The Barrister


Wow. Weekdays suck. I started my week with a crapload of work all jammed together like the Buffalo News Sports staff trying to ride an elevator together, then followed it with a bunch of exhaustion, and now the week is almost done and I figured I'd scrap together a few thoughts to impart to you before the weekend. Why? Because fuck you that's why. 

Join me. And imagine me saying that in as non-creepy was as possible.

I don’t know if I have ADD or I just want to get on a pedestal about a whole bunch of shit today, but I just couldn’t pick one thing to write about. So let’s make an introductory list: (1) Jerry Sullivan is a troll that eats babies. (2) I wonder what made Jerry Sullivan a troll that eats babies. (3) Props to Jeremy White and Howard Simon for not putting up with his shit this morning. (4) This Mario Williams business is intriguing and frustrating. (5) This tornado in Oklahoma is just... wow.

Ok let’s roll.

(1) Good lord, if you haven’t listened to Jerry Sullivan’s segment on WGR this morning, it’s worth a listen - if for no other reason than to give yourself an idea of what the biggest asshole in North America sounds like. You know, just to give yourself a baseline. Let’s break down some of his quotes, on this, a day where the top story in sports is Mario Williams apparently feeling suicidal:

“I haven’t been sympathetic, one iota about this guy since he played his first game for the Bills.” Ok, so Sullivan doesn’t feel bad for a guy who’s suicidal, and hasn’t ever since he had a bad game. Nice. 

Sully then went on to criticize Mario’s effort throughout the year, brushed off his double digit sacks, then disclosed (to my knowledge for the first time) that a player told him last year, off the record that he was unhappy with Mario’s effort. Next, Sullivan says “Anyway, he might have a very good year. There are indications - I heard in camp he came into camp energized! Oh boy, Mario Williams at 100 million dollars comes into camp energized”

“Go look at his injury history, it’s always something with this guy.”

Sensing a pattern here? Sullivan hasn’t even talked about the story yet - he’s just taken this occasion to rip a guy in the wake of a story THAT HE’S SUICIDAL.

“I know for me, in the text, he’s - he can’t even write a simple declarative sentence.” -achm- Unreal. Attacking grammar in a text message WITH A SENTENCE FULL OF FAULTY GRAMMAR. If I was truly anal, I’d break down what’s wrong with Sully’s sentence.

“I have written about suicide in an earlier - in an earlier life in journalism, and I know you’re supposed to always take threats seriously, but I’m having trouble with this one.” SO, I know I should be taking suicide seriously, but I kinda don't like this guy, so... naaaahhhh.

Then, one of the morning show guys mentions the column that Sullivan mentioned earlier in the segment, and he gets defensive. “You goin Ted Black on me?!” The next 5 minutes is Sullivan just lashing out at anything he can think of. He re-hashes the Ted Black press conference, and tries to paint himself the victim of Black’s aggression, when Black asked him if he wrote the column already: “that was a cheap shot on his part, and suggested he wanted a fight!”

“I laughed later. I like those vigorous exchanges because you get more out of people. … I tried it with Mario Williams after the Seattle game” So, Sullivan admits that he jumped on the guy after an embarassing loss just to get a rise out of him - and that this is a tactic he uses frequently. No, Jerry, no... you? I don’t believe what I’m hearing.

Finally, Sullivan closes out by saying “you guys, you guy - come on. I’m past 7:20, I’m not even gettin’ - I don’t even get compensated past 7:20. I don’t need that, bein - why don’t you guys talk about baseball or somethin.” So, Sullivan, a professional journalist, closes out with FIVE incomplete sentences minutes after he rips a suicidal football player for his grammar in a motherfucking text message.

As, The Barrister tweeted this morning, 
"You are a disgraceful person and journalist, @TBNSully. May your taint be set on fire. Forever and ever, Amen." 

I concur. Go to hell. You're nothing but a troll with a salary. You’re no better than the idiots that waste their lives on twitter just trying to calculate the right words to piss someone off. Actually, you’re worse, because you’ve found a way to get paid to do it. Burn taint burn.

The Barrister


I know I write on a blog that knocks its boots to a tune of crass humor, dick jokes and calling Buffalo media members all sorts of defamatory names (except those names are all true, hence no defamation! ZING), but man oh man even I draw the line somewhere. Like, for instance, terrible puns that make light of real world shitty things. The kinds of puns that you find on the front or back pages of the New York "we're owned by a criminal wiretapping parent corporation and have absolutely no standards when it comes to integrity, law, morals, ethics, hygiene (see Brooks, Larry) or credibility" Post. The kinds of puns that make reasonable-thinking people cringe at the poor humor of it, not to mention that complete lack of sensitivity to the personal impact that some news stories can have on the subjects of said stories.

Like, for instance, the pun used in a screen graphic by Jonah Javad, a WGRZ sports anchor, to describe the latest news about Mario Williams' alleged struggles with suicidal thoughts and pills. 

STUPOR MARIO

Listen, I get that this story started with news of Williams' engagement being broken off by his ex-fiancee, and that Williams was suing her for return of the ring, and that hahahahaha that's so funny because basically no millionaire athlete is ever supposed to exercise his legal rights when it comes to money because FUCK HIM HE'S RICH. TMZ had a laugh at it, I got into a spat with one of Bomani Jones' twitter followers over the legality of conditional gifts like engagement rings and the whole thing seemed a pretty silly thing generally.

Then Mario's ex comes out with details about how he had said she could keep the ring and how the lawsuit was meant to harass her, so she counter-claims in the lawsuit and we all scratch our heads about "oh man, Mario may be an idiot lulzzzzz." But then, unexpectedly, she mentions the text messages, and the depression, and how he was talking suicide and pills and suddenly the shit isn't at all funny anymore. It's entirely too real, too serious to be funny.

And then, shortly thereafter, as if he was reporting on a last second touchdown or a player being cut or a coach being hired, Jonah Javad decides that a motherfucking pun is a good idea. 

Not only are puns stupid about 80% of the time even when they're about meaningless shit like hockey games (I'm looking at you NHL dot com), but they're downright callous when they're used to talk about real shit. 

I get that, as you see above, Mr. Javad has gone on twitter to issue apologies about his intent and how he didn't mean to make light of Williams' drug use, but that he meant stupor as in "dazed." But, wait... So, in other words, Javad wasn't poking fun - because that's what a pun does, after all; if pokes fun - at the alleged use of pills, he was poking fun at Williams' more general mental state. He wasn't making a joke about, perhaps, an attempt at suicide, but really just at the depression - the daze, I guess - that led to the attempt? 

Cool, because that totally doesn't contribute to the outstandingly unfair and prejudicial way that we think about mental illness in our society.

I absolutely understand that the sports media in this country, and in particular my beloved hometown, is more often than not ill-equipped to deal with the complex issues surrounding mental hygiene, particularly where the ideal of American athletes is centered on mental fortitude and any deficiencies therein are signs only of weakness. Which is why, when reporting - as they should - on the inevitable instances where the issues of mental illness and sport overlap (increasingly so with the traumatic brain injuries prevalent in football), the same bullshit shtick that can work for sports suddenly does not work anymore.
 
As many explanations and apologies as Mr. Javad wants to throw out, fine. I don't doubt he's an incredibly decent guy. But this shit is really inexcusable. It has to be better than this.

These 4-picture collages are quickly becoming my thing. And that title was literally the last thing I wrote. I didn’t even mean it to rhyme. Until I included fuck you. Then needed something to rhyme with it. 

ANYWAYS… Don’t get me wrong - I loves me some mock drafts. But let’s face it - it’s a crap shoot and nobody knows a fuck about fuckin’ nothin’. But I wonder who knows the least nothing... rrr most nothing... -achm- I wonder who sucks the most at it?!

Well, in the words of that creepy owl from the Tootsie Pop commercials, LEEEET’S FIIIIIND OOOUUUT!

I employ a grizzly monster the Westerners call “statistics.” It’s actually really great. You just throw some numbers together and then when the simpletons disagree with you, you just say “hey, the numbers never lie.” They get red in the face and say something like “whatever, I mean, I just feel like...” and then you laugh inside a deep, bellowing laugh that echoes across your inner kingdom because you know you’ve won. So finish your 168x IPA kick off your oxfords, and throw on an episode of Workaholics because you’re a nasty prick and that’s what nasty pricks seem to like these days.

Whoa, what the hell happened? Oh yeah, I was going to write about sports. Anyway, so here’s what I did: I basically just compared where each mocker had each player going with where the player actually went for 2012. And I figured, while I was at it, I could see which positions they sucked the most at projecting. And what teams reached the most for players! And maybe some other nerdy shit!!!

But before I get into the numbers, I think a furious monologue is in order:

Dear mock drafters: GO FUCK YOUR FUCKING SELVES. Seriously. Basically every mock draft I looked at got me progressively more bloodthirsty.

- Kiper/McShay: jesus christ. I get that ESPN has to push it’s Insider subscription bullshit, and that if I can just pull up your mock drafts with a simple Google search, maybe I won’t pay whatever silly, delusional, self-aggrandizing price ESPN demands for Insider, but cccoooommeee ooonnnnn! I challenge any of you to go out and find me Kiper/McShay’s full mock drafts on the internet for free. In the end, I had to grab Bleacher Report’s evaluation of the Kiper/McShay first round mocks. Shit’s wizzeak.

- Basically everybody else: you’re only going to mock the first round? Seriously? There’s 32 picks in the first round. I looked at 13 mock drafts. Thirteen. Collectively, those 13 mocks had a grand total of 45 different names. 20 players were in every single 1st round mock (to the credit of the mockers, those players were all taken in the 1st), and 28 players were in at least 10 of the 13 mocks. My point? YOU’RE NOT DOING ANYTHING!! You’re just regurgitating the names that all your fellow pundits are throwing out there in a slightly different order. That does nothing for me. Oh, you guessed at a few trades in your mock? WOW.  Props to Joe Buscaglia and Walterfootball.com for going well beyond the first round and talking about the prospects and the team needs. Their mocks are enjoyable. The rest that I looked at are just the same cookie cutter mainstream media bullshit that I like to think my generation is slowly beginning to reject. Have a little pride and put some actual human thought into the shit you publish for millions.

Soooo, because of how lazy and incompetent all these mockers were, I couldn’t get into the really fun nerdy shit like which teams reached the most for players. But I can give you the best and worst first round mockers of 2012. Here you go:

Whew. All that anticipation. How does it feel to know that Don Banks is your go-to guy for mock drafts? But fuck that, WGR’s own Joe Buscaglia is my guy. The kid killed it. 

For the record, there’s a metric ton of mock drafts out there, and I’ll wager that a lot of them are really high quality. But I grabbed the ones that came out on the top of Google searches because these are the ones most people look at and they suck soooo hard.

On that note: MY 2013 MOCK DRAFT!!!

The Wild Card


LEGAL DISCLAIMER: This post contains legal jargon, legal analysis and less profanity than usual because, well, my professor will be reading it and that’s kind of weird. But I think you’ll enjoy it if you’re a bored sociopath.

On March 12, 2013 an article appeared on Deadspin containing a recorded phone call between NFL General Managers (GMs) Buddy Nix of our very own Buffalo Bills and Mark Dominik of the not-our-own Tampa Bay Buccaneers.[1] Neither GM knew that their conversation was being recorded by two eager opportunistics on a third line. The content of the conversation was, at least to football obsessives like my self and yours: racy. Both GMs disclosed otherwise proprietary information, such as who was on the trade block, and how they felt about certain of their players under contract. The article garnered a degree of publicity, and a short survey of comments on the Deadspin website shows that many fans thought the same thing: that’s got to be illegal. Right? We’ll see. But first, let’s spin a tale of intrigue, suspense and “dadgum” embarrassment.

Here’s how it happened. According to Deadspin, the “pranksters”[2] dialed the publicly listed phone number for the Bills’ front office and asked for Buddy Nix, claiming to be Dominik. Surprisingly enough, they were patched through and Nix answered the phone. They panicked and hung up.

Next, they concocted a little plan: they would call Dominik next and see if they couldn’t get Dominik and Nix to play an annoying game of phone tag. The devils. But while they were on the horn with Dominik’s secretary, Nix called them back! So, they used three-way calling to answer Nix’s call while they were being patched through to Dominik.

Barrister here. As you all should know by now, sometimes we post a lot, sometimes our real jobs at which we're each enormously successful take up a little too much of our time, sometimes we have to plan for weddings and public remarks at said weddings, and sometimes we just forget we have a website to maintain in between early wake up calls in pools of our own vomit. We've lately been a little short on actual written content here (download those podcasts, though!), but have added a new guest contributor to our pathetic ranks!  "The Wild Card" hails from West Seneca but is down here in NYC for law school and he likes to drink and curse like us so I'm sure he'll fit right in. In any event, someone had to write about Fitzpatrick here at the Deeg, and sure as shit none of the rest of us had the stomach for it. So I give you...


The Wild Card

Why I Hate that Fitz is Gone, and No, it's not Beard-Related

I know. The beard was like 99% of the gravitas. Hell, it was fuckin' awesome. But it wasn't awesome enough to make you want him as your starting QB and that's probably why you, as a Bills fan are pretty happy today. The Bills cutting Fitz means we get a NEW quarterback next year! And new is great! Right?! RIGHT?! 

Mike Tannenbaum  Well, not if that new QB sucks a giant fat one. This is the problem - with Fitz gone, everybody knows that the Bills are taking a QB with one of their first 2 picks. So, if I'm Mike Tannenb... I mean, John Idzik (the Jets new GM) (don’t worry I had to google it too) sitting at 9, and I really like Geno Smith, or Barkley, or some other ass-hat not worth a top 10 pick, I'm trying like hell to trade up in front of the Bills and grab my guy. And if that guy is the Bills’ guy too, then the Bills are going to have to take a different guy! I don’t want that guy! I want the other guy! The other guy is Ben Roethlisberger (two Super Bowl rings)

and that guy is JP Losman (you just vomited)! Please, god, let us get the other guy.

And the same thing goes if the Bills want to wait until the second round to get their guy, or trade back up into the first. When everyone knows what you’re doing it’s a lot easier to get fucked by one of the other handful of teams that need a QB.

But maybe everything will work out and the Bills will get their guy. Great. But now their guy has to be THE guy. He has to be the starter. Day one. Do you really see Tarvaris Jackson starting week 1 at QB for this team? Or… Aaron Corp? Or… sweet Jesus … Rex Grossman? Did you vomit again yet?! Did you even make it past Jackson without vomiting?! So yeah, whoever they take is going to have a ton of pressure on him, and the conventional wisdom is that none of the guys in this draft are polished enough to be day one starters. They’re guys that would be better off taking a year and sitting behind a wiley, bearded, Harvard-educated, Wonderlic-crushing veteran that screams like a 4 year old girl.

Tuesday, that wiley, bearded, Harvard-educated, Wonderlic-crushing veteran that screams like a 4 year old girl was on our roster.  Now he is not.

And the beard was sexy as fuck.

The Deeg

In one of our shortest CrapTastiCasts ever, we struggle for subject matter after the Sabres' first loss of the season.  While you can't really say we succeeded, we showed up at least so that's something.  During the more lucid moments of this particular installment from the Buffalo expat insane asylum, we talk a little about the Sabres, a little about Manti Te'o, a little about baseball, and a little about man tears. The Scizz was off his rocker for most of the evening so don't expect much by way of focus... which, incidentally you should never really expect from us anyway.

Musical content by way of Deeg house band The Jambrones, Jane's Addiction, Radical Face and Aerosmith. 

Stream below, subscribe with our handy itunes button or download here or here.

The Barrister

And they DID.

Not much of anything good to say about the season, but man does this still put a huge smile on my face. Someone break out the champagne! - we have some cathartic, remaining casually apathetic celebrating to do!

This probably changes nothing in the long run - Ralph "Odious Taint" Wilson, Jr. remains the owner of our Buffalo Bills - but it feels great to revel in the end of the Chan Gailey era at One Bills Drive.

May the wind be ever at your back, dear Chan, and your tendency to over-use your goats and under-use your stars ever keep you out of the ranks of NFL coaches for the rest of your days.

The Barrister


I am making a pact to not spend more than twenty minutes on putting this quick ragestorm of a post together because, honestly, the Buffalo Bills can go die in a fire for all I care. (Not really please don't move the team I love them inexplicably oh God)

This morning, our 5-7 Buffalo Bills were given a gift. Russel Salvatore, WNY Meat King, agreed to purchase all remaining tickets for the Bills' remaining home games. Apparently, after just one blackout this season, Bills fans are getting bailed out of having to find illegal streams online or listen on the radio or ignore altogether, and the Bills are being bailed out of an ongoing PR nightmare - having to answer questions about ticket sales and TV blackouts without discussing, too much, the underachieving and disappointing team of elephants in the room.

Everybody wins! 

Except, of course, on most weeks, the Buffalo Bills.

Let me preface my anger on this point by expressing good feelings for Mr. Salvatore, though his good deed does little to impact my life living outside of WNY's blackout zone. And, to the extent that these extra tickets are given away and a few thousand people that otherwise would have stayed home make it to the game, I have no gripe.

Nevertheless, the fact that this even has to be done is, and should be, an embarrassment. Yet, those Buffalo Bills are apparently the poorly wrapped and overpriced gift that keeps on giving.

The Barrister

Back from a pretty long hiatus, the Deeg is back with another CrapTastiCast, and it's one some of you have been waiting for since Mr. White and I exchanged words over the NHL Lockout in October.  We spoke about having Jeremy chat record with us at the time, but daddy duties and Hurricane recovery put this on the backburner until now.  

Perhaps that delay was for the best since, in the month and a half that has followed that initial twitter fight (God I feel so stupid typing that), Jeremy and I have had a chance to talk more about the lockout.  While I wouldn't say we've reached any kind of consensus on those issues that got me so heated in October, it's become apparent that Jeremy is a civil dude (not always readily apparent on twitter... which could be said about many) and that civility plays itself out on what you'll listen to here.

My apologies if you came here expecting nothing but our unbridled asshole shtick. Frankly, we care too much about the issues of the lockout to cave into our sophomoric tendencies - at least this time - especially when we have a guest willing to look beyond the fact that I may or may not have called him a equivocating hack/dickhole back in October.  /rushes to delete Deeg archives /trips over beer cans /farts /forgets original task

Which isn't to say that this CrapTastiCast is entirely devoid of those tendencies you've come to know and love. Along for the ride are The Scizz and The Continental. In addition to the lockout, we talk Bills, Jets, Mets, Knicks and stumble through a few completely inappropriate conversations about drugs in closets and Scizz's love for our 43rd President.  

If you're only interested in our talk with Jeremy, cue it to 15:55 and enjoy. Also - give yourself the finger from us since we think you should listen to the whole fucking thing.

In addition to our usual intro, Deeg house band The Jambrones help us out with our first two musical interludes, while the rest is picked up by Audioslave and Brother Ali. 

Podcast page here. Direct download here. iTunes link below or Subscribe via our RSS feed here. And, of course, stream audio in the player below if you wish.