He was rewarded for doing an amazing job at what he is currently hired to do for the Bills and will be doing for the Sabres.Originally Posted by OpIv37
What about this don't you understand?
Apparently the Sabres hockey operations were a mess, according to Paul Hamilton, and other inside sources. The Bills operations were clearly running very well and Pegula decided to upgrade the Sabres side as well.
I get accused by you for not being able to make distinctions and yet you cannot make a very simple distiction between corporate and football decisions?
I'm nopt sure if we can dumb this further for you but here goes..... Russ is NOT making football/hockey personnel decisions. Whaley/Murray are. He's making corporate decisions.
He is being rewarded for being able to sell a crappy product. If you cannot grasp how valuable a person like that it to ANY business, then I have nothing for you.
Even if Sabres have a great marketing team, you still look for ways to get better. Wasn't it your opinion that it's stupid for bills fans to be content with " good enough"? Look who's guilty of doing the same thing now.
Selling 97% is nothing when you can sell 100% every year. It would be great if you have a waiting list for season ticket holders which the sabres have not achieved.
Stop settling for mediocrity OPiv .
Last edited by justasportsfan; 07-30-2015 at 09:29 AM.
better days (07-31-2015),THATHURMANATOR (07-30-2015)
Ok well I'm not going to get too involved in this 5 page thread of discussion equal to my uncle's facebook feed about whether Obama is a Muslim, but come on.
I know he is symbolic of a lot of the frustration of Bills fans, but I think we've lumped enough on him. We can't even unequivocally agree on what he has been responsible for that is so bad (or is entirely his fault).
Just read this:
Yet the leadership change for the Pegulas highlights how Brandon continues to move away from the football operations of the Bills, where decisions are now made solely by general manager Doug Whaley and coach Rex Ryan, who report directly to the Pegulas."So I think this really delineates really more, in concrete, that we have a hockey department with [Sabres general manager] Tim [Murray] and Coach [Dan Bylsma], we have a football department with Doug and Coach [Ryan], and now we have a business department that I oversee: the business and culture within both organizations.""I know that I take some heat there, and understandably so. I understand why," Brandon said. "But that gets a little bit overblown on that front. There's collaboration in every organization. There were times when I was filling a void within the structure of our organization at times.
"That ended when Buddy [Nix] took over [as general manager, in 2010]. Buddy was in charge of football, period. And when we transitioned into [Doug Whaley], he's in charge of football, period.Nothing here shows anything that I should be worried about as a Bills or Sabres fan. He's just heading that new synergized One Buffalo concept basically, which is fine. I only care about the product on the field/Ice."But they have full autonomy, Doug Whaley and Coach [Ryan] and Tim Murray and Coach [Bylsma]. They have full autonomy to run their departments, and they report to the owner. And that's the way it should be."
Listen, I know what the rebuttal is. How can we trust him? He's a snake oil salesman. If that is your response then you will never be convinced, because all we have in this world is the facts before us and we can't actually get into his sneaky brain that is secretly going to try to ruin our sports teams. That is basically internet discourse these days and whatever if you want to use emotion as a basis for your argument that is your right in this new internet age.
I for one don't give a **** if they put Fred Flinstone as their director of business operations. As long as he isn't making personnel decisions it doesn't matter to me at all. He tried and failed to get involved in personnel decisions, that happens in life. It's not like he is an evil or bad person, you guys act like he is some megavillain in a damn movie. Now he doesn't participate in that aspect of the teams anymore. Why people have a personal vendetta against him is beyond me. If you have some sort of bone to pick with Brandon then I recommend you let it go, you'll live a lot longer.
http://espn.go.com/blog/buffalo-bill...ball-decisions
Last edited by BuffaloRedleg; 07-30-2015 at 09:37 AM.
better days (07-31-2015),justasportsfan (07-30-2015)
Since the Pegula's own both the Bills & the Sabres, it is only logical to have one person run the business of both.
It will be much easier for one person to market both teams with the left hand knowing what the right hand is doing.
And Buffalo is not the only place to do this.
For example, in New Orleans, the same person runs both the Saints & the NBA Basketball team for the owner of both teams.
on the other side of the coin, does Russ Brandon get any credit for the iron clad stadium lease between the county the Bills and to a lesser extent the NFL?
I don't like the fact that he's been here for all of the losing. I don't like it that, despite his marketing genius and the world's greatest fans, we still had blackouts through his tenure. I certainly hated and reviled the Toronto ****show, lackluster GM and head coach hires, and the awful 2000 era uniforms. His product was unenjoyable to say the least. But I kept watching not because of what was going on currently, but the anticipation and hope of what to come was going to be better than what we had.
He get's a big fat meh from me.
"Hate is a lack of imagination."
-Graham Greene
yes, he gets credit for the last lease because that was solid. i said it at the time. i just don't think marketing football in buffalo is a thing. the nfl exploded in the90's. most teams got the benefit from this increase in popularity. buffalo wasn't ho hum on the team before brandon.
and as ralph aged, we felt like we had to keep our tickets to keep the team, regardless of the performance. he had a set of circumstances that made it ideal to do nothing and make money.
and when it wasn't going his way he trotted out his "its hard to be viable." He's darcy reiger. people were afraid to move from him because he was here so long. and we were told he was so great with everything that he'd be scooped up immediately. he languished for a while and was picked up by a team that doesn't have a fan base and was competing to be the worst with us.
Brandon doesn't get picked up in the same role if he got canned. bills and sabres tickets sell without him. He's the court jester and the kings and queens have been amused. the rest of the populace other than aspiring jesters find him mostly useless.
He was GM for two years so don't tell me he was never involved in the on the field product.
And even when he supposedly wasn't responsble for football decisions, a) he held the purse strings for those who were and b) we don't know how much he meddled.
Once again, not a chance worth taking, especially since the sabres already have good marketing.
No one can sell 100% of the tickets on a last place team.
Look, Thurmanator, I think the consensus here isn't that Russ Brandon is a bad marketing/advertising guru. He's obviously has a sharp mind for that. Just like all great snake oil salesmen, he can hype anything if he can get the fans stoked year in year out for a franchise that hasn't made the playoffs since the 1990s. He could sell ice to an Inuit if he was of a mind to.
We're just expressing our immense gratitude that he won't have a role in actual personnel decisions or oversight of involvement in decision making that affects the product on the field. Because he was one hell of a failure when he assumed those roles.
Let the man do what he does best, but not a single thing more.
And that's what's happening, so all's well ends well.
Last edited by JoeMama; 07-30-2015 at 08:21 PM.
Disclaimer: The sentiment expressed in this post is strictly for entertainment purposes only.
Oh and that's the other thing.
Maybe Russ truly has nothing to do with football/hockey operations. But iif the people who do **** it up, Russ will still get fans to buy tickets and give him a handy as a thank-you for the privilege.
People are seriously defending the guy who got them to drop a **** ton of money on a garbage team. Gotta love the homerism.
Well, if Bills fans did not support the team as they have during the bleak times, who knows if the Pegula's would have bought them when Ralph died?
If the Stadium sat empty on game days, maybe BonJovi & the Toronto carpetbaggers or a group from LA would be the new owners of the Bills & they would be headed for Toronto or LA.
I believe the Pegula's bought the Bills because they saw the passionate fan base in Buffalo that continued to support the Bills & buy tickets despite the lack of success on the field for a long period of time.
Or...maybe people just understand and agree that he's made good business decisions? Just because he got gullible fans to buy products and tickets for a crap team doesn't mean he did something wrong.
You're basically making the point that Bills fans are too stupid to know better.
COMING SOON...
I didn't say he was never involved in the on the field product.
I said he will not be in his current positions.
Clear as day.
better days (07-31-2015)
once again , can't make the distinction between business and football operations. Don't you ever accuse me of being unable to make distinctions. I am only defending him from a business perspective.
better days (07-31-2015)
They are saying he won't be involved in football decisions. We have no way of knowing if that's true. The only way to guarantee it is to make sure he is not involved with the organization at all.
And once again, you completely missed my point. Russ Brandon duped fans into paying for an inferior product. And if fans are willing to pay for an inferior product, what reason did Ralph have to spend money to improve the product? Because Russ was making him money, Ralph didn't have to shell out for coaches or spend to the cap to entice fans with a good team. Blood on his hands.
When Pegula took over, I advocated a scorched earth policy and I still feel that way. Brandon is a snake oil salesman.
Explain again why this was a bad thing from a business perspective?
It's not bad from a business perspective. Taking the financial motivation away from winning is bad from a football/hockey perspective. And as fans, the football/hockey perspective is what matters most. From a business perspective, all fans need to worry about is that the team's books are healthy enough that it won't move or fold.
I don't know if it gets any dumber than this. Saying this post is stupid would be a huge compliment
Translation: it's not bad from a business perspective which is what he is being hired to do so Im *****ing just to b!tch like always.
From a business perspective, Brandon can make financial decisions that negatively affect the football side. "Cash to cap," remember?
The only way to guarantee he won't **** up football operations is to make sure he's not part of the organization.
WagonCircler (08-01-2015)
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