. So is WNY.

Yeah, with the mudslides, the constant forest fires, the thickening smog, the gang bangers, the 17% unemployments rate, the constant trafficking of illegal aliens from Mexico, the housing market crash & the earth quakes & the constant threat that the whole state is going to fall into the Pacific Ocean one day California is a great place to live. You keep telling yourself that if it makes you feel better.

I don't think anybody is trying to tell Ralph to buy the remaining tickets. I don't think anyone expects him to layout a couple hundred grand so the game is on tv. I don't know if your last comment was directed towards me but I have sat thru more meaningless games in December then I care to remember. It was part of the reason why I dropped my seasons after 12 years this year. I decided to buy on a game by game basis & told myself before the season I will keep buying them until they start losing. I bought the 1st 3 games, had a great time. Did not buy for the jets because I was out of town that weekend. If they somehow beat the titans & the chargers & still are alive for the playoffs I will probably go to the Miami game. With the NFL Ticket, I could really care less if the game is on TV. I will just put Murph & Kelso on the surround sound & will just watch another game this week on Tv.

You know what was weird & never seen anyone post about it last year. I probably should of said something at the time on this board. But the first 2 games that were blacked out last year(one was definately jacksonville, the other one was the detroit game I believe)I actually got the games on one of the channells that they use for the ticket. It was not on my regular CBS channel but the games were on one of the channels in the 700s. I live about 15 minutes from the stadium. Anyone else experience that

I will add one more thing. The way technology has been upgraded & the hassle & cost of going to the stadium I think makes the choice easier for alot of people to stay at home. I was just at Sam's Club this weekend & they had a 60 inch LED Flat Screen for $1,299. That price is incredible. You put a surround sound down in the basement, mount another tv behind the bar, talk Direct TV into giving you the NFL Ticket for virtually free(like so many of us have done on this board the last few year) & why in god's name would you want to freeze your a** off in December, pay for parking, pay $8 for a lousy draft beer, put up with the drunks, risk getting a dwi on your way home to watch a watch a game that probably is not going to have any implications on this years playoff race? If you break it down like that it really does not make any sense to go to the game.

That is really not true Promo. The 3rd Super Bowl run we did not sellout the Houston game however the actual attendance was over 70K that day(the stadium used to hold over 80K). We got drilled by Houston the week before, fans did not even know if we were going to be playing that next Sunday(if we won we would of won the division & had a bye) + Kelly was out, Bennett was out & the Bills suddenly & unexpectadly had to move about 30K seats in the matter of 4 days to meet the blackout deadline. That would be a tough task to do for any team unless you are one of those few select teams that have sellouts just by season ticket holders. The next year we did sellout & lift the blackout for the raiders game although there were about 15K no shows due to the temperature being in the single digits & the wind chill minus 25 degrees. We also soldout & lifted the blackout for the chiefs game the following week. So your statement clearly does not work that year. Saddly enough the last playoff game did not sellout against Jville however once again there was over 70K people there. Once again there was extreme circunstances. The bills did not know they would even be in the playoffs going into the final week let alone hosting a game. They needed to beat KC in which they did that final week. Jacksonville backed in also as Mort Anderson missed a chip shot fg to get Jville in @ 9-7 as the last wild card team. So you had a 10-6 team going against a basically new expansion franchise that barely got in the playoffs & once again had to move probably 30K + tickets in a matter of actually 3 days(game was on a Saturday). The weather was very nice that day(per WNY standards) - 50s partly cloudy but even still very tall order for any small market team to move that amount of inventory in such a short period of time. My point, I never bought the theory that the Bills fans are the best fans in the league but we are certainly not the worst or even in the bottom half & certainly should never be in discussion for losing our team. We have supported this mostly horrible product for the better part of 40 + years & a couple blackouts in what amounts to another meaningless December is not going to change that fact.

You know the county/town courses close I believe at the end of October but the public/private courses usually keep the pins in until the snow falls. I have golfed as late as December 30th one year at Terry Hills & the pins were still in. You got to figure this is all bonus money for them this time of year. Whatever cash they get to they probably don't even claim it. They probably just put it in their pockets.

Yep, can't complain at all. Actually went golfing Saturday at Byrnecliff. Course is in great shape. They said on Channel 4 that we are going to set a record for latest in the year that there has been measurable snow fall at the airport. With no significant snow in the next 15 day forecast we maybe able to get out of most of December without lifting a shovel. Certainly not LA weather but we will take what we can get here in WNY.

Agreed, with that being said if by some miracle they do win out they will have the tie breaker over Denver/Tenn/Oak/San Diego. They would have to hope that both the Jets & Cincy go 3-2/2-3 respectively. I could see Cincy folding but the Jets I don't think play a team with a winning record for the rest of the year. They needed to win the game yesterday, that was pretty much an elimination game.

Have you ever been in a turkish prison?

The whole problem with the bills though is they are very hesitant to give guys that 2nd contract. They are constantly letting their drafted players go after their 1st contract runsd out & the problem with this is we are always trying to replace the guys with the draft. They are never going to be able to build depth with this approach. I mean look at the rb situation. We trade mcdipsh*t & we use our 1st to try to replace him with Lynch. We trade lynch & we use another 1st to try to replace him with Spiller. We let Winfield walk & try to replace him with Clements, we let Clements walk & we try to replace him with the other mcdipshit. This line of thinking if you break it down, is crazy. They are never going to win with this approach. Whitner was not the best & had his shortcoming, but he was a legit NFL safety & he could of at least been brought back to add depth. They are never going to win with an approach like this. Injuries are inevitable in the NFL, you need guys that could at least step in & contribute.

Having Brady certainly does help but this guy is just a mismatch nightmare for any defense. You put a linebacker on him & he runs right by him. Put a db on him & he is too physical for them to deal with. The Bills really blew it by taking troupe over him. Too bad too, it would of been a great story.

When I was a kid my best friends dad was a big hunter. He tried to get his son to hunt but he never cared for it. Said the same thing, your in the woods, it is freezing out, nothing to do & some days you do not even see a deer. He hated it. One day he was telling me his dad took him out in the morning. He is up in a tree stand. Did not see one thing all day. Bored out of his mind. At the end of the afternoon he starts to climb down the tree stand & notices a chipmunk a few yards away getting an acorn or something off the ground. He tells me he pauses for a minute. thinks to himself, what the hell, points his rifle at the chipmunk & blows him away. He said the only thing left was a little bit of his tail. For the chipmunk, talk about being at the wrong place at the wrong time. I still laugh when I think of the story even to this day.

This is just a bad arguement. Name one QB since Kelly retired that left the Bills & lit up the league somewhere else. Let's see, Todd Collins, nope career backup, Doug Flutie, had a decent 5-6 game stretch & at the end of the year was benched for a rookie named Drew Brees, Drew Bledsoe, nope was eventually benched with the Cowboys, Jp Losman, nope went to the arena league, was cut by the seahawks & now is backup with the Dolphins, Trent Edwards, nope is out of the league. My point is has it ever occurred to you that the QBs that have been brought in here since JK retired have been absolute crap? Nah that couldn't be it it could it?