Hey, Pegs.

[The last buffalo fan]

You are late as usual, September.

[OpIv37]

There can be some nuance though. I love the Pegula's for investing in Buffalo and stabilizing ownerships. I criticize them for what I perceive as ownership fumbles.

I'd rather have a bad team to criticize, than no team.So I can say thanks to the Pegulas, then call them goofballs. At least they're our goofballs.

You know, toward the end of Ralph's tenure, my thought process degenerated to this: No sports team wins every year, but it's a quid pro quo. All the losing becomes worth it for the excitement and celebration over the few times in your life that your team actually does win. But what happens when the quid pro quo ceases to exist? What happens when ownership is either so incompetent or has its priorities so out of line that there is basically ZERO chance of ever winning?

The sample size is too small with the Pegulas to go to that point yet. But they insist on ownership interference and they have this incessant loyalty to Brandon to the point where they gave him responsibilities with the Sabres too. The early results aren't promising

[OpIv37]

There can be some nuance though. I love the Pegula's for investing in Buffalo and stabilizing ownerships. I criticize them for what I perceive as ownership fumbles.

I'd rather have a bad team to criticize, than no team.So I can say thanks to the Pegulas, then call them goofballs. At least they're our goofballs.

I used to have that mentality, but what happens when the bad team has no prospect of getting better? Being a fan of a sports team is sort of an unspoken quid pro quo- fans support the team during the bad years because it becomes that much more enjoyable when we do eventually win. But what happens when winning gets taken off the table?

I had reached that point under Ralph. It's extremely difficult to win in the NFL, and with "cash to cap" and his reluctance to spend on coaching, the Bills were working under additional constraints that most teams didn't have. On top of that, they had an incompetent FO that completely screwed up in the few instances where Ralph did let them spend. I had resigned myself to the fact that the team would never win. The only thing that kept me interested was that, with Ralph's advanced age, I knew the team wouldn't be his much longer. When the new owners took over, either they'd move the team and most of us would be done with them, or we'd have better management and the possibility of winning would be back on the table.

Unfortunately, so far Pegs hasn't been any better than Ralph. The sample size is too small to conclude that we can't win under him, and he did change his tune with the way the Sabres operate, but then he kept Brandon with the Bills AND gave him duties with the Sabres as well. He's not afraid to spends, so those constraints are gone, but right now, he has a completely dysfunctional organization. When he took over the Sabres, he got enamored with shiny new toys and set the team back 3-4 years, and it looks like he did the same to the Bills. The team will only win if he learns from his mistakes, and so far he has only shown a limited ability to do that.