millbank Posted June 30, 2006 Share Posted June 30, 2006 Ranking The Owners Bob Kraft No. 1, Jerry Jones No. 2 . Ralph Wilson is ranked lagging behind at 27, "Wilson, perhaps the league's least progressive owner, whines so much he makes Weaver look like Jimmy Stewart at the end of It's a Wonderful Life. Even after big-market owners like Kraft and Snyder, in a quest for labor peace, embraced a compromise that would transfer some of their revenues into Wilson's coffers, Wilson threw a public tantrum and voted against the proposal." - absolute garbage imo Tom Benson is ranked the worse, Last and least is Benson, the car salesman who both mismanages his franchise and doesn't appear all that stressed about adding to the misery of a suffering region. Before Tagliabue stepped in and decreed that the Saints would return to New Orleans -- at least for now -- Benson seemed content to remain in San Antonio, where he coincidentally has a home, while casting a wistful eye toward the L.A. market. So for the time being Benson will be bringing his ridiculous "Boogie" back to the Superdome and hoping that karma doesn't actually exist. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BillnutinHouston Posted June 30, 2006 Share Posted June 30, 2006 Correction - Ralph's not listed in the "In Dreamland" section, he's actually a tier lower, in the "Lagging Behind" category. I'm sure the author would have commented on Ralph's "body of work" rather than just his recent high profile rant against the new revenue sharing agreement, except that he has no clue what that body of work consists of. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ramius Posted June 30, 2006 Share Posted June 30, 2006 Correction - Ralph's not listed in the "In Dreamland" section, he's actually a tier lower, in the "Lagging Behind" category. I'm sure the author would have commented on Ralph's "body of work" rather than just his recent high profile rant against the new revenue sharing agreement, except that he has no clue what that body of work consists of. 716512[/snapback] Its because the new wave of hot pocket reporters and analysts consider the past 3 months when making decisions. They dont want to do work and actually research ralph, so they see that he voted against the CBA, and he was one of 2 to do so, so Ralphbad! Just liek the way they analyze the season. sign someone they have heard of, and you get an A+. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Oneonta Buffalo Fan Posted June 30, 2006 Share Posted June 30, 2006 Another ranking article. Sounds familiar. But seriously S.I. actually ranks Ralph 27th. hmmm..... THAT'S NOT RIGHT! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PatPatPatSack Posted June 30, 2006 Share Posted June 30, 2006 Last and least is Benson, the car salesman who both mismanages his franchise and doesn't appear all that stressed about adding to the misery of a suffering region. Before Tagliabue stepped in and decreed that the Saints would return to New Orleans -- at least for now -- Benson seemed content to remain in San Antonio, where he coincidentally has a home, while casting a wistful eye toward the L.A. market. So for the time being Benson will be bringing his ridiculous "Boogie" back to the Superdome and hoping that karma doesn't actually exist. 716499[/snapback] Brother, this is truly beyond stupid. Might be the worst piece of writing bout someone in the Bills organization ever. Georgia Front tire is about 10 spots ahead? If I could advise, I would suggest that you save your time and not click on the link. No matter how interesting it is to read truly stupid stuff. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
todd Posted June 30, 2006 Share Posted June 30, 2006 what a !@#$ing idiot. he ranked ziggy wilf over ralph? zig has hardly been a !@#$ing owner at all! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bill from NYC Posted June 30, 2006 Share Posted June 30, 2006 what a !@#$ing idiot. he ranked ziggy wilf over ralph? zig has hardly been a !@#$ing owner at all! 716597[/snapback] Todd, I care nothing about these stupid rankings. What I DO know is that the Vikes signed Hutchinson and Ralph (with a ton of cap space) didn't even try. Tell me, if you owned the Bills, would you have made a move for Hutch? Would this disaster of a draft have went down? I remind you, 3 of the 1st 4 picks were defensive backs. Since 1990, the Bills have drafted a 1st round defensive back no less than 7 times. This season, Bills management simply went to hell with themselves and drafted an entire flock of them on day 1, giving up a much needed pick in this ugly process. I am loyal to Ralph for keeping the team in Buffalo, but he is doing a lousy job of building a good football team. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pine Barrens Mafia Posted June 30, 2006 Share Posted June 30, 2006 Whoa, hold on here. Anyone witha sense of historical perspective (i.e. you've watched this team for more than the past decade) knows that the people of Buffalo were ready to run ralph out on a rail prior to the Kelly years. He was so cheap it wasn't funny. Cheap with coaches, cheap with players. And to this day, he's still cheap when it comes to management. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ganesh Posted June 30, 2006 Share Posted June 30, 2006 Todd, I care nothing about these stupid rankings. What I DO know is that the Vikes signed Hutchinson and Ralph (with a ton of cap space) didn't even try. Tell me, if you owned the Bills, would you have made a move for Hutch? Would this disaster of a draft have went down? I remind you, 3 of the 1st 4 picks were defensive backs. Since 1990, the Bills have drafted a 1st round defensive back no less than 7 times. This season, Bills management simply went to hell with themselves and drafted an entire flock of them on day 1, giving up a much needed pick in this ugly process. I am loyal to Ralph for keeping the team in Buffalo, but he is doing a lousy job of building a good football team. 716607[/snapback] Bill, I respect your opinions a lot....But come on, Ralph does not make the decisions to draft 3 DBs with the 1st 4 picks.... May be he gets criticized for hiring a GM who has no prior GM experience and a coach who was canned by another team and has no real success other than a 13-3 season..... Ralph might influence the draft, but to attach the 4 picks to him is ridiculous. BTW, time will tell if those picks turn out to be good ones or not... I was disappointed in the non-Hutch signing too....But to sign someone is a two way street....What if Hutch never wanted to come here. Again, ton of cap space does not map to tons of real cash in hand..... The PATs have won with no name 4th-5th rounders and street FAs on their OL....If our OL could get a resemblance of coaching we could be better Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dr. Fong Posted June 30, 2006 Share Posted June 30, 2006 Where the hell are all these rankings coming from all of a sudden? I guess the talking heads of the sports world have officially reached their saturation point and run out of things to talk about. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pyrite Gal Posted June 30, 2006 Share Posted June 30, 2006 Its because the new wave of hot pocket reporters and analysts consider the past 3 months when making decisions. They dont want to do work and actually research ralph, so they see that he voted against the CBA, and he was one of 2 to do so, so Ralphbad! Just liek the way they analyze the season. sign someone they have heard of, and you get an A+. 716565[/snapback] Actually its my sense that Ralph has long gemerated some negative feelings amongst his felllow owners and some folks well connected in the NFL. Somebody (ies?) well connected somewhere may well have it in for Ralph which may well explain wny he has never gotten inducted in the HOF despite being a several time finalist and one of the original AFL owners. There are a number of episodes that Ralph has been involved in that are candidates for pissing off some NFL folks (some are not a problem as far as I am concerned but on some of these items Ralph took a stand I thought was unreasonable). 1. Many of course are familiar with Ralph;s recent canning of TD. Though I think this move is well justified by TD's record of failure, it clearly pissed off Mort since TD was one of his boys. I think this in part is at the base of ESPN using its post season rankings to pretty much rag on the Bills. However, though ESPN has shown some stupidity with their rankings, this is a legitimate indictment of Ralph in that either he screwed up in firing TD or else he screwed up by hiring TD. One way or the other in reality he screwed up. 2. I think some in the NFL have a bad taste about the way Ralph handled his firing of Wade in that he certainly had a right to can him (and was correct to do so as Wade came off like a Billy Joe Hobert when he publicly announced with 3 or 4 games left in the season that the Bills were done are far as making the playoffs even though they had a mathematical chance of making it. Jim Mora then HC of an Indy team with the exact same record as the Bills said that Wade was nuts for saying that and as long as Indy had a mathematical chance they were going for it. Indy made the playoffs (including logging a win over the Bills) and the Bills did not. Bu,'s son deserved to be canned. However, in a fit of pique probab;y explained by Ralph being pissed at how Butler had strung him along putting off contract talk til after the season and then flying the coop for CA, Ralph ignored everyone telling him this idea was a loset and challenged paying Wade the year remaining on his contract. Ralph lost in arbitration setting a bad precedent for disputes between HCs and owners. Though much of the reporting by the young Turks is prompted by recent events such as the debacle of the TD hiring or firing mistake and by his perceived Alzheimers like moments saying he did not understand the new CBA, there actually is some history of his alienating some NFL folk a few years back. 3. In addition, to these nuggets, my sense is that a big reason why some folks may be anti-Ralph regarding the HOF was the way things went dpwn with he retirement of Jim Kelly. In essence Ralph violated the restrictions of the salary cap by paying Jimbo a cool million bucks in return for his services in the past with no future cap hit for this allocation. Supposedly, Jimbo and Ralph had a handshake agreement that Jimbo was going to be rewarded by Ralph in his next contract when he became a free agent after what turned out to be his last season (96 or so). Hpwever. because Kelly got concussed out of the league in his final game, but insisted thar Ralph make good on his handshake. the million simply became walking away money so that Jimbo did not complain. In essence Ralph violated the nascent salary cap by getting service from Jim which never counted against the Bills cap. I was surprised other owners did not moan about this and would not be surprised if they are taking it out on Ralph in other ways. 4. Overall, there appears to be some hisory which goes pretty far back of Ralph either exercising his financial muscle to the disadvantage of the Bills fans or inconvrnience of other teams, but fortunately for him we still love him. This oddity MAY grate on someThese include: A. Ralph complained quite publicly and bitterly in the late 90s when attendance dipped from the incredibly high levels produced when the Bills were going to SB after SB in the early 90s and the Bill's were simply putting a worse product on the field. he went as far as putting a big ad in the Buffalo news in essence calling out Bills fans for not supporting the team. Fortunately the teams success turned around and the fans came back, but it really came off to some as sour grapes to have him complain at all about lack of fan support given how great rabid Bills fans were and the primitive level of customer support the Bills provided through the late 90s (ex. rather than running tickets through computers accessible throught the statdium like most teams, will calls were told to go to one window where tickets were divided into old shoe boxes. B. Ralph complained and kvetched and still forces the NFL to give the Bills home games at 1pm on Sunday as our regional marketing strategy make it hard for fans to commit the driving time to attending night (particularly non-weekend Monday) night games. This request can be done but the restriction is another item which complicates putting a schedule together. ironically many Bills fans blame the league for not featuring the Bills when actually it is the Bills who complained bitterly about hosting any night games. C. When the league stupidly was trying to enforce the black-out rule in all cases (the NFL eventually realized that the big money was not in ticket sales but in TV revenue and that it made better financial sense for them to provide product to sale commercials in large markets rather than attempt to raise attendance by threatening that it was the only way to see the game- TV was both "free" advertising and a bigger cash cow in the end than ticket sales) the Bills seemed to ask for extensions of the deadlines and try to sell every ticket they could and still get a chance to be on TV. This interplay also likely complicated NFL rule application and set odd precedent. Again fortunately, NFL economics overrode this odd case as rhe new CBAs led to increased popularity which reduced black-out issues and also teams reduced stadium seat amount and converted them to luxury boxes which not only made the blacout issue easier but also allowed owners not to split the premium seat $ with players. Some of this different people reacted different ways so I am uncetain how these issues rank in importance, but I think there is a long history of Ralph pissing his peers and some fans off and it is now coming back to haunt him in the complaints of younger writers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ganesh Posted June 30, 2006 Share Posted June 30, 2006 1. Many of course are familiar with Ralph;s recent canning of TD. Though I think this move is well justified by TD's record of failure, it clearly pissed off Mort since TD was one of his boys. I think this in part is at the base of ESPN using its post season rankings to pretty much rag on the Bills. 716650[/snapback] I think this TD firiing is ridiculous. If TD was such a great GM, why haven't 31 other teams of wich some had needs for a GM never hired him. Bottom line is TD proved inept at building a team to win. His 5 year record proves it. He made some good moves in the FA and draft and some moves did not Pan out. He made two bad moves in hiring HC which ultimately cost him his job. 2. I think some in the NFL have a bad taste about the way Ralph handled his firing of Wade in that he certainly had a right to can him (and was correct to do so as Wade came off like a Billy Joe Hobert when he publicly announced with 3 or 4 games left in the season that the Bills were done are far as making the playoffs even though they had a mathematical chance of making it. 716650[/snapback] This one is on Ralph. He really handled this shoddily. But then he was pissed of at the firing of his best ST coach and hriing of the worst ST coach in the NFL and the refusla to fire him. Wade also encourage the QB controversy by not shutting down either RJ or DF. Still, RW never did justice by making this a public feud. Though much of the reporting by the young Turks is prompted by recent events such as the debacle of the TD hiring or firing mistake and by his perceived 3. In addition, to these nuggets, my sense is that a big reason why some folks may be anti-Ralph regarding the HOF was the way things went dpwn with he retirement of Jim Kelly. 716650[/snapback] BTW, the last time I checked the writers of ESPN they were still Mort, Pasta Belly and Prof. Crooky.....All who have been in the NFL reporting for more than a decade....Calling them Turks sounds seems silly....And SI has Dr. Z, King etc... In essence Ralph violated the restrictions of the salary cap by paying Jimbo a cool million bucks in return for his services in the past with no future cap hit for this allocation. .................... 716650[/snapback] I think every team does this in some sort of way....When a player becomes a "Consultant" to the team, that is in essence what they are doing...I am sure Kelly got a similar position.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pyrite Gal Posted June 30, 2006 Share Posted June 30, 2006 I think this TD firiing is ridiculous. If TD was such a great GM, why haven't31 other teams of wich some had needs for a GM never hired him. 716667[/snapback] All I am saying is that take your pick, either way you choose leads to the conclusion that Ralph made a colossal error. There are those in the media who were pissed when their boy TD was let go because they lost a source who was inside the NFL system. I think this is actually the source of some of the kvetching some media are making about the Bills choice of Whitmer being pre-mature and that they were fools to trade up for McCargo. On the other hand you might feel that Ralph was totally correct to fire a football fool like TD, but even this agreement with his firing declares Ralph a fool for hiring this idiot in the first place and expecting him to do anything other than his team failing to make the playoffs in his 5 years. Either way you cut it, the buck stops with the owner who hires the GM. You get your choice as to whther he screwed in hiring TD or firing TD. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lurker Posted June 30, 2006 Share Posted June 30, 2006 This just in...SI sells more magazines in large markets than small ones. They should hang a red light over their masthead. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
eball Posted June 30, 2006 Share Posted June 30, 2006 Ranking The OwnersEven after big-market owners like Kraft and Snyder, in a quest for labor peace, embraced a compromise that would transfer some of their revenues into Wilson's coffers, Wilson threw a public tantrum and voted against the proposal. 716499[/snapback] You mean the "public tantrum" that resulted in other small market owners coming forward to admit they felt backed into a corner to sign the agreement, and the same "public tantrum" that resulted in Buffalo being given a seat on a newly formed committee to explore the long-term effects of the CBA in small markets? Yeah, he sounds like a doddering old fool to me too. !@#$ the media. I can form my own GD opinions. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
drnykterstein Posted July 2, 2006 Share Posted July 2, 2006 how the heck do you go about ranking owners? goodness, everything needs to be ranked these days. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dibs Posted July 2, 2006 Share Posted July 2, 2006 how the heck do you go about ranking owners? goodness, everything needs to be ranked these days. 717371[/snapback] I rank your post #4 out of the 16 posts on this thread. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ganesh Posted July 2, 2006 Share Posted July 2, 2006 Either way you cut it, the buck stops with the owner who hires the GM. You get your choice as to whther he screwed in hiring TD or firing TD. 716733[/snapback] IF that is the case, then a guy like Snyder should be at the bottom of the pile for hiring and firing GMs and Coaches regularly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nanker Posted July 2, 2006 Share Posted July 2, 2006 When does the SI Article ranking NFL stadium Parking Lots hit the news stands? Can't wait for that one. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bill from NYC Posted July 2, 2006 Share Posted July 2, 2006 There are those in the media who were pissed when their boy TD was let go because they lost a source who was inside the NFL system. I think this is actually the source of some of the kvetching some media are making about the Bills choice of Whitmer being pre-mature and that they were fools to trade up for McCargo. 716733[/snapback] You might be right. Anything is possible, but I find the above statement to be far fetched. Who in the world besides a diehard Bills fan could possibly think that our favorite octogenarians had a good draft? Levy refused an extra 2nd to move down to 14th, right? He was afraid I suppose that we would have missed out on the 2nd safety to be selected, a player who was himself surprised to be drafted so early. The team sucks, yet he refused an extra 2nd round pick, and gave one away in the same draft. If you are happy with this idiocy I envy you, but expecting the media to praise this ass-backwards process is a reach and a half. By it's very nature this draft was unorthodox, if not out and out stupid, and rings of TD imo, who was arrogant enough to take a fat RT at #4. You see, fat RTs don't go that early. As for safeties....... Very few were ever drafted in the top 10 as you can see, let alone the one who is rated second by most. Can this draft be a good one? Sure, but the odds seem stacked against it, and I don't blame reporters for saying so. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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