Bills Analogy

[raphael120]

With all this new information coming out about perhaps another Toronto game...it's pretty clear that the writing is on the wall for the Bills to be fully outta here in 4 years or sooner. The new CBA, stadium lease, Ralphs eminent passing, etc...

I ask you...is it harder to root for the team now knowing that the Bills have one foot out the door?

The Bills are that chic you've dated since college. Yeah, she was the hot cheerleader back then. She had her good few years. Now she's a chain smoking, coke addict, and now works as a door greeter at Walmart. The smokin hot bod she had for a few years is all but a memory and she traded in her slim sexy black dress and high heels for a snuggie and uggs. You're married to this chic. Committed, and know you deserve better. You've been mistreated and abused, lied to and given false hopes again and again. She takes all your money and gives you blue balls when you actually get excited enough for her (after much beer consumption). She now tells you that yeah, despite putting up with her addictions, and general *****iness and heartbreak, she's saying that YOU'RE the problem and that she's going to leave in a few years, but until then, she's gonna tell you you'll need to deal with her abusing and using you for your money, your time, and your emotions until the time for her to leave has come.

This is how I see it, and yes...I guess I'm going to be that guy that sticks around and gets punched in the face by an abusive wife. Sure, I may reach for the phone to dial 911 every once and awhile, but i'll have a few beers and maybe when the light hits that pirate hookers face just right, it'll remind me of the good times. And while in the back of my mind the wins won't be as sweet because of the emptyness of it, im gonna hold onto my beer and drink to the old days and try to make the best of it.

Is that stupid? Hell yeah. But traditions die hard, and this has been a tradition.

Until then, I'm going to drink my beers on gameday and maybe when I drink enough beers, and squint just right, instead of Edwards I'll see Kelly, instead of Lynch I'll see Thomas, and Evans I'll see Reed.

[Syderick]

Another case of playoff drought syndrome

[LifetimeBillsFan]

I get the analogy and, believe me, when it comes to the Bills, I understand the feeling. But, in keeping with your analogy, let me say something that is probably going to get me negged and in a whole lot of trouble with a lot of folks here:

Seeing that chick who is now your wife and all of her faults and shortcomings isn't hard to do. But, as you think about that, have you ever taken such a good hard look at yourself?

The big shoulders of that athlete that the cheerleader found so attractive are now sitting on your waistline and that beer-filled belly is so big that you can even see your feet, let alone what's between your legs, when you look down in the shower. That full head of hair that you once had is streaked with grey and thinning so fast that when you comb it a handful ends up stuck to the comb. Worse yet, some of it has also started to migrate from your temples to your ears and nose. Those penetrating eyes that she used to lose herself in so dreamily are now blood-shot and crowned by eyebrows that are so long and bushy that they look like ivy vines growing up towards your forehead and get stuck in your eyelashes whenever you have to squint. And, you have to squint quite often now because, while you won't admit it, you can't see as well as you used to. But, you belch and fart a lot more that you did back when you were slender and muscular. Especially when you are stretched out on the sofa sucking down a beer as you watch yet another sports program or when you climb into bed next to her at night.

Yeah, she just can't wait to smell your beer-breath and feel all of that weight of yours slamming down on top of her when you are drunk enough to want to have sex with her, but sober enough that the equipment works properly, even of it isn't as long or hard as it used to get. And she loves the whining and begging that you do to get her slide her face down over the forest of hair on your chest and the mound of flubber below it until it is squeezed between the flabby sequoias that pass for your legs. She may love you enough to put up with it once in awhile, but it is hardly a mystery why she would rather do a line of coke in the ladies room of a bar with some handsome, younger stranger who has been showering her with compliments and flattery all night.

She's certainly not a winner or what you thought that she would be when you married her, but neither are you. You were going to take that college degree and all of that energy that you had and become the CEO of the company that hired you after you graduated. When you lost that job, you took all of the money that you had saved and started your own company, but your timing was bad and the economy slumped and you had to close up the business. So, instead of being a "stay-at-home-mom", she had to take that job at Wal-Mart to help make ends meet while you drifted from job to job until you landed that middle-level managerial position that you have where the pay doesn't come close to matching the title that they gave you when you were hired. So, instead of wearing glamorous dresses to lavish cocktail parties or going out to eat at the best restaurants and romantically dancing with you in the most chic nightclubs, she has to be satisfied with eating casarolles that she throws together with hamburger meat at home and, if she is lucky, maybe going out to Dave 'n Busters with you once or twice a month where you will pay more attention to the game that's on the television or the other amusements than you will to her.

You know, it's a two-way street that you are on. And, sadly, there are a lot of reasons why she might be doing that coke and find those other guys who are flattering her and trying to seduce her more attractive than being with you. She may love you as much as you love her and be willing to stay with you if you made the effort to clean yourself up and fulfill even half of the promise that you had when she met you. If you'd stop whining about how she has or will do you wrong and at least try to get your act together be more presentable, she just might find you attractive enough again to want to stay with you--and even make love to you more often.

But, you can't just keep sitting there moaning, "Woe is me!", like you have for the last 35 years, letting yourself go to pot and doing nothing to make yourself the least bit more attractive, and expect her to fall all over you in mad passionate love.

You can blame her all you want for being the way she is, but it's not her fault that you have become what you are. And, however bad she may be, it's no wonder that she is finding that there are others out there who are a lot more attractive and a lot more willing to keep themselves that way than you are.

There is only one answer to the problem with this relationship: if you want to keep this relationship--or make yourself attractive enough to find another partner to replace her if she should leave you--it is YOU that have to stop whining and get off your butt and start doing whatever you can do to make yourself more presentable and attractive to the kind of woman that you want to have. And, there are things that you can start to do NOW that will have an immediate effect in moving you in that direction.

Now, before you jump down my throat, let me spell it out for you Western New Yorkers: As long as the water from the Great Lakes flows down the Niagara River to the Falls and as long as the winds blow over the Canadian plains and across Lake Erie, the WNY region is in a position to make itself economically attractive to businesses, even with NY State's high taxes.

With demand for energy growing and a President in office who recognizes that it will be necessary for the US to shift from a petroleum based economy to one that uses a variety of sources of energy, the opportunity for Buffalo and WNY to make itself more economically attractive exists. If the political and business leaders who are currently in place do not recognize this or are so focused on other things to realize the need to act quicky and forcefully to take advantage of this opportunity, the people of WNY need to get up off their butts, throw them out of office if need be, and put people in place who will get what needs to be done accomplished. (There is no reason why any house in WNY should have to pay an electric bill! There is no reason why WNY cannot put itself in a position to offer cheaper energy costs to attract new businesses. With UB and the other colleges in the area, there is no reason why the region cannot make itself a center for new technologies and reverse the "brain-drain" that has seen tens of thousands of students graduate from area colleges and then promptly leave the area and go elsewhere for jobs.)

You can dismiss me as a critic or as an outsider because I no longer live in Buffalo. But, I will consider Buffalo my hometown until I die, no matter where I end up living. I care about Buffalo even more than I care about the Bills--and, as you all know, I am very passionate about the Bills. But, it saddens me to see what Buffalo has become. Especially because I can see what Buffalo and WNY could be--if the will was there to make it so.

However, looking at Buffalo as it is and at how WNY has been allowed to deteriorate and miss opportunity after opportunity to make itself more of what it could be, it is no wonder that the Bills and the NFL have begun to look elsewhere for a more presentable partner.

IMHO it is long past time for the people of WNY to stop whining about all the bad things that have happened to the region and take a good hard look in the mirror. Like a man getting older, there are some things that there is nothing that they can do anything about. But, just as an aging man can trim his eyebrows, nose and ear hair and get on a treadmill to work some of his weight off, there are things that CAN be done, opportunities that can be taken advantage of, etc. But, the will must be there to do those things.

Is it? Well, if Buffalo and WNY wants to keep the Bills, the people of the region and their political and business leadership is going to have to find that will.

Otherwise, you can whine all you want about how that woman made a sucker out of you as you watch her walk out the door and leave you sitting alone on your sofa with a beer in your hand and no dinner on the table.

[Don't Panic]

I get the analogy and, believe me, when it comes to the Bills, I understand the feeling. But, in keeping with your analogy, let me say something that is probably going to get me negged and in a whole lot of trouble with a lot of folks here:

Seeing that chick who is now your wife and all of her faults and shortcomings isn't hard to do. But, as you think about that, have you ever taken such a good hard look at yourself?

The big shoulders of that athlete that the cheerleader found so attractive are now sitting on your waistline and that beer-filled belly is so big that you can even see your feet, let alone what's between your legs, when you look down in the shower. That full head of hair that you once had is streaked with grey and thinning so fast that when you comb it a handful ends up stuck to the comb. Worse yet, some of it has also started to migrate from your temples to your ears and nose. Those penetrating eyes that she used to lose herself in so dreamily are now blood-shot and crowned by eyebrows that are so long and bushy that they look like ivy vines growing up towards your forehead and get stuck in your eyelashes whenever you have to squint. And, you have to squint quite often now because, while you won't admit it, you can't see as well as you used to. But, you belch and fart a lot more that you did back when you were slender and muscular. Especially when you are stretched out on the sofa sucking down a beer as you watch yet another sports program or when you climb into bed next to her at night.

Yeah, she just can't wait to smell your beer-breath and feel all of that weight of yours slamming down on top of her when you are drunk enough to want to have sex with her, but sober enough that the equipment works properly, even of it isn't as long or hard as it used to get. And she loves the whining and begging that you do to get her slide her face down over the forest of hair on your chest and the mound of flubber below it until it is squeezed between the flabby sequoias that pass for your legs. She may love you enough to put up with it once in awhile, but it is hardly a mystery why she would rather do a line of coke in the ladies room of a bar with some handsome, younger stranger who has been showering her with compliments and flattery all night.

She's certainly not a winner or what you thought that she would be when you married her, but neither are you. You were going to take that college degree and all of that energy that you had and become the CEO of the company that hired you after you graduated. When you lost that job, you took all of the money that you had saved and started your own company, but your timing was bad and the economy slumped and you had to close up the business. So, instead of being a "stay-at-home-mom", she had to take that job at Wal-Mart to help make ends meet while you drifted from job to job until you landed that middle-level managerial position that you have where the pay doesn't come close to matching the title that they gave you when you were hired. So, instead of wearing glamorous dresses to lavish cocktail parties or going out to eat at the best restaurants and romantically dancing with you in the most chic nightclubs, she has to be satisfied with eating casarolles that she throws together with hamburger meat at home and, if she is lucky, maybe going out to Dave 'n Busters with you once or twice a month where you will pay more attention to the game that's on the television or the other amusements than you will to her.

You know, it's a two-way street that you are on. And, sadly, there are a lot of reasons why she might be doing that coke and find those other guys who are flattering her and trying to seduce her more attractive than being with you. She may love you as much as you love her and be willing to stay with you if you made the effort to clean yourself up and fulfill even half of the promise that you had when she met you. If you'd stop whining about how she has or will do you wrong and at least try to get your act together be more presentable, she just might find you attractive enough again to want to stay with you--and even make love to you more often.

But, you can't just keep sitting there moaning, "Woe is me!", like you have for the last 35 years, letting yourself go to pot and doing nothing to make yourself the least bit more attractive, and expect her to fall all over you in mad passionate love.

You can blame her all you want for being the way she is, but it's not her fault that you have become what you are. And, however bad she may be, it's no wonder that she is finding that there are others out there who are a lot more attractive and a lot more willing to keep themselves that way than you are.

There is only one answer to the problem with this relationship: if you want to keep this relationship--or make yourself attractive enough to find another partner to replace her if she should leave you--it is YOU that have to stop whining and get off your butt and start doing whatever you can do to make yourself more presentable and attractive to the kind of woman that you want to have. And, there are things that you can start to do NOW that will have an immediate effect in moving you in that direction.

Wow... side of fries with your touche, sir?

[Don't Panic]

Wow... just read that again. That was simply a fantastic post, LTBF. Great way to tie in the WNY economy... well done.

[Jan Reimers]

The only thing that may keep the Bills in Buffalo - despite all of Ralph's efforts to sell to the highest bidder upon his passing - is the debt structure for new ownership in another city. The sale price, NFL relocation fees, and the cost of a new stadium will approach $2 Billion. That's a hellacious amount of debt to service.

New ownership in Buffalo would have only the sale price to deal with, and would inherit a grateful fan base and a servicable stadium. A friendly county legislature would most probably be agreeable to extending the existing sweetheart lease provisions to a new local owner as well.

[Yasgur's Farm]

The machine that is the NFL will blow itself up soon. The Bills NFL franchise may well move, but the NFL can't sustain the revenues it needs to continue. Players demands are out of control.

Poor middle class shcmucks like me can't afford to go to games and buy the merchandise (other than a T-shirt or 2 given as gifts)... AND THAT'S AT BUFFALO PRICES!! CAN YOU IMAGINE HAVING TO PAY WHAT PATS FANS DO?

[Jan Reimers]

We are in better shape to survive than many franchises. We don't have the staggering debt of new Taj Mahal-type stadiums with their concomitant need for $50,000 PSLs, multimillion dollar corporate suites, and obscenely priced naming rights. Even if the economy comes back, those kinds of ridiculous pricing schemes are going to be very difficult to sustain.

We are more than poised to compete in an NFL that will have to come back to reality, even in the elite, major markets.

[mybills]

I nominate this thread for the Hall of Fame.

[LifetimeBillsFan]

The machine that is the NFL will blow itself up soon. The Bills NFL franchise may well move, but the NFL can't sustain the revenues it needs to continue. Players demands are out of control.

Poor middle class shcmucks like me can't afford to go to games and buy the merchandise (other than a T-shirt or 2 given as gifts)... AND THAT'S AT BUFFALO PRICES!! CAN YOU IMAGINE HAVING TO PAY WHAT PATS FANS DO?

It's not just the NFL.

News Flash confirmed by Mike Francesa the other day on WFAN in NYC: The NY Yankees originally required non-season-ticket holders to purchase a 10 game package of tickets if they wanted to buy a ticket to Opening Day at the new stadium (to get an Opening Day ticket, you had to buy not just the ticket to the Opening Day game, but tickets to nine other games at the same price). Ten days ago that policy was changed: now you only have to buy a 5 game package to get a ticket to Opening Day.

Why? Because people don't have the money to spend and they weren't willing or able to buy tickets to nine games just to get to go to the Opening Day game. So, the tickets for Opening Day weren't selling, even though that is always a hot ticket in NYC and the word is that the new stadium is fantastic.

All of the sports have been and are going to be impacted. And, because none does more to squeeze every buck that it can out of fans, none will be impacted more than the NFL.

According to Francesa, the NY Giants, who have had an almost 40 year waiting list for season tickets (you couldn't get a shot at buying a season ticket for the Giants until somebody died just about), are almost two thirds of the way down through that waiting list and still have not sold out all of the PSLs that they are requiring their fans to buy in order to get season tickets.

The Jets fans are screaming bloody murder about the price of the PSLs. "Fireman Ed", who has been the face of Jets fans for years has said that, because of the price of the PSLs, he has been forced to move to a different section of the stadium where the PSLs are cheaper. Think about that: this guy has been one of the most recognizable fans in all of the NFL and a symbol of Jets fans for decades and the team would not even cut him a break on the price of the PSLs to keep him sitting in the same section that he has had season tickets in for all of this time--instead, to squeeze a couple more bucks out of the fans, they are forcing him to give up those seats and move to another part of the stadium with poorer seats because he can't afford to pay for the PSL for the seats that he has had for all of these years. How do you think "Fireman Ed" and the rest of the Jets' fans feel about that?

The attitude of the NFL and the owners, in particular, but the players, too, is to get every dollar that they can get and the fans be damned. Because so much of their income comes from TV and luxury boxes, they don't care about the "average fan". If average fans can come to the games, make some noise, and fill up the seats and add some color for the television cameras, fine. If not, who cares as long as the luxury boxes are all sold, the TV money keeps coming in, and the fans buy the jerseys and trinkets that they sell.

Why don't you see them building huge 100,000+ seat stadiums (like some colleges) to accomodate all of the fans that they could sell tickets to? Because, as far as they are concerned, the average fan is a pain in the butt and controling that many fans would cost just about as much as they would gain in revenue (because they would all basically want cheap seats). Only in the smaller markets do the fannies in the seats matter because they are the ones who make the difference between making and losing money.

And, that attitude is plain to see in how the NFL handles the Super Bowl. The game isn't for the fans of the two teams anymore. It is for the celebrities, big-shots and corporations who get most of the tickets. Yes, they still let a select number of fans from the two competing cities buy up a few tickets, but that's just to add some color for the television cameras so it will look like the stadium is filled with rabid fans on the broadcast. Sure, there will be a few locals with deep pockets who will buy some of the premium seats, especially if Dallas, Washington, New York or New England get to the SB, but the majority of the fans who are able to get tickets to the game are there to see and be seen--to mingle and make the right acquaintances--and have, at best, just a betting interest in the outcome. They are not the real, dedicated fans. But, that's okay with the NFL because it's all about the bucks and those are the people who have them. Who cares about the "average fan"? We're just the schmucks who are dumb enough to believe that it is still a game and that who wins the Super Bowl (or any game during the season) actually matters....

[LifetimeBillsFan]

PS: Another news flash: The price of building these new stadiums--of building anything these days--is obscene.

If it cost as much for the people who started this country to build things, like roads, bridges, buildings, etc., as it does now and it took as long to repair things, like roads, as it does now, we'd just about be getting across the Appalacian Mountains at this point.

Think about that for a second. And, then, ask yourself this question: "What is wrong with this picture?"

I'll leave it to each of you to come up with your own answer to that question....

[raphael120]

LBF, awesome continuation of the analogy.

Nice to talk about some of the nitty gritty stuff other than chasing 500 rumors about what practice squad player on another team the Bills are interested in.