May Day 10 Posted February 7, 2009 Posted February 7, 2009 http://vault.sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vau...018/1/index.htm This article just oozes awesomeness. It is about the Buffalo sports landscape from January 1969. It starts out about the Knoxes, covers the city's pursuit of an MLB team, and then talks at length about how Ralph Wilson is threatening to take the Bills and move them to Seattle. And OJ may have given Ralph the leverage he needed! really though, if you have time and you are a Buffalo sports fan, this is a must read.
crazyDingo Posted February 7, 2009 Posted February 7, 2009 News flash: Ralph Wilson is still holding the city hostage.
WVUFootball29 Posted February 7, 2009 Posted February 7, 2009 News flash: Ralph Wilson is still holding the city hostage. News Flash: Water is still wet
May Day 10 Posted February 7, 2009 Author Posted February 7, 2009 thats one of the great things about the article. you could change a couple words here and there, and you could convince someone the thing was written 40 days ago, not 40 years ago. for me, someone who wasnt alive yet, it was fascinating to see that snapshot of that time period.
BillsWatch Posted February 7, 2009 Posted February 7, 2009 thats one of the great things about the article. you could change a couple words here and there, and you could convince someone the thing was written 40 days ago, not 40 years ago. for me, someone who wasnt alive yet, it was fascinating to see that snapshot of that time period. Some are so easily convinced Jedi mind tricks and the power of the Shadow is not needed; Saturday morning cartoons, FOX News and Ladies Home Journal is all that is needed.
Tcali Posted February 7, 2009 Posted February 7, 2009 http://vault.sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vau...018/1/index.htm This article just oozes awesomeness. It is about the Buffalo sports landscape from January 1969. It starts out about the Knoxes, covers the city's pursuit of an MLB team, and then talks at length about how Ralph Wilson is threatening to take the Bills and move them to Seattle. And OJ may have given Ralph the leverage he needed! really though, if you have time and you are a Buffalo sports fan, this is a must read. "says Wilson himself, seated in an opulent, glass-walled office overlooking the Detroit River. He is a big, thick-shouldered man with a heavy, rather brooding face that conceals an easygoing manner graced with wit and candor. He leans back and gazes out the window on a bearing toward Buffalo, roughly 250 miles to the " Ralph--a big thick shouldered man................... time marches on folks --great article by the way--just classic
keepthefaith Posted February 7, 2009 Posted February 7, 2009 News flash: Ralph Wilson is still holding the city hostage. Hardly. The Bills receive far less compared to many cities that get huge public funding for new stadiums or money when a new team located. The Bills operate in a completely differently economic climate from many franchises. Lower revenue, lower expenses and lower profitiability than many. Let's not forget above average state taxation as well. If Ralph was in this only for the money, he could have moved the team a long time ago.
SF Bills Fan Posted February 7, 2009 Posted February 7, 2009 That is a great article. It's crazy is how it confirms our paranoid fears about outside forces working against us. Can you imagine Buffalo without the NHL? This article was written when Buffalo was a bigger city. How could a major city that was a hockey hotbed be overloooked? It shows how much of a poorly and shortsighted operation it was that a**holes like Jim Norris were in control, ensuring that their interests were taken care of, but the league suffered. The NHL is still struggling to be anything but an afterthought and they can thank sh**heads like Norris. Glad they took his name off the division. Buffalo should build a statue of John Norris on the the waterfront getting pee'd on by a Sabre.
In space no one can hear Posted February 7, 2009 Posted February 7, 2009 If this quote (from the article) doesn't fill one with civic pride, what would? "Buffalo presents such an image of unpleasantness to the world that even its residents have come to believe that they live in sort of a condensation of all that is nasty and foul"
Lurker Posted February 7, 2009 Posted February 7, 2009 The biggest thing I got from that article was how much sports journalism (or maybe just general readership erudition) have changed over the past 40 years. "The blue-collar men who populate the city fit the mold of William Graham Sumner's original forgotten man: the middling white man who works hard, pays taxes, likes sports more than ideas and finds the modern world bewildering." Although I suppose some things never change: "The city's shock and outrage was echoed by the area's biggest and richest newspaper, the Buffalo Evening News, a grave, gray journal that chronicles the Niagara Frontier with a plodding thoroughness brightened only by a fiercely chauvinistic sports staff." Too funny...
Ennjay Posted February 8, 2009 Posted February 8, 2009 Here's something scary (to me anyway): I remember reading that article as a kid when it first came out. It was accompanied by the worst picture of the old Rockpile (War Memorial Stadium) anyone's ever seen, looking across a broken-up semi-paved parking area at a decrepit exterior wall. As I recall, Brock Yates, the author, was originally from WNY -- maybe Lockport.
Tcali Posted February 8, 2009 Posted February 8, 2009 Here's something scary (to me anyway): I remember reading that article as a kid when it first came out. It was accompanied by the worst picture of the old Rockpile (War Memorial Stadium) anyone's ever seen, looking across a broken-up semi-paved parking area at a decrepit exterior wall. As I recall, Brock Yates, the author, was originally from WNY -- maybe Lockport. hehe--i was a kid too--but I remember the ladies in tyhe neighborhood complaining about being called unfashionable in Glenn dickeys article...
VJ91 Posted February 8, 2009 Posted February 8, 2009 http://vault.sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vau...018/1/index.htm This article just oozes awesomeness. It is about the Buffalo sports landscape from January 1969. It starts out about the Knoxes, covers the city's pursuit of an MLB team, and then talks at length about how Ralph Wilson is threatening to take the Bills and move them to Seattle. And OJ may have given Ralph the leverage he needed! really though, if you have time and you are a Buffalo sports fan, this is a must read. You are right, the article was fantastic. The writer had a great sense of humor, and mixed some compliments of Buffalo in with his list of bad Buffalo-jokes popular 40 years ago. Here's something that struck me reading about Ralph Wilson as a 50 year old imposing-looking owner being interviewed in his office in Detroit back then. He was tougher in 1969! He told Buffalo that unless he got a new stadium, domed or otherwise, he would leave town. Plain and simple. He became a lot softer over the next 29 years, right up to the day he accepted the proposal to "re-model" Rich Stadium for half the money a new stadium would have cost, in 1998. Looking back, I wish Wilson would have simply made the same demands in '98 that he made in '69, "Build the Bills a brand new state of the art money making stadium, domed or otherwise, on the Rich Stadium site or someplace else in Western New York, or I will leave town." We all know we would have built it and it would have been a stadium that deserved another 25 year lease, and not this idiotic lease that already runs out in three years. In fact, if Western New York, New York State, and "Business Backs the Bills" would have found a way to get the very best stadium available in 1998 built, the Bills may not even feel forced to sell out to Toronto for regular season games.
SKOOBY Posted February 8, 2009 Posted February 8, 2009 That is a great article. It's crazy is how it confirms our paranoid fears about outside forces working against us. Can you imagine Buffalo without the NHL? This article was written when Buffalo was a bigger city. How could a major city that was a hockey hotbed be overloooked? It shows how much of a poorly and shortsighted operation it was that a**holes like Jim Norris were in control, ensuring that their interests were taken care of, but the league suffered. The NHL is still struggling to be anything but an afterthought and they can thank sh**heads like Norris. Glad they took his name off the division. Buffalo should build a statue of John Norris on the the waterfront getting pee'd on by a Sabre. Personally, I'm a Adams fan.
justnzane Posted February 8, 2009 Posted February 8, 2009 nice article; but; WTF is "beef on week" i dunno, but who da funk sez "Buff-low" ? I mean I lived in Erie/Genesee Counties for the vast majority of my life, and don't recall anyone saying "Buff-low." I have heard my students down here in ATL say that, but not back home.
jester43 Posted February 8, 2009 Posted February 8, 2009 brock yates! is being forced to report on buffalo what chased him into motorsports journalism once and for all?
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