Bravo, Bucky

[birdog1960]

In what way does this contradict what I said? Just because the business-building model is non-traditional doesn't mean that the owner isn't fully responsible for it.

 

Also, to say that he's done nothing to add to the popularity of the league is patently false. He's the first NFL owner to play regular home games outside of the United States. Regardless of the popularity of his team in that market, there's no question that the NFL is benefitting from that exposure.

 

And you might notice that I was one of the first people in this thread to point out that attendence has zero to do with the team's profitability.

having a consistently lousy team hurts the league. and he's put together consistently lousy teams. how many national bills fans are going to drop sunday ticket next year if gailey is still coach and fitz is still qb? i know of one. will there ever be an exciting and meaningful bills/somebody rivalry again?

 

but the point of the article is that wilson cares much too little about the fans or buffalo as evidenced by his actions outlined there. building a successful business and having a winner in the nfl needn't be mutually exlusive. but for the vast majority of wilson's tenure that has been the case.

 

and legacy? don't think he cares a fig about it but billy sullivan's wiki page might foreshadow that "legacy", with additional footnotes about legal wranglings with coaches and gm's and the hof, resulting in a net wash.

[G-Daddy]

How much is enough for Ralph? Interest alone on the net amount from the sale of the team will take care of the family quite nicely. You can't take it with you Ralph. Spend some cash on an NFL level professional front office and coaching staff while you still can to thank rabid Bills fans for their 51 years of support. Hey, success will most likely increase the value of the franchise even more.

[RkFast]

Hack article.

 

1. Williams did not have to "justify" his contract in the first month he was here. Nobody hired for any job anywhere is expected to do that.

 

2. The great coaches sitting behind microphones arent doing that becuase they would rather not coach the Bills. They are doing that becuase they would rather not coach ANYWHERE. They all have had success, have worked the 100 hour weeks, have endured the press, and the pressure. Now they have a fly-in, fly-out jobsfor a few days a week, get paid more and get to keep what sanity they have left. When they are done with a game, they dont have to go do pressers and be second guessed or hide in the bowels of the stadium watching film for another four hours. They go have a big dinner and then fly home until the following Thursday. Easy decision.

 

3. Wilson is in the HOF not becuase of his team's W/L record, but becuase he was instrumental in the AFL/NFL merger and the founding of the modern NFL. Every football fan alive knows that. Come on.

 

4. The Bills were good for more than just "the early 90s." They had a winning record except for two years from 90-99. The Bills were good for the ENTIRE 90s, for the most part. Bucky is playing fast and loose with the facts.

 

5. The article is about Wilson, but the last part is about hiring staff. Bill Polian, who is more or less retired, and AJ Smith. Why not dig up John Butler while youre at it, "Bucky"? Seriously....the best he can suggest is hiring the guys who built the team 20 years ago? And how does hiring hew staff (or rehiring old staff) fix the ownership "problem?"

 

Hack piece....hack.

Edited November 29, 2012 by RkFast

[K-9]

Hack article.

 

1. Williams did not have to "justify" his contract in the first month he was here. Nobody hired for any job anywhere is expected to do that.

 

2. The great coaches sitting behind microphones arent doing that becuase they would rather not coach the Bills. They are doing that becuase they would rather not coach ANYWHERE. They all have had success, have worked the 100 hour weeks, have endured the press, and the pressure. Now they have a fly-in, fly-out jobsfor a few days a week, get paid more and get to keep what sanity they have left. When they are done with a game, they dont have to go do pressers and be second guessed or hide in the bowels of the stadium watching film for another four hours. They go have a big dinner and then fly home until the following Thursday. Easy decision.

 

3. Wilson is in the HOF not becuase of his team's W/L record, but becuase he was instrumental in the AFL/NFL merger and the founding of the modern NFL. Every football fan alive knows that. Come on.

 

4. The Bills were good for more than just "the early 90s." They had a winning record except for two years from 90-99. The Bills were good for the ENTIRE 90s, for the most part. Bucky is playing fast and loose with the facts.

 

5. The article is about Wilson, but the last part is about hiring staff. Bill Polian, who is more or less retired, and AJ Smith. Why not dig up John Butler while youre at it, "Bucky"? Seriously....the best he can suggest is hiring the guys who built the team 20 years ago? And how does hiring hew staff (or rehiring old staff) fix the ownership "problem?"

 

Hack piece....hack.

 

Nice post.

 

But there is a faction of fans that think the NFL started only AFTER Jerry Jones and Robert Kraft became owners. Anything before that time was just leather heads running around. Didn't you know that Thorpe and Namath and Nagurski and Jim Brown all played in the same era?

 

GO BILLS!!!

[Helpmenow]

Ralph Wilson is one of the Crown Jewels of WNY.....we are lucky to have had him.....

 

 

what has bucky ever built ?....NOTHING !!!.....

 

 

it's so easy to tear someone or something down.....a little harder to build something.

 

Crown Jewell that's a good one. Kept a team here and what has he given his fan base?

 

It is more about respect to Wilson than winning, let see run polian out and keep loser nix in

[5 Wide]

Debate all you want about how lucid Wilson is. Sit here and discuss what his true intentions are. Those are all debatable, however his track record is not. Mediocre hires into positions of authority within the team. With the exception of a few years of Donahoe, the leadership of the team has always been a bit of puppetry to Wilson. Even when the architect of the winningest portion of the team's history had a different vision, he was dismissed. Ralph might be in the middle of the pack for what he has invested in player contracts, but he has failed to pilot the organization in a straight and true direction. This organization has never had an identity. When you think of the greatness of the Kelly, Thurman, Bruce Bills of the early 90's, it looks like it was the case of a blind squirrel finding a nut. They captured lightning in a bottle for a few years with some superior talent. They sell off a game every year to Toronto when a significant portion of that revenue could simply be generated by not having the stadium named after Ralph. They retread coaches, they retread GM's, but act like they do us a favor by maintaining the lowest prices in the league. What they don't tell you is that you are getting exactly what you pay for, mediocre football that at times borders on dysfunctional, in an old stadium that houses one-less regular season game than it used to. They tell us how hard it is for them to make their $30 million annual profits in a small market, but they don't mind floundering in the obscurity that their mediocrity has created. At the end of the day, all they have to answer to is a few small market reporters who occasionally take them to task in front of a disillusioned audience. There is no Ed Werder camped outside the administration offices on Gailey watch, there is no headline in the USA Today asking what happened to the Buffalo Bills. There is just the silence that is momentarily broken by a few who question the lunacy of it all, only to have it die back down in time for the next check to clear.

[K-9]

... They sell off a game every year to Toronto when a significant portion of that revenue could simply be generated by not having the stadium named after Ralph. ...

 

I disagree with this. The last Bills/Toronto deal paid them $78m over five years. The vast majority of royalties paid for stadium naming rights don't come close to this annual average. And the ones that equal or surpass that deal, are in much larger corporate markets.

 

This article was published before the opening of the season last year. Not sure if anything has changed but the big deals are for many years and are still in effect.

 

http://images.businessweek.com/slideshows/20110822/nfl-stadiums-with-the-most-expensive-naming-rights#slide1

 

Ironically, Ralph Wilson was one of the first owners in history to sell the stadium naming rights when Rich Stadium opened in 1973.

 

GO BILLS!!!

[Mr. WEO]

worked fine this morning. seems the link on the main tbd page doesn't work now either. strange. you can go directly to the buffalo news sports site and that works last i checked.

 

maybe locked out of team events. possibly just a hostile environment or passive aggression in bills facilities i expect his job is somewhat dependent on access not available to the likes of us. have you never been the recipient or possibly the giver of the cold shoulder in a work environment? i've seen people change jobs over it.

 

Hmmmm....I did not consider the dreaded cold shoulder.. Well, in that case, Bucky's heroics make him a regular William Wallace.

 

If you would just allow a man to call your daughter what Polian supposedly said about Ralph's daughter and not do something about it, I have zero respect for you.

 

What if it was an accurate description?

 

In what way does this contradict what I said? Just because the business-building model is non-traditional doesn't mean that the owner isn't fully responsible for it.

 

Also, to say that he's done nothing to add to the popularity of the league is patently false. He's the first NFL owner to play regular home games outside of the United States. Regardless of the popularity of his team in that market, there's no question that the NFL is benefitting from that exposure.

 

And you might notice that I was one of the first people in this thread to point out that attendence has zero to do with the team's profitability.

 

I think I explained that the business model for the NFL actually does mean that the owner isn't fully responsible for it.

 

Also, Ralph's raping of the gullible Rogers clan turned out to be incredibly unpopular on both sides of the border. There is no evidence that this had any impact on the popularity of the league. No one outside of these 2 cities likely knows the Bills play there once a year and the empty seats in the tiny Skydoem attest to the lack of popularity in the only place it was intended to improve.

 

Didn't Ralph have to lend money to teams so the AFL won't fold?

 

Yes, and that brief act of kindness (or shrewdness) got him into the HOF. But for the last 40 years, he has done very little to make the NFL as popular as it is nationwide. Recall the collective national groan when the Bills made it to the SB for the 4th consecutive time. For the past 40 years he has drawn hundreds of millions off of the shared revenue model from his $25,000 investment.

[thebandit27]

I think I explained that the business model for the NFL actually does mean that the owner isn't fully responsible for it.

 

Also, Ralph's raping of the gullible Rogers clan turned out to be incredibly unpopular on both sides of the border. There is no evidence that this had any impact on the popularity of the league. No one outside of these 2 cities likely knows the Bills play there once a year and the empty seats in the tiny Skydoem attest to the lack of popularity in the only place it was intended to improve.

 

 

The owner is fully responsible for making an effort to maximize local revenue in order to be eligible for shared revenue from the league. It's in the CBA.

 

And the bolded statement cannot possibly be serious. I'd wager any serious football fan could tell you that Buffalo plays 1 game per year in Toronto just as easily as they could tell you that Jacksonville will start playing 1 game per year in London next season.

 

Lastly, it's pretty obvious that the empty seats in Toronto are a result of the team's relative lack of popularity, not the NFL, as I know more than a handful of Canadian NFL fans that travel from Ottawa, Sudbury, Windsor, and other areas to see that game...and they're not Bills' fans. The move may not have increased NFL popularity as much as originally anticipated, but whatever number of fans attend that game each year is an increase in the number of NFL fans that attended a game in Canada pre-2008. Also, I find it hard to believe that the league would approve a 5-year extension for the series if they didn't believe it increased the popularity of their brand.

 

Yes, and that brief act of kindness (or shrewdness) got him into the HOF. But for the last 40 years, he has done very little to make the NFL as popular as it is nationwide. Recall the collective national groan when the Bills made it to the SB for the 4th consecutive time. For the past 40 years he has drawn hundreds of millions off of the shared revenue model from his $25,000 investment.

 

Wait, really? We're going to attribute this to Ralph Wilson, and not the fact that the nation was tired of seeing the Bills lose?

 

Nice job bludgeoning your own credibility, WEO.

[Mr. WEO]

The owner is fully responsible for making an effort to maximize local revenue in order to be eligible for shared revenue from the league. It's in the CBA.

 

And the bolded statement cannot possibly be serious. I'd wager any serious football fan could tell you that Buffalo plays 1 game per year in Toronto just as easily as they could tell you that Jacksonville will start playing 1 game per year in London next season.

 

Lastly, it's pretty obvious that the empty seats in Toronto are a result of the team's relative lack of popularity, not the NFL, as I know more than a handful of Canadian NFL fans that travel from Ottawa, Sudbury, Windsor, and other areas to see that game...and they're not Bills' fans. The move may not have increased NFL popularity as much as originally anticipated, but whatever number of fans attend that game each year is an increase in the number of NFL fans that attended a game in Canada pre-2008. Also, I find it hard to believe that the league would approve a 5-year extension for the series if they didn't believe it increased the popularity of their brand.

 

See below. You are agreeing that the Bills do not contribute to the League's popularity. In fact, you are implying that the unpopularity of the Bills is the reason there are so many empty seats. It can't also be true that the empty seats are a sign of the NFL's increased popularity, even if a curious few people you know ventured through the gates..

 

 

Wait, really? We're going to attribute this to Ralph Wilson, and not the fact that the nation was tired of seeing the Bills lose?

 

Nice job bludgeoning your own credibility, WEO.

 

Yes, you've got it right--the nation was tired of seeing the Bills win--and earn a spot in another SB, which most assumed they would agian squander. Therefore they were unpopular. Hence, the preceding sentence that "he has done very little to make the NFL as popular as it is nationwide." Even in their apex, the Bills had become unpopular (and not in a way, say, the pats or the Cowboys are "hated"). Sicne then they have become a joke to other fans, or irrelevant at best.

 

So no, Ralph and his Bills did not contribute to the exponential popularity of the NFL over the past several decades.

[thebandit27]

See below. You are agreeing that the Bills do not contribute to the League's popularity. In fact, you are implying that the unpopularity of the Bills is the reason there are so many empty seats. It can't also be true that the empty seats are a sign of the NFL's increased popularity, even if a curious few people you know ventured through the gates..

 

Try reading the whole post next time...as I said:

 

The move may not have increased NFL popularity as much as originally anticipated, but whatever number of fans attend that game each year is an increase in the number of NFL fans that attended a game in Canada pre-2008. Also, I find it hard to believe that the league would approve a 5-year extension for the series if they didn't believe it increased the popularity of their brand.

 

 

Yes, you've got it right--the nation was tired of seeing the Bills win--and earn a spot in another SB, which most assumed they would agian squander. Therefore they were unpopular. Hence, the preceding sentence that "he has done very little to make the NFL as popular as it is nationwide." Even in their apex, the Bills had become unpopular (and not in a way, say, the pats or the Cowboys are "hated"). Sicne then they have become a joke to other fans, or irrelevant at best.

 

So no, Ralph and his Bills did not contribute to the exponential popularity of the NFL over the past several decades.

 

Grow up WEO. You're blaming the Bills' winning for their lack of popularity now? Come on man. By that logic, Robert Kraft, Art Rooney, and Jim Irsay also haven't contributed to the league's popularity, since--you know--their teams are the ONLY 3 teams to have represented the AFC in the Superbowl over the last 10 years. And nobody with any level-headedness can deny that the non-Patriot and non-Steeler fans around the continent are tired of seeing them win. Or does the fact that they've taken turns getting there every 2-3 years exempt them from that situation in your view?

 

Good grief man. The Bills are lousy, so they haven't contributed to the league's profitability...and when they were good, that was the reason they didn't contribute to the league's profitability?

 

Are you sure you're actually arguing a position, or are you on another one of your disagree-for-the-sake-of-disagreeing kicks that you partake in so often?

Edited November 29, 2012 by thebandit27