Jerry Sullivan

[SevenandNine]

Well, seeing as you don't know EITHER of the guys' names, you're not fit to criticize their signings are you?

 

 

Yes, I can criticize them...I've been a fan for almost 35 years.

 

What's in a name? It's the mentality of the organization we're talking about here.

 

This is typical of Bills fans...they are more concerned about spelling the guy's name right than they are

about the state of the organization. This team is plummeting and I can tell you if this shi# was going on here in NYC with the Jets, the fans would be losing their minds and the owner wouldn't be safe walking the streets. It seems here in this honkeytonk city, the fans are as complacent as their jackass owner. I guess mediocrity is par for this city.

[BillsWatch]

Yes, I can criticize them...I've been a fan for almost 35 years.

 

What's in a name? It's the mentality of the organization we're talking about here.

 

This is typical of Bills fans...they are more concerned about spelling the guy's name right than they are

about the state of the organization. This team is plummeting and I can tell you if this shi# was going on here in NYC with the Jets, the fans would be losing their minds and the owner wouldn't be safe walking the streets. It seems here in this honkeytonk city, the fans are as complacent as their jackass owner. I guess mediocrity is par for this city.

 

 

Well if you believe that Mediocrity why are you are still here? Sound like your colors are Green and Yellow Mediocrity. Mentally, lacking as they may be, Jets fandom seem to be for you Mediocrity. Seems your state is being full of shi# and acting like a jackas since you appeared to join to stir up trouble like a troll.

[SevenandNine]

Well if you believe that Mediocrity why are you are still here? Sound like your colors are Green and Yellow Mediocrity. Mentally, lacking as they may be, Jets fandom seem to be for you Mediocrity. Seems your state is being full of shi# and acting like a jackas since you appeared to join to stir up trouble like a troll.

 

What are you babbling?

 

I've seen more intelligent responses from my six year old niece.

[jester43]

If he was a writer of a rival AFCE team newspaper he does a good job attempting to jab and stir up trouble. As a writer of a column in Buffalo he is a douche bag and perfect poster boy for the former Buffalo Bills fans who like to pretend to still be a Bills fan.

i take offense to that. if i didn't love this team i wouldn't bang my head against the wall 12 months a year following them. i can't help it if the owner and the front office have done everything in their power to !@#$ things up to the point where i have lost hope in them ever being competitive.

[firstngoal]

To be honest, hamgartner or however you spell it didn't get a very good review from Tim Ryan of Sirius and Fox.

When a Bills caller aske Ryan what he thought of him Ryan replied that he did a good job for the panthers when he was pressed into duty when a starter was out, but Ryan said that he will struggle against the likes of the Jenkins, Wilfork and the Miami nose tackle in the division (3-4 nose tackles)

[Adam]

I hated him when I first started reading his columns because he was all doom and gloom.

 

Then I realized he was right most of the time, and is now my favorite columnist.

 

He's paid to be the "bad guy" or devil's advocate on everything the Bills do, can't fault him for it.

Very good description- Just about every newspaper has someone like him and plenty are worse than him. I don't even want to talk about one from North Dakota

[DazedandConfused]

Sullivan is not a journalist but a columnist who tries the old method of increasing sales by inciting readers.

I agree there is a difference in the jobs. My main problem with Sully is that he is not a very good writer. He is adequate in that he has definite opinions like any columnist or commentator should. Even better, his opinions are often based in demonstrable facts (though like most opinioneers he picks and chooses which facts he wants to try to "prove" a pre-ordained point which seems to have been made mostly to stir folks up.

 

He gets a leg up in my book as many of the other commentators like a Mike Schoop talk a good game but in their quest to fill air time without the ability to edit which comes with being a writer, Schoop often seems submerge into what I call fact-free opinions. At least Sully's views are both closer to the truth whether they are correct or lame as they are more based on true facts. However. am observer can see the difference between if ones forum is filling several hours of air time each day or writing and edited column and then basically sticking to that script for your short radio stints.

 

My problem though with Sully is that he is little more than an adequate writer because his views are based on facts but carefully chosen partial facts.

 

The best writers are those who are give the facts but actually write well enough to do even more.

 

The best writers are those who can take the basic facts and find in them the basic truths about broader humanity.

 

I think this is why John Feinstein is a great writer. This why I think Frank Deford is a great writer. Heck, this why I think George Will is a great writer when he writes about baseball (though he goes off the deep-end IMHO opinion when he wrotes about politics- in sports he is usually writing about someone else like a Tony LaRussa and why they are great but in politics he seems to get all caught up in trying to demonstrate how smart and literate he is and he gets lost in my view- George should stick to pontificating about the designated hitter rule where his writing and opinions are very cool).

 

Sully though, also loses it when he writes as too much of his writing is about him (as in when he did his golf series and tries to show how smart he is regarding the Bills) and not enough about the sport itself (which actually is great even though he is just another guy).

 

The great writers can tell a sports story with great accuracy and detail, it is because they are great writers that when they are done telling the story you come to realize that they use their detailed understanding of the sport and their great skill as a story teller to reveal a greater truth most of us can relate to.

 

One of the best sports books ever in my view is one called the Survival of the Birch Bark Canoe by John McPhee. McPhee s a great writer/ Whether the story he is telling with exacting detail is one like The Curve of Binding Energy which he wrote about the Manhattan Project or the Canoe book about the recreational (this is sports in my mind) activity of canoeing.

 

Birch Bark tells the story of a canoe trip in the outback with one of the last surviving builders of canoes from the bark of the birch tree. McPhee goes into almost loving details about the craft which is simply dying. He tells this story in the context of a canoe trip with this craftsman (who quite frankly a jerk) and with Warren a buddy of his with great outdoor and canoeing skill.

 

By the end of the book one begins to realize that though this tale gives often excruciating details about canoecraft (its like reading Herman Melville provide a primer on whaling in Moby Dick) it actually is a description of how though the craft of canoemaking is dying off with one of its last practioners, the basic love of the out of doors and reverence for nature lives on embodied in his buddy Warren.

 

McPhee is a great writer about sports recreation (and tons of other stuff). Melville is a great writer as he uses the arcane details of whaling to tell a greater universal and human truth about being so addicted to a task (killing the great white whale) that one loses site of the objective (being a good human). Feinstein with a Good Walk Spoiled (his treatise on humanity using golf or even his exploration of Bobby Knight in his biography of of this force of nature is great sports writing.

 

Sully is a hack.

[SageAgainstTheMachine]

I agree there is a difference in the jobs. My main problem with Sully is that he is not a very good writer. He is adequate in that he has definite opinions like any columnist or commentator should. Even better, his opinions are often based in demonstrable facts (though like most opinioneers he picks and chooses which facts he wants to try to "prove" a pre-ordained point which seems to have been made mostly to stir folks up.

 

He gets a leg up in my book as many of the other commentators like a Mike Schoop talk a good game but in their quest to fill air time without the ability to edit which comes with being a writer, Schoop often seems submerge into what I call fact-free opinions. At least Sully's views are both closer to the truth whether they are correct or lame as they are more based on true facts. However. am observer can see the difference between if ones forum is filling several hours of air time each day or writing and edited column and then basically sticking to that script for your short radio stints.

 

My problem though with Sully is that he is little more than an adequate writer because his views are based on facts but carefully chosen partial facts.

 

The best writers are those who are give the facts but actually write well enough to do even more.

 

The best writers are those who can take the basic facts and find in them the basic truths about broader humanity.

 

I think this is why John Feinstein is a great writer. This why I think Frank Deford is a great writer. Heck, this why I think George Will is a great writer when he writes about baseball (though he goes off the deep-end IMHO opinion when he wrotes about politics- in sports he is usually writing about someone else like a Tony LaRussa and why they are great but in politics he seems to get all caught up in trying to demonstrate how smart and literate he is and he gets lost in my view- George should stick to pontificating about the designated hitter rule where his writing and opinions are very cool).

 

Sully though, also loses it when he writes as too much of his writing is about him (as in when he did his golf series and tries to show how smart he is regarding the Bills) and not enough about the sport itself (which actually is great even though he is just another guy).

 

The great writers can tell a sports story with great accuracy and detail, it is because they are great writers that when they are done telling the story you come to realize that they use their detailed understanding of the sport and their great skill as a story teller to reveal a greater truth most of us can relate to.

 

One of the best sports books ever in my view is one called the Survival of the Birch Bark Canoe by John McPhee. McPhee s a great writer/ Whether the story he is telling with exacting detail is one like The Curve of Binding Energy which he wrote about the Manhattan Project or the Canoe book about the recreational (this is sports in my mind) activity of canoeing.

 

Birch Bark tells the story of a canoe trip in the outback with one of the last surviving builders of canoes from the bark of the birch tree. McPhee goes into almost loving details about the craft which is simply dying. He tells this story in the context of a canoe trip with this craftsman (who quite frankly a jerk) and with Warren a buddy of his with great outdoor and canoeing skill.

 

By the end of the book one begins to realize that though this tale gives often excruciating details about canoecraft (its like reading Herman Melville provide a primer on whaling in Moby Dick) it actually is a description of how though the craft of canoemaking is dying off with one of its last practioners, the basic love of the out of doors and reverence for nature lives on embodied in his buddy Warren.

 

McPhee is a great writer about sports recreation (and tons of other stuff). Melville is a great writer as he uses the arcane details of whaling to tell a greater universal and human truth about being so addicted to a task (killing the great white whale) that one loses site of the objective (being a good human). Feinstein with a Good Walk Spoiled (his treatise on humanity using golf or even his exploration of Bobby Knight in his biography of of this force of nature is great sports writing.

 

Sully is a hack.

 

So Sully is a hack because he isn't on par with Herman Melville and John Feinstein? I tell ya, there are a LOT of hacks out there.

[Lori]

You're comparing 800-word columns to a longform narrative, D+C?

[CFLstyle]

Hangartner is a backup..............except when on the Bills. The team where backups start at nearly every position.

You mean like Michael Turner when he went from San Diego to Atlanta?

[DazedandConfused]

So Sully is a hack because he isn't on par with Herman Melville and John Feinstein? I tell ya, there are a LOT of hacks out there.

Naw as the way too lengthy piece (but fun for me to do to pull together esoterica from long ago enjoyed but basically unused day to day in this life I have stumbled upon) says Sully is an adequate writer IMHO compared with greats like McPhee and DeFord (both fellow victims of my alma mater by the way).

 

He is a hack because he wastes his considerable talents by simply settling for being adequate.

[Peevo]

So Sully is a hack because he isn't on par with Herman Melville and John Feinstein? I tell ya, there are a LOT of hacks out there.

 

Exactly. Its kinda hard to compare a modern sports columnist, especially in small market with a newspaper teetering on the edge of complete collapse in this economy, to a writer of Moby Dick, some would consider a staple of American literature, and the "great American novel" of the 19th century. I've never read it, and some that I've talked to who've read the uanbridged version is actually entirely unreadable, with literally hundreds of dry pages on whales. Seriously.

 

In my opinion, Sullivan is the best sports writer in town. He's the best writer at that paper, and puts his opinions in a prose that is accesable yet actually, dare I say it, makes you think! I'd agree he is quick to sing praises and then raise pitchforks. That was well said. However, he is right very very often. Maybe, like all of us, he's just sick of reporting on a dysfunctional, hapless organization. Sullivan has said it on 'GR many times. "What am I gonna write about today? The quartaaback (Boston accent), the goalie, the coach?" His material gets old, because, quite simply, we've been all talking about the same stuff for literally 10 years. Can't blame the guy for rehashing the same problems, with both pro organizations, that seem to never get fixed.

 

He's a basketball writer. That's what he's said he loves the most. It's interesting we have a decent college basketball season here. UB is still in the running for a higher MAC seed. Niagara is doing very well. Perhaps successful college teams can reinvigorate the culture here. We dont have to worry that UB is going anywhere in the next few years. Niagara isn't gonna close their doors from the bad economy. For what its worth, there is some security in following a decent college team.

[BillsWatch]

You mean like Michael Turner when he went from San Diego to Atlanta?

 

Many players sit as reserves because they need more seasoning time Whether Carolina OL Geoff Hangartner is a backup who never will become starter material or a player ready to start we will find out. Of course those who bad mouthed him in beginning will continue to do so to support their premature exclamations.

[DazedandConfused]

Perhaps I was re-acting (or maybe over-reacting to a few superlatives heeped on Sully about being a great or even very good writer.

 

I like the caveat that you put into your assessment of him that he is the "best sporters writer in this town". I think the unabridged praise some gave him in earlier threads in this post do not make this simple distinction and that was actually what launches Sully into comparison with the greats. Melville was arguably great (though I personally found even the unabridged Moby a bit turgid).

 

However, even limiting things to the modern writer or the modern sports writer, Sully is not even in the minor leagues compared to those I consider truly great sports writers like DeFord, Feinstein, or even George Will on baseball. I think even working in a small market, comparisons to these writers is legit as a person can write well whether they are in a big town or Thoreau sitting next to Walden Pond.

 

Particularly in the internet age where one's prose is virtually accessible all over the world, the small town to whereever comparison is an illusion.

 

Passion for a sport makes a difference (see George Will regarding baseball). However, the best writers are among the best because their command of the craft is so good they transcend one sport. I think Sully's work almost demonstrably falls apart for one making a judgment (which actually Sully deserves credit for because he like other professional writers are willing to subject their craft for review to the general world- this is bravery) when one looks at his series on him taking up golf. Here the Melville comparisons are probably most legit because Sully comes off as a Capt. Ahab dealing with his own demons in the course of his search to slay the white whale of aging.

 

The great writers though take the voice of Ishmael and lovingly describe the struggle of tortured soul Ahab. Sully instead presents a smarmy self-psychoanlysis of the difficulties of aging which if we are lucky we all face. Perhaps it was my failing that I could not stick with the series over time or until it was done and Sully's writing turns out to be truly great as his columns reveal greater truths.

 

However, for this reader who was actually quite prone to interest in this unusual topic from this columnist, I found his use of the craft so self-referential that I felt it was simply bad work,

 

In many ways I feel Sully is actually the perfect writer for a depressed Buffalo. He is a small writer in a small limited town.

 

Yet, the better writers (Esmonde for the news, Mark Goldman who wrote City on a Lake about Buffalo, and thousands of great writers and reporters who live in economically depressed areas some how find a way to do great expression from horrible conditions.

 

This fans judgment is simply that Sully is an adequate writer. He does show flashes of literacy and talent which indicate he could be more than adequate. The fact that he rarely seems to elevate his writing beyond simple flashes of adequate work is what makes him a hack to this reader.

 

 

Exactly. Its kinda hard to compare a modern sports columnist, especially in small market with a newspaper teetering on the edge of complete collapse in this economy, to a writer of Moby Dick, some would consider a staple of American literature, and the "great American novel" of the 19th century. I've never read it, and some that I've talked to who've read the uanbridged version is actually entirely unreadable, with literally hundreds of dry pages on whales. Seriously.

 

In my opinion, Sullivan is the best sports writer in town. He's the best writer at that paper, and puts his opinions in a prose that is accesable yet actually, dare I say it, makes you think! I'd agree he is quick to sing praises and then raise pitchforks. That was well said. However, he is right very very often. Maybe, like all of us, he's just sick of reporting on a dysfunctional, hapless organization. Sullivan has said it on 'GR many times. "What am I gonna write about today? The quartaaback (Boston accent), the goalie, the coach?" His material gets old, because, quite simply, we've been all talking about the same stuff for literally 10 years. Can't blame the guy for rehashing the same problems, with both pro organizations, that seem to never get fixed.

 

He's a basketball writer. That's what he's said he loves the most. It's interesting we have a decent college basketball season here. UB is still in the running for a higher MAC seed. Niagara is doing very well. Perhaps successful college teams can reinvigorate the culture here. We dont have to worry that UB is going anywhere in the next few years. Niagara isn't gonna close their doors from the bad economy. For what its worth, there is some security in following a decent college team.

[Anzaloha]

Jerry Sullivan has no class and knows very little about football. We deserve better.

You are now talking about 90% of the people on here.

He tells the truth, which most people do not want to hear.

He is not always right, but who is? He is at least honest and not a suck up, which

most of the reporters in Buffalo are. Most people associated with the Bills/Sabres do not

like him as he calls them out and god forbid that.

[SageAgainstTheMachine]

You are now talking about 90% of the people on here.

He tells the truth, which most people do not want to hear.

He is not always right, but who is? He is at least honest and not a suck up, which

most of the reporters in Buffalo are. Most people associated with the Bills/Sabres do not

like him as he calls them out and god forbid that.

 

But here's the problem...your version of "telling the truth" simply means "taking an extreme pessimistic view whenever things aren't going well". Telling the truth implies exploring situations objectively, and not just getting pissed off because the Bills didn't happen to sign a "big name" free agent yet. Like many posters on this board, Sully is an impatient reactionary who uses the "9 years without playoffs" item as a crutch whenever faced with a situation where it actually seems like the Bills did something positive.

[marauderswr80]

Like him or not he says what he feels and most of the time he is right.