The "Peter and Ralph Principle" the Perfect Storm at Work

[BackInDaDay]

Yeah it was. I can remember exactly where I was. My best friend growing up lived in a funeral home. They lived upstairs while the parlor etc... was downstairs. I was in his living room downstairs. Man there were clues everywhere!!!

 

[mart]

All great posts worth reading

[bobobonators]

 

Yeah it was. I can remember exactly where I was. My best friend growing up lived in a funeral home. They lived upstairs while the parlor etc... was downstairs. I was in his living room downstairs. Man there were clues everywhere!!!

 

Lol! Man thats great.

 

To OP: great post.

[MrLocke]

The thing I have been most encouraged by with Whakey is that he's actually brought in some new scouts. It seemed like the last few GMS the Bills have brought in have been getting advice from mostly the same people. Modrak was always Donahoe's right hand man. When Marv came in Modrak still had a lot of power. Buddy still took advice from Modark untill after the 2011 draft. I feel like this team really needs to clean house in the front office if they are ever going to win! Don't just change the guy at the top change the people around him too.

[BillnutinHouston]

The thing I have been most encouraged by with Whakey is that he's actually brought in some new scouts. It seemed like the last few GMS the Bills have brought in have been getting advice from mostly the same people. Modrak was always Donahoe's right hand man. When Marv came in Modrak still had a lot of power. Buddy still took advice from Modark untill after the 2011 draft. I feel like this team really needs to clean house in the front office if they are ever going to win! Don't just change the guy at the top change the people around him too.

I'm pretty sure Biuddy brought in new scouts as well, just too busy today to look it up.

[Delete This Account]

tired of this it's all "Ralph's fault" baloney, which is what i gleaned from the original post as much as i could before my eyes went squirrely.

 

i'll provide you a few examples of how it was not Mr. Wilson's fault, and how people have been allowed to function and make their own decisions without hindrance from above.

Tom Donahoe made the pick for Mike Williams and the trade for Drew Bledsoe. No one told him to do that.

Donahoe also picked Willis McGahee.

Dick Jauron was behind the decision to draft Aaron Maybin and Leodis McKelvin.

It was Marv Levy, with input from scouting staff, that made the decision to commit some $70 million in salary to sign Dockery and Walker in free agency way back when.

 

Mr. Wilson stood behind Mularkey in the former coach's decision to suspend Eric Moulds. That said, Mr. Wilson held the suspension to one game, where Mularkey wanted it to last longer.

Mr. Wilson attempted to have Mularkey change his mind from quitting.

 

Mr. Wilson signed off on the Mario Williams signing.

The one time I know he had input in making a decision was having the Bills sign Terrell Owens. It wasn't all that bad of a move. T.O. was the team's leading receiver and did sell tickets. And the team was far more dysfunctional than he was.

 

Sometimes, Mr. Wilson has been more swayed by the outcry of the mob -- Fire Jauron, Fire Gailey, Fire Everyone, Jerk Nation -- than he is to his own whims. So if you're going to knock the owner, knock yourselves as well.

 

the decision to go with Levy after Donahoe was a wrong one. but i understand why that happened. same with handing the GM job to Russ for one season.

all that said, credit Russ for giving it up and hiring an actually qualified person for the job.

 

as for questioning what Whaley does or is doing, stop being a smart-ass here. Whaley spends much of the season scouting. that's his job. to suggest all he does is shill tickets is silly.

 

 

yes, there will always be so-called "meddling" from ownership. the owner, after all, owns the team. and where's the fun in that if you can't have any say in it. ... see Jerry Jones, Terry Pegula, et al.

 

jw

Edited December 10, 2013 by john wawrow

[All_Pro_Bills]

For those who have studied management theory there is something referred to as the Peter principle where people in authority actually rise to their level of incompetence. Yet someone has to serve as the enabler for this to happen. I have as a Biils' "draftee at birth", personally witnessed this in my five+ decades as a Bills loyalist. I will also posit the "Ralph principle", that those who are insecure in a position of authority. tend to promote those to a position of authority that will not challenge them, and they in turn will hire the same and the chain keeps on repeating itself. One can see this where Russ Brandon is named a President of a professional football team. Where Doug Whaley is promoted to the GM position (where is Doug exactly anyway? Is he the latest incarnation of Booth Lustig? The only time I have heard him at all is pitching some high rollers on buying into private suites at the Ralph.) And the only times, for those new to the Bills' tumultous history, that the Bills have ever had success is when someone was brave enough (or perhaps had the inner confidence to call a spade a spade) to challenge their superior commander, unfortunately they are too few and way too far between. Whereas I can't think of an example that would be as contemptuous as say General Douglas MacArthur and President Harry S. Truman, I can think offhand of but a few exceptions where as a subordinate he challenged his superior and "commander in Ralph", I cite as these examples, former Bills' GM Bill Polian, and also former Bill's head coaches Chuck Knox and Lou Saban (yes twice), who fit that description, meanwhile we have had to endure the collection of "yes men" who have predominated the Bills history, I offer as such notorious examples, the likes of the Kay Stepenson's, Harvey Johnson's, Jim Ringo's and Chan Gailey's, Dick Jauron's, Buddy Nix's (I could keep going but it is a very long list) these individuals were not going to question their supreme commander and chief. One might seriously doubt Doug Marrone will be any different. Why should we expect anything else. He may have lucked out on Mike Pettine (time will tell), but also hired Nate Hackett because why? Nate won't challenge his mentor. See the pattern? I contend that Marv Levy was more a victim of good circumstance, being the benefactor of Bill Polian's brilliance and, add to that, Marv, being a Ralph contemporary, was not someone who was going to rock the boat after all he was a former NFL HC reject at KC and who had his only previous success in the CFL and USFL (I actually attended a Chicago Blitz game where Marv was coaching when living there). At times the Bills ship desperately needed to be rocked, perhaps the last person to try this was former Bills' President and GM Tom Donahoe (Ralph subsequently declared that this would be the last time he would see to it that he would so delegate such authority, this in itself calls into question the Russ Brandon appointment as Bills' el Presidente), also as an aside it it was just after Tom D. was the loser of a power struggle in Pittsburgh to HC Bill Cowher, so he naturally wasn't going to hire another coach who challenged him and hence we ended up with Greg Williams. Does anyone else see a pattern? It is truly the pefect strorm the "Peter and Ralph principles" at work. Doesn't get any better than that especially in the NFL!

The first Bills game I remember is the AFL championship game against the Chiefs which decided who would lose to Green Bay in SB I (that was before they called it the Super Bowl). I also think there is more than the incompetence of the Peter Principle and the suspected insecurity of the leader. My big issue is simply that winning has never been a priority of ownership. Sure, we might be able to cite a couple examples where Mr. Wilson mentioned the importance of winning but this has not translated to action in the organization and ownership has not taken enough responsibility for those failures. And with the exception of a few periods of success this franchise has been a consistent failure on the field of competition. Why? Because winning is not a goal. Many believe making as big a profit as possible is the goal of the Bills management team and while all businesses should seek to make and maximize profits the goals of making money and satisfying their customers (in this case winning would satisfy Bills fans) are not necessarily incompatible. Making statements as Mr. Wilson has many times that the reason for losing is that the team doesn't have enough talent shows a lack of accountability. If you're the leader and make that statement you've got to look in the mirror and see the source of that problem is you! You hired the guys who are evaluating and acquiring talent. So if they can't do the job then its your fault for hiring them into that position.

 

I know they're out of favor and this might strike a nerve for many but contrast this with the Sabres. Sure they stink now but when Pegula took over he put winning as priority number one. The sole reason for the organization and team to exist if I recall. His mistake was a failure to recognize that he was pursuing a course of action (with Reiger) that had a proven record of failure - the failure being not able to successfully lead the organization to acheive the goal of winning. He let his emotional attachment to the GM (and the team) get in the way of logic but finally realized or was convinced that this GM was not going to move the team forward to that goal. After waiting a little too long to take action, I believe he did move in the right direction by bringing in LaFontaine and Nolan to stablize the situation and re-set the plan.

 

Which one would you prefer, 50 years never having the goal of winning a championship or having that goal and waiting a couple years too long to realize you made a mistake and correcting it?

Edited December 10, 2013 by All_Pro_Bills

[May Day 10]

tired of this it's all "Ralph's fault" baloney, which is what i gleaned from the original post as much as i could before my eyes went squirrely.

 

i'll provide you a few examples of how it was not Mr. Wilson's fault, and how people have been allowed to function and make their own decisions without hindrance from above.

Tom Donahoe made the pick for Mike Williams and the trade for Drew Bledsoe. No one told him to do that.

Donahoe also picked Willis McGahee.

Dick Jauron was behind the decision to draft Aaron Maybin and Leodis McKelvin.

It was Marv Levy, with input from scouting staff, that made the decision to commit some $70 million in salary to sign Dockery and Walker in free agency way back when.

 

 

 

who has been hiring all these people who commit blunder after blunder?

 

It has now been 14 years with no playoffs, and no playoff wins in 17 years. The Constants are the most powerful people: Wilson, Brandon, Littman, and Overdorf. I also don't believe for 1 second that Brandon ever fully relinquished the GM role.

 

Without Jim Kelly, this franchise has won one playoff game post merger.

 

This is a loser franchise that has no hope until there is a different owner. Unfortunately, that might bring a relocation.

[BackInDaDay]

The first Bills game I remember is the AFL championship game against the Chiefs which decided who would lose to Green Bay in SB

 

i still say Bobby Bell clipped on a kickoff return when the outcome of the game was still in doubt!

 

As for Wilson, it's a shame his first roll of the dice - purchasing the franchise - has remained his best one.

[mart]

You are right, the goal is not winning. The goal is to make money for the Wilson

 

family which the last public accounting I saw was worth over $13 Billion. If the Bills

 

win that is a plus for them because it adds to their bankroll.

 

All you are going to get out of Brandon, Whaley and Marrone is what they want you to

 

know. Marrone talked after the game Sunday about improvements in the team and they

 

had a bad game. This is a bad football team, a 3-9 team, and they can say what they

 

want but we don!t have to believe them. I still remember back in the pre-season when

 

he was asked about the problem with EJs knee and what the proceedure was and he

 

said he knew but was!nt telling. Marrone is a corporate guy who will do what he is

 

told, although it probably won!t save him after his 3 year contract is up.

[ExiledInIllinois]

Two roads diverged in a wood...and we chose the one less travelled by - and it will make all the difference.

 

Interesting adaptation of Frost. Are you being negative or positive?

 

There have only been so few winners in the game. I feel the Bills have taken the path that most take... The easy, more well worn path... If you may, explain your comment a little more.

Edited December 10, 2013 by ExiledInIllinois

[birdog1960]

tired of this it's all "Ralph's fault" baloney, which is what i gleaned from the original post as much as i could before my eyes went squirrely.

 

i'll provide you a few examples of how it was not Mr. Wilson's fault, and how people have been allowed to function and make their own decisions without hindrance from above.

Tom Donahoe made the pick for Mike Williams and the trade for Drew Bledsoe. No one told him to do that.

Donahoe also picked Willis McGahee.

Dick Jauron was behind the decision to draft Aaron Maybin and Leodis McKelvin.

It was Marv Levy, with input from scouting staff, that made the decision to commit some $70 million in salary to sign Dockery and Walker in free agency way back when.

 

Mr. Wilson stood behind Mularkey in the former coach's decision to suspend Eric Moulds. That said, Mr. Wilson held the suspension to one game, where Mularkey wanted it to last longer.

Mr. Wilson attempted to have Mularkey change his mind from quitting.

 

Mr. Wilson signed off on the Mario Williams signing.

The one time I know he had input in making a decision was having the Bills sign Terrell Owens. It wasn't all that bad of a move. T.O. was the team's leading receiver and did sell tickets. And the team was far more dysfunctional than he was.

 

Sometimes, Mr. Wilson has been more swayed by the outcry of the mob -- Fire Jauron, Fire Gailey, Fire Everyone, Jerk Nation -- than he is to his own whims. So if you're going to knock the owner, knock yourselves as well.

 

the decision to go with Levy after Donahoe was a wrong one. but i understand why that happened. same with handing the GM job to Russ for one season.

all that said, credit Russ for giving it up and hiring an actually qualified person for the job.

 

as for questioning what Whaley does or is doing, stop being a smart-ass here. Whaley spends much of the season scouting. that's his job. to suggest all he does is shill tickets is silly.

 

 

yes, there will always be so-called "meddling" from ownership. the owner, after all, owns the team. and where's the fun in that if you can't have any say in it. ... see Jerry Jones, Terry Pegula, et al.

 

jw

does routine meddling include waiting til after sending a head coach (wade phillips) to the east-west shrine game before firing him while there and then suing him? have you heard any talk among the premier coaches and gm's in the game about what a good/bad owner wilson is to work for? what happened to the proposition of spending top dollar on a top coach, only to land chan gailey? why so many "not interested's"? no doubt you have much more info than us regular joes so how bout fielding some of these questions. Edited December 11, 2013 by birdog1960

[patfitz]

tired of this it's all "Ralph's fault" baloney, which is what i gleaned from the original post as much as i could before my eyes went squirrely.

 

i'll provide you a few examples of how it was not Mr. Wilson's fault, and how people have been allowed to function and make their own decisions without hindrance from above.

Tom Donahoe made the pick for Mike Williams and the trade for Drew Bledsoe. No one told him to do that.

Donahoe also picked Willis McGahee.

Dick Jauron was behind the decision to draft Aaron Maybin and Leodis McKelvin.

It was Marv Levy, with input from scouting staff, that made the decision to commit some $70 million in salary to sign Dockery and Walker in free agency way back when.

 

Mr. Wilson stood behind Mularkey in the former coach's decision to suspend Eric Moulds. That said, Mr. Wilson held the suspension to one game, where Mularkey wanted it to last longer.

Mr. Wilson attempted to have Mularkey change his mind from quitting.

 

Mr. Wilson signed off on the Mario Williams signing.

The one time I know he had input in making a decision was having the Bills sign Terrell Owens. It wasn't all that bad of a move. T.O. was the team's leading receiver and did sell tickets. And the team was far more dysfunctional than he was.

 

Sometimes, Mr. Wilson has been more swayed by the outcry of the mob -- Fire Jauron, Fire Gailey, Fire Everyone, Jerk Nation -- than he is to his own whims. So if you're going to knock the owner, knock yourselves as well.

 

the decision to go with Levy after Donahoe was a wrong one. but i understand why that happened. same with handing the GM job to Russ for one season.

all that said, credit Russ for giving it up and hiring an actually qualified person for the job.

 

as for questioning what Whaley does or is doing, stop being a smart-ass here. Whaley spends much of the season scouting. that's his job. to suggest all he does is shill tickets is silly.

 

 

yes, there will always be so-called "meddling" from ownership. the owner, after all, owns the team. and where's the fun in that if you can't have any say in it. ... see Jerry Jones, Terry Pegula, et al.

 

jw

Speaking of squirley..., sorry Ralph er "Mr. Wilson" apologist if we pinched a nerve. The fish always rots headfirst. Nuff said.

Edited December 11, 2013 by patfitz

[Chandler#81]

Excellent post, OP! Having been around from the inception as well, your analysis is accurate, truthful and, IMO, unbiased. Sure, there have been an assortment of other issues through the years that have abetted the overall dismal historical standing of the club, but it has always begun and ended at the top with Ralph's ego.

 

I'm sure I speak for all Bills fans by saying our biggest fear is the inevitable new owner will relocate the team and we will never realize a Lombardi Trophy.

[thewildrabbit]

What Bills fans don't know, or won't admit to know is that this owner is a businessman first, above all. The ultimate goal of this owner is to make money, and nothing wrong with that really, after all it is a business

 

He wants to win, just not at the expense of not making a profit. He won't take risks like other owners have done to hire top coaches or go over budget bringing in top players. Much like Raiders owner Al Davis or ex Miami Dolphins owner Wayne Huizenga who both overextended their respective teams financially badly trying to build a SB team, and thus were forced to sell part or all of the team.

 

You really have to admire this owner and his marketing dept for keeping the Buffalo Bills fans buying season tickets year after year considering so many seasons of mediocrity.

 

This owner was quietly almost as involved in all phases of the team just as Cowboys owner, president, CEO, GM Jerry Jones is with the Cowboys. I say almost because he never publicly proclaimed himself GM. Ralph Wilson has been a very hands on owner up until he hired Bills president / GM Tom Donahoe.

 

There were years past that this franchise was very close to going underwater, and the owner probably did contemplate moving the team. Instead he chose to hire top coaches, and or pay the players the going rate.

 

This owner already won two AFL championships and got his NFL teams to the super bowl four times. What is his motivation at this point in time.

 

 

Bottom line: this fan base is sorta screwed because this owner turned over his team to a money man in Russ Brandon, and not a football man! Brandon made the Toronto deal for an extra 12 mill. The Buffalo Bills are currently ranked 30th most valuable NFL team at 870 million, 12.6 million operating income. This owner wants to keep the team as profitable as possible to make the franchise more enticing for the next owner.

 

 

http://www.thepostgame.com/blog/dish/201308/only-one-nfl-team-lost-money-2012

 

http://www.forbes.com/teams/buffalo-bills/

 

 

 

Interesting, http://www.albanytribune.com/06122013-activists-demand-stripping-nfl-nonprofit-status/

[thewildrabbit]

Excellent post, OP! Having been around from the inception as well, your analysis is accurate, truthful and, IMO, unbiased. Sure, there have been an assortment of other issues through the years that have abetted the overall dismal historical standing of the club, but it has always begun and ended at the top with Ralph's ego.

 

I'm sure I speak for all Bills fans by saying our biggest fear is the inevitable new owner will relocate the team and we will never realize a Lombardi Trophy.

I agree, good honest points by the OP. I think the bolded is what has kept the fans buying season tickets every year, and that in turn retains the status quo.

 

If the fans had stopped buying season tickets the past decade like they did in 76-77 / 84-85 then this owner might have hired another Chuck Knox, a Bill Cowher type at some point. That type of hire cost more then what the head coaches salary is, because they will want top assistants, and also want input into personnel decisions.

 

But, since his team is making a nice profit every year....

[Delete This Account]

Speaking of squirley..., sorry Ralph er "Mr. Wilson" apologist if we pinched a nerve. The fish always rots headfirst. Nuff said.

 

not sure how i can be regarded as a Mr. WIlson apologist or that anyone has pinched a nerve. i simply refuse to take the it's all his fault approach. it's always a dicey proposition for me weighing in on these threads, because as i've pointed out numerous times in other threads that routinely pop up like this, because it's no-win. Mr. Wilson has a polarizing effect on people, who have essentially made up their minds on him one way or the other.

 

i'm merely trying to provide some perspective. but go ahead and provide your kneejerkish reactions. you're not the first and won't be the last.

 

jw

[GG]

 

the decision to go with Levy after Donahoe was a wrong one. but i understand why that happened. same with handing the GM job to Russ for one season.

all that said, credit Russ for giving it up and hiring an actually qualified person for the job.

 

jw

 

I seriously hope you don't mean Buddy Nix

[Delete This Account]

I seriously hope you don't mean Buddy Nix

 

say what you will, but Nix was an upgrade on what they had, and allowed for a transition to move forward. Whaley was being groomed for the GM job ever since he got here.

 

jw

[SactoBillFan]

Interesting post. Don't completely agree but the "Ralph Principle" thats kind of funny. Paragraphs are nice too.