MattyRenn

On March 17th, 2020 I sat down at my laptop at home and began to write. The tone is upbeat, incredulous, tackling the surreal early days of the pandemic lockdown with some tongue-in-cheek exposition on why everything is closed and we’re hunkering down at home. Our son was due to arrive in late June so I figured why not attempt to chronicle this jarring shift in modern life, unfathomable only weeks earlier. At the time, long before I read my first Ed Yong article in The Atlantic or watched a PBS show on the virus, I figured our son might grow up with some curiosity about what it was like for us managing the grinding halt of society coupled with the typical excitement and anxiety of preparing to welcome your first child into the world. I figured it might be a six-month project, capturing the start of the pandemic, the universal actions that choked out the virus and the first few months of his life. I figured come fall I’d be back to the fulfilling times of tailgates and travel, at which point the pandemic journal would end. That was 529 pages and 300,000 words ago.

Like anyone reading this, I’ve learned a lot about myself, family, friends, employers, society, and life in general these past two years. The thing I’ve learned about myself that is the most applicable to this long defunct sports blog is this: I’m a much better writer when it comes to the negative than the positive. Grief, loss, anger, injustice, immorality, corruption, I have a natural ability to pluck out the right word, craft the right sentence, formulate those into the paragraphs that properly encapsulate the sheer melancholy of the moment on whatever scale that happens to be. Whether I was writing about the decay of lifelong friendships post-George Floyd or the insidious depravity that mutated the pandemic from an opportunity for positive societal change to an opportunity for consolidating power and ensuring the rest of us tear each other to bits while a million dead get brushed off as martyrs for Applebee’s or some shit, that’s the writing I push back from the keyboard satisfied.

Joy, love, gratitude, excitement, I struggle to convey sufficiently, at least to my own satisfaction. I feel like I’m grasping for the right words, that they don’t exist in the English language, though I am sure they do. The many joyful moments these past two years I’ve felt that I’ve come up short properly capturing and outside of private, intimate occurrences- I absolutely kill it in handwritten cards- it’s emerged as an alarming blind spot in my writing.

It’s been a decade since I first wrote here, an opportunity I got from emailing a guy who milkshake ducked himself a few years later as a creep but an opportunity that led to friendships that today make up most of my social circle. I’m proud of a lot of the stuff I put out here but there’s a reason that shit was good- the Buffalo Bills and Buffalo Sabres were two sides of the same cow chip coin. Go back and read a season review of the Sabres and then compare that to some shit about being happy Rex Ryan is here and tell me what’s better. Yachtsman (are we still using pseudonyms? Even our haters know our real names right?) was the best at this, righteous fury exploding off the screen so naturally, a visceral disgust that can only come from something you love wronging you.

I couldn’t copy that if I tried, the pure uncut shit (not outside 280 characters at a time, anyway), but goddamn was it easy to take that nauseating pit in the deepest part of my being that pulsated and grew with every failed Sabres season and rub it all over the page like the Long Kesh dirty protest. But ultimately the Pegulas, just like every other callous moron that makes up the upper echelon of society knew that eventually people get tired of calling out their shit. At a certain point what can you say? Those in power lack the capacity to feel shame and ultimately collective voice and action has proven meaningless. There was a time people in the street and an outraged electorate or fanbase could bring about change but like, Democrats are climbing over each other to see who can give cops the most money and Kim Pegula has a new keynote speaker gig every month, you know?
​
Outside of the obvious- the birth of my kid, the family weekend getaways that hit like a narcotic after a pandemic winter- the greatest joys of these past two years have been from sports. I spent the early months of the pandemic- you know, the ones where you were going to take up a new hobby, tackle that home improvement project, get in shape before not doing those things (I tried football manager but it’s such a good game that my failures drove me to Euro Trucking Simulator and Super Mega Baseball on easy mode)- watching old sporting events on youtube. When the Bundesliga became the first league to return, albeit behind closed doors, I eagerly tossed on Wolfsburg or RB Leipzig every weekend. While the empty stadiums look like a fever dream now, they didn’t bother me then. I was just happy sports were back.

On January 16th last year I headed to a bar for the second time of the pandemic. I had spent the week desperately hunting down a place:

1. In Rhode Island
2. With an outdoor television
3. In January

As it turned out, one of my favorite craft beer dives in Providence had put a television outside to cater to the covid-careful and despite the freezing drizzle in the forecast they would be open. Those who know me may think I was hunting this down because my wife is a Ravens fan but it was more that for the biggest Bills game since my childhood, I couldn’t just sit on my couch as if it was a drought game against the Jets. Not to mention our condo contained my mother-in-law and a six-month old and the natural reaction (screaming like a maniac every ten seconds) would not be conducive to the surroundings I wanted for them.
​
I hurriedly walked through the small indoor bar, silently judging the many 20-somethings eating, drinking and enjoying themselves on a Saturday, ignoring the decisions I might have made if the pandemic had hit when I was 26 and living in Tonawanda. I was the only person on that patio, dressed in layers to watch television. What a world. When Johnson’s pick-six arrived I was screaming into the dreary, damp Providence night at the top of my lungs. A patron opened the back door to the patio, pointed at me, pumped his fist. I may have watched that game alone but the joy of that moment was a shared joy- I knew wherever you all were, whoever you were all with, you were feeling the same explosion of happiness, a release months in the making after untold despair. Why didn’t I write then? Shit, I’ve done something similar for the Pominville game in the past. I guess I didn’t feel I had the words.

That May came time to say goodbye to the greatest player to play for Man City, a club I first discovered playing Fifa in college (“another Manchester team? One that no one respects? Yeah that fits with my aesthetic!”). If City had been accessible viewing in 2005 I’m sure I would have watched them but as luck would have it, it wasn’t until 2011 and I’d moved back from Vermont that I finally got to watch them. While the aughts were a time of wheel-spinning mediocrity and rebuilds slowly driving us mad in Buffalo, I was captivated by Sergio Aguero. After I’d fallen out with my hometown friends he’s what got me to head to mes que for the first time and what kept me returning, making me comfortable going to a bar by myself for really the first time. City was something I introduced and bonded with my stepdad over, bringing him to mes que for Aguero’s four goal masterpiece against Leicester. He was a player who would make your jaw drop, one of those who makes “holy SHIT” the proper exclamation after a goal. He scored in the biggest games, scored the most in club history, the most of any non-englishman in league history, scored so much that the manager who wanted so desperately to replace him ultimately had to admit that sometimes the genius move is admitting you were wrong.

With his time at the club coming to an end I had made it my goal to get to the Etihad to see him in person. Most who know me know what happened- a freak winter storm caused them to postpone the game the morning of, news I received in our hotel in Manchester some four weeks before the world shut down. Perhaps if the world hadn’t shut down this would bother me more, perhaps if the world hadn’t shut down I would have been back to see him fall of 2020 but it wasn’t meant to be. So on a hot, sunny day where my wife and son would be heading to the beach- those couple post-vaccination months where we figured the death and suffering was at an end- I settled right down on the couch I’d spent most of the past year and put on Sergio Aguero’s final game at the Etihad.
​
It took an hour for the damn manager to put him on (I assume out of injury concerns with the Champion’s League final ahead) and he went out there and scored a brace. Pep cried, I cried, brushing off my wife’s texts about when I was going to come to the damn beach. I said that day that it marked the end of a certain kind of fandom for me, the fanboy mentality. I could appreciate greatness certainly but I was too old, too far removed to feel any personal investment in wanting them to succeed as people. Sure there would be jerseys bought and group texts lavishing praise on our favorite players but certainly none would make me *feel* that way again.

The Bills season started four months later.

The Barrister 

​I can't remember the last time I watched a football game with someone who actually lives in Buffalo. It's hard to place, between the bourbon and recreationals, exactly when it would have been. If I had to guess it would be Tyrod's comeback against the Bucs (?) in 2017 (?) when I went to the game with a massive van full of friends, got to our lot before the sun was above the tree line, and Taylor had a very typical day where he went 20/33 for 268, no picks and a touchdown. Added another 53 on the ground. Deonte Thompson (?!?) had over 100 yards on 4 catches, so there were a few super fun moments, and at some point during the 3rd quarter, I got bored in the sunshine and started a big rendition of Queen's 'Don't Stop Me Now' during a particularly long break in play. 

When you move away for long enough, or maybe for good, something can occur to you slowly over time, something of an obvious thing that only becomes clear when you're living in a place that doesn't have a charging Buffalo greeting you when you walk into the local grocery store: the Bills exist, as both a capitalist and existential commodity, for the benefit and enjoyment of people who live in and close to Western New York. Because of course they do. 

It's no small thing, as it happens, to have one of your favorite things in the world be suddenly relegated to the back-burner of your day-to-day by simple geography, and it's hard not to get resentful at the patterns that emerge. Resentful at how well-rehearsed your take about Norwood's wide right or four straight Super Bowl losses or how great a leader Marv Levy was, all because those little sad facts are what the Bills have generally meant to people outside Western New York. Living through the drought as an expat is in many ways like living in a loop, with our sports teams playing this bizarrely central role in how we define ourselves and where we're from, with our sports teams unable to do anything of note except continue to fail, with our sports teams providing distant memories, at best, for the well-intentioned chatter from locals all-too eager to reminisce about those near-misses of Buffalo's sports history. 

When you're in Buffalo, all these things, all this history and pain, are understood and better left unsaid more often than not. No one needs to bring up Norwood because if you watched that shit in real time and if you watched that shit a hundred times since, it never really leaves you. Not really. Outside of Buffalo? First time I mention I'm a Bills fan, some sob story from our past (distant or recent) is the FIRST and potentially only thing that will come to mind for the person I'm talking with, as if Frank from Long Island has been waiting his whole life to unleash his thoughts on Thurman losing his helmet or Leodis fumbling on primetime. Our teams, lacking any ability to break their cycle of failure, create this insanely aggravating routine for expats, especially when all we're looking for is a chance to taste a little bit of home, smoke a few darts and get loose, and then some asshole ponies up to the bar and forces us to relive childhood memories as scarring as the loss of any pet or family member. And fuck me if the jagoff then pivots to "how have you been able to keep cheering for these teams?" as if the answer is easily summed up over a high ABV pour in some Queens dive bar. 

Until now. 

Out of nowhere, it seems, unless your optimism had you believing this run was coming (and peace be with you if it did), the fun of being from Buffalo has been absorbed and channeled by this team and suddenly anything seems possible if not probable. 

My wife likes to comment on how Buffalo people congregate together outside of WNY like they're just instinctively drawn together by their shared history and whatnot. If you're an expat, you know that vibe about which I speak, and finally we have a team that might just find a way to gather the kind of victory to match the vibe we've been rocking so persistently the whole of our adult lives. 

Finally we have a team that might give us some memories that end in clear and absolute joy, closing the book on that history that some asshole is all too eager to bring up. 

​Bills by a Billion.

The Barrister 

Ho-Ho-HOLY SHIT WHAT A TREAT MONDAY NIGHT WAS. 

Cosmic forces decidedly did not ruin my bonfire/projector screen socially-distanced-outdoor-gathering-of-five-people-and-two-dogs, though my dog running about a quarter mile away into the snowy night certainly tested that theory. Pro tip for all the homies: when calling your wife to express with terror that you just fucked up and your new dog ran away, confirm that your eight year old son who wanted a dog for years is not sitting right there listening in on speakerphone. Nothing like a screaming child to add to the mix of quality dad fuckups. (The dog is fine, by the way, and bonus points to me for being able to experience the joy of seeing Oscar run towards me at the sound of my voice from about a block away ... real joyous reunion, folks). 

Canine fuckery aside, the game was just about as fun an evening as I could have hoped, and was another rung up the ladder for this Bills team as it continues its ascent into the top tier of football teams in the league this year. San Francisco is a good team. Buffalo made them look like a week-old bowl of goulash that someone let spoil in the desert sun. That defense I worried about in last week's preview? Our large adult son Joshua did exactly what he wanted every time the offense took the field, making those pre-game concerns look almost trite in hindsight. After the Bills tied it at 7-7, there wasn't a moment when I truly thought they could lose, which is a remarkable thing to say given the decades of rampant conditioning the team has put us through in order to make losses seem SOP every week, year after year. Put another way ... 

At 9-3, the Bills remain in control of their destiny playoff-wise, and are currently positioned to host a playoff game for the first time since before Ken Starr was ever a household name in America. I don't know about you, but 1996 was a big year for me, personally. My family moved from North Buffalo to the Bidwell Parkway neighborhood in Buffalo. I started high school. I had my first girlfriend, my first kiss and, probably, my first blue balls. To think that it's been 25 fucking years since the Bills hosted a playoff game is insane. To think that the Bills may finally get one without being able to safely allow fans to attend is hilariously sad and, well, just about perfect. 

I mean, fuck, Liverpool won its first English Championship in 30 years in front of an empty Anfield. This is just the way it was always going to be. Hashtag becauseitsbuffalo.

Next up is Pittsburgh, fresh off their first loss of the season. Depending on which narrative you prefer, the Steelers are either raring to rebound with a big conference win against a too-big-for-their-britches Bills team, or are ripe for exposure by a Bills team that continues to baffle opponents. Who knows which one will happen? Let's find out! Sports!

THREE REASONS WHY THE BILLS WILL SMASH SUNDAY NIGHT

1. Josh Allen. 

The kid is a gamer and Monday night further proved it. As improved he is in terms of his decision-making this season - limiting interceptions and fumbles and focusing his accuracy to absurd completion percentages - he's blessedly been able to make that transition without losing the intangible qualities Bills fans fell in love with even while he floundered over his first two seasons. Monday night's game would have been a coming out party for Allen if he hadn't already had a few along the journey thus far, and the response from the national media confirms that #17 is one of the hottest performers in the league right now. The only reason we're not talking about him as MVP is because we just haven't started yet. We probably should. A win Sunday and we definitely will. 

It's not hyperbole to say that we're watching something remarkable and borderline unprecedented from Allen this season, and with every week that he puts in another great performance, we're closer to looking back on this season as one of the best in franchise history.

​2. Ben Roethlisberger's Ludo-Looking Ass

This will almost certainly come back to haunt me but honestly fuck Big Ben. I am so fucking sick of seeing these timeless quarterbacks stick around the league getting their balls coddled by Cris Collinsworth and Adam Schefter. My hatred of Big Ben is based on nothing apart from his big dumb face and rapey visage, but for now it all boils down to "he's the QB of the best team in the AFC so fuck him with a fireplace bellow." 

Ben is having a great year, of course, but it's a December night game in Orchard Park and the Steelers have been relying on their 38 year old quarterback to throw over 40 times a game on average this year (over 50 in each of the past 2 games). This seems ill-advised. I just don't see a primetime win against a very in-form, high-scoring Bills team with something in the vicinity of 15 (or more!) wasted plays on offense due to incompletions. 

Then again, I'm an idiot.

3. It's the funniest outcome. 

As hinted at above, my prevailing theory about most things in 2020 is that the funniest outcome is the likeliest. The Bills becoming a presumptive challenger to KC as the AFC's best with no fans allowed in Orchard Park is deeply funny. Not in a ha ha sort of way so much as a "this is the kind of wretched bullshit that makes a blog like ours possible" kind of way. 

For what it's worth, this theory why I am seriously disturbed and frightened by the slow burn coup being attempted by Trump and his band of jackboot fascists. Not because I worry that their arguments may be successful in Court or whatever, but because their succeeding in retaining some modicum of power despite being waxed at the polls and igniting some gross combination of constitutional crisis and civil war is absolutely the funniest possible outcome for America. Nihilism tastes great with my morning coffee, thanks for asking.

THREE REASONS THE BILLS WILL LOSE

1. They won't.

2. Fuck you.

3. idk the defense I guess?

MAGA LAWYER POWER RANKINGS

Back for another installment, and goodness there are a BUNCH to choose from. Other than the #1 spot - prizes for anyone who can guess who that will be (hint it rhymes with Judy Pooliani) - these rankings are clearly arbitrary and mostly based on when I actually get to the deep dive into professional histories and filings and whatnot that our readers rely on as the basis of the legal analysis presented here. And by "deep dive," I assume you all know I mean "cursory glance enough to devise some bad jokes."

#4: Texas AG Ken Paxton

"Wait a second, Dubs!", you may be saying. "I thought you were profiling Trump's lawyers? This guy is a State Attorney General not a private lawyer!"

YOU WOULD THINK, WOULDN'T YOU

As American democracy continues to devolve into a puddle of petulant powergr- psyche American democracy has always been exactly that- American institutions are revealing themselves, at best, to be pathetically incapable of holding accountable the unconscionable conduct of our President and, at worst, to be incredibly susceptible to misuse by Trump and his supporters for personal and political gain. This has been the theme of the Trump administration from start to finish. We the people have allowed this to happen and Ken Paxton, initiating a lawsuit as devious as it is meritless, is counting on our continued indifference. 

Incidentally, Ken Paxton's foray into this post-election fuckery and attempted coup is not the kind of run-of-the-mill bootlicking that we've come to expect from all levels of government these days. Homeboy has a STAKE in the game, even if it's just about flattering the Big Boy President in the hopes of an eleventh hour preemptive pardon. As reported today by The Hill:

L O L

The shit isn't surprising anymore, but as a lawyer it really gets my blood boiling to see a public servant so transparently abuse the power of his office, abuse process by the filing of a legal challenge to support Trump's failed reelection bid, and abuse all sense of fairness by asking the Supreme Court to invalidate the votes of citizens from Democratic-leaning states. These pieces of shit not only think that Democrats shouldn't get to vote and that their votes shouldn't count, but they also have the fucking gall to think that our nation should adopt such an insidiously baseless position as a matter of law. 

Not for nothing, but Conservatives are the same folks who argued that the Voting Rights Act trampled on states' rights (to deny the franchise to people of color) in administering elections according to their own laws when SCOTUS struck down Section 4(b) of the VRA in Shelby County v. Holder. Having won that argument due to a stacked Court of bumbling white supremacists, much to the horror of anyone with a shred of decency and belief in racial equality, the present arguments that COVID-prompted changes to state election rules violated the U.S. constitution are totally without merit. A 154-page complaint from the Texas AG, now joined by Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina and Utah, doesn't change that fact. All it does is reveal Ken Paxton as a villainous shitmonger.

tl;dr: Find a safe space and go fuck yourselves, you goddamned fucking babies.

HYPE TRAIN SOUNDTRACK

Ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to introduce the high hat. 

Droppin Rs and Smokkin Ls

With more states legalizing the good shit lollipop, our matron saint Mary Jane, and with my current residence in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts about three years into its post-prohibition journey to the land of milk and honey, let's talk buds. I'm not sure what this space is going to be used for beyond just telling funny stories or dropping recs for strains or delivery mechanisms, but I guess that's enough? 

One of the absolute best things about living in a state with legal cannabis is seeing the industry absolutely explode with fun and creating new products. As most of these new treats were devised under the influence, they're all of course delightful and often over the top. One such treat that I have discovered in the last year is the terp stick. 

The terp stick should probably not exist. It's basically the FourLoko of weed (or would be if Moon Rocks didn't also exist) and, just like FourLoko, it was love at first taste for me, Clive. For the uninitiated, the terp stick is basically a pre-rolled joint infused in some way with concentrated THC extract. In other words, it's the cannabis version of a hot fudge sundae with chocolate ice cream. The definition of overkill, which means it's right up my alley. 

When the pandemic is done and dusted, terp sticks are going to be the thing I enjoy with friends at my first opportunity, because honestly it's too much to handle solo, a lesson I learned while trying to hike a trail at Mount Wachusett after puffing half a terp stick some months back. That I made it a half mile up the reasonably steep ascent was a feat in itself; that I bailed in favor of bodily safety after a half mile - despite not being able to feel any of my appendages - was a blessing. 

Next time you're driving through MA and want to stop by a dispensary for a treat, snag one of these and enjoy safely. It's worth the $20-ish pricetag and then some. 

FINAL SCORE PREDICTION:

Bills 38, Steelers 27

I was remarkably close with last week's guess so fuck it. I don't see the Bills' offense slowing down much at all, and I think the Steelers will have a hard time putting enough points up to keep pace. The Bills will, of course, let Pittsburgh stick around and make a late run, but it won't be enough and we'll get another Victory Monday with a side of rust belt schadenfreude. 

Enjoy your weekend, Bills fans. It's going to be one to remember. 

The Barrister

Back when we wrote a bunch, we had a habit of doing weekly Bills previews and recaps using bits of pop culture as thematic fulcrums. Mostly out of laziness. Also because it allowed us to crib Drew Magary without directly cribbing Drew Magary. 

With six weeks of football left (barring COVID-related season-stoppage, which is not outside the realm of likely outcomes) and the Bills sitting pretty atop the AFC East at 8-3, it seemed time to slip back into old routines in the hopes of sharing a laugh or two. And with American culture awash in very real and very absurd outgrowths of ignorant bigotry and violence, with a side of pathetic, zealous buffoonery, there's no better piece of pop culture to use as my fulcrum than HBO's Watchmen. HOLY SHIT what incredible television. Bonus points for teaching a generation of Americans about the Black Wall Street Massacre because I know for fucking SURE that they aren't teaching that shit in most high schools. If you haven't watched it yet, let me know and I'll slip you my buddy's HBO Max login just kidding Joseph I would never. 

As for the football, well, the Bills are a good football team! A friend of mine who also writes for this site and has a worse habit of pissing people off than I do insists that this is a mediocre football team but I disagree. I am happily eating crow this year as Joshua Withrop Allen and Sean Reginald McDermott remind us that nobody is perfect, especially not football fans. 

More on that below, as well as Power Ranking Trump's election lawyers, cannabis reviews from the Bay State, and some other stuff, too, probably!

THREE REASONS THE BILLS WILL SMASH TONIGHT:

1. The aforementioned Joshua. 

I don't know that I've truly expressed the mea culpa that I feel is due from my corner of the internet, what with me being so very wrong about Josh Allen. The Bills are 8-3, Allen is playing not-quite-mistake-free-ball-but-honestly-pretty-close, and more than anything - a point that can't be overstated, truly - the Bills are uproariously fun under the leadership of this big goofy kid with a rocket arm. When the Allen stans started demanding apologies from those who dared question Josh's greatness in years past, it was obviously ripe for me to start shitposting because that kind of discourse is juvenile nonsense, but honestly that kind of black-and-white approach to what we're seeing from Allen sells him short. When I watched #17 play over the course of his first two seasons, it was impossible to see a reliably likely path from his abilities under center to anything approaching success.  

Seeing Allen find that path despite how improbable it seemed in those first 20 or so starts of his career, and seeing now not just a winning football team but one that pulls hilarious, creative and - crucially - productive offensive production out of his reckless cannon of an arm is art. 

The job that Allen and the coaching staff have done to refine his accuracy is nothing short of unbelievable, and I could not be happier to have been wrong about this one. Does he have super annoying tendencies that may be his undoing in the playoffs like some sort of hubris-ridden Greek drama? Maybe! And that's the fun of it because we get to find out while he's running an amazing version of the option and lateraling to receivers who are dropping dimes for six. 

2. The coaching?

Another mea culpa coming, though it's slightly more muted. 

I like Sean McDermott as a football coach. I also think football coaches are patently ridiculous people. 

It's a profession steeped in cliché and that makes it an easy mark for criticism on the internet, and as this season plays out with Allen's numbers and the defense re-finding itself just in time for a playoff push, and the club playing truly enjoyable football under truly shit circumstances, the strength of McDermott's leadership is self-evident. He's a walking cliché and thus the easiest mark of them all, but he's also a master of those stereotypical coach tendencies. The end result is a group of football players who, by all accounts and the evidence on the field, are thriving during this pandemic season. 

The thing about clichés is that they exist for a reason and sometimes - not all the time, dear god no - but sometimes they're spot on, and in a season with few or no butts in seats, all things being equal, a team that is having a fun ass time playing together has a competitive advantage. 

Clap it up. 

3. The early-season chumps figuring it out. 

Two chumps in particular - AJ Klein and Tyler Bass - have been on my mind a lot in recent games as a couple key guys whose play has improved pretty dramatically and have produced some big moments in those wins. I won't get too deep in the weeds on either of these guys, but their play in recent weeks has been a boon to their respective units on the field. I don't read enough Bills news to really have a sense of what was wrong with Klein in his first 8 games of the season, but his numbers the last two games have been ridiculous. That kind of productivity down the stretch will be massive - especially the tackle numbers - as teams try to run on us in December weather. 

As for Bass, he's a rookie so calling him a chump is unkind but the dude was trash on the only metric that matters for a PK in the NFL: getting it through those big yellow things. That he has settled into a solidly reliable option for McDermott is a relief, if an expected one. He was never going to remain as bad as he was the first few weeks of his rookie season; whether he's good remains to be seen. But holy shit does he have a vicious right foot. 


THREE REASONS THE BILLS WILL LOSE:

1. I'm having a few friends over to watch on a projector around a firepit and it'll require no small amount of effort that is only really justified by a Bills win and the last time I did it was for the Chiefs loss and also the universe hates me. 

After that heading, well, this is pretty self-explanatory, I should think.

2. Bad Josh Allen

For a third year starter of any pedigree, while the dumb mistakes of your early career may rear their ugly head more infrequently, they haven't been put to bed altogether. One of the things I love about Allen is how his mistakes are simply something to overcome, and a challenge he's seemed to accept as part of the job description. His bounce back is very real after mistakes, but all the same some of the bizarre decisions he makes have the very real opportunity to cost us games.

3. San Francisco's Defense

I watch very little football that isn't the Bills, but the internet tells me that the 49ers are recently healthy at important spots on the defensive side of the ball - Richard Sherman, primarily - and that they're a solid unit against both the run and pass. SF is very much in the hunt in the NFC West, and they have the experience of having to relocate home games to Arizona to either bond the squad together or split it at the seams. If they can consistently jam up the Bills' plans on offense, it could be a tough and ugly game. 


Shifting gears....

This next feature has been ruminating for a couple weeks now, both in my brain and in reality. The kind of truly hilarious set of American circumstances that insists on one-upping itself on a near-daily basis. 

I write, of course, of the slow burn coup d'état that the Trump White House/Campaign/Organization is attempting, and I use each of those terms generously. To suggest that they're going through the motions of their various legal challenges would, again, credit the Trump team with knowing what motions are appropriate for this chosen strategy. They do not. For over a month, it's been clear that our Big Boy President got beat by Joe Biden and the only reason anyone pretends otherwise is because there's a sociopathic narcissist who still has the nuclear codes and he never learned how to admit failure despite a career absolutely steeped in it. Last I checked, and I stopped checking a while ago, Biden beat that ass to the tune of 6 million votes and something like 6000 electoral votes (don't look it up), and the death rattle of this administration has long-since transitioned to pathetic, frivolous litigant mode.

​Reverting to the mean, in other words. 

One of the themes that I have taken to heart the most over the tenure of Trump's Presidency is how unremarkable it is to see a deeply stupid fascist at work. The most prevalent lie we're told about successful fash dictators is that they're all geniuses. It's the kind of lie that excuses the rest of us for our inaction, since the destructive force of an evil genius madman requires equally genius, strong forces to stop it. So instead of asking questions about the passive ambivalence of well-intentioned Europeans - and Americans - in responding to Hitler's actions despite the fact that he was clearly a vicious idiot, we unconditionally praise the forces that eventually brought the great and powerful Hitler to heel.

The Trump Operation, from top to bottom, both the private and public sectors of the enterprise, is one most-prevalently marked by operational failures. It's only gotten worse as the administration's lifecycle has marched towards its inevitable conclusion, with any and all staffers holding a modicum of competence have been pushed out by a President who not only demands fealty to himself, but also to his various flawed beliefs about the world. Stating aloud plain-as-day facts about the world is the type of thing that can bring you in the crosshairs of this baby-brained fucking loser, which is why White House staffers who are looking for work are being fired for daring to suggest that Trump won't be sworn in as President in January, why Chris Krebs was surreptitiously fired for not publicly denouncing voting security lapses that didn't​ occur, and why John Bolton is suddenly the stupidest person Trump has ever worked with as soon as he suggests Trump lost an election in which he was dragged and whipped in a burlap sack by a guy who just six months ago was barely able to form complete sentences in public. 

Surprised, I am not, therefore, that the parting legacy of the Trump administration is this post-election loss insistence on digging deeper into a field of Ls and ensuring that our lasting memory of this humongous shithead is going to be how funny it was to watch him and his ragtag legal team go into court after court and get absolutely worked. And because I've had the idea to apply some longstanding Fire Joe Morgan principles to the various legal updates that have come into the news since election day, I wanted to take some time to riff. For you. Out of love. 

Today will be the first installment, so if you have suggestions for further rankings and/or have tidbits you want to share about Trump's hilarious legal fuckbois, @ me on Parler.

Caveat: this list isn't exhaustive and I can't really claim any sort of accuracy in what may seem like reporting here. This is me cobbling together tweet drafts and my basic knowledge of the last two weeks of legal news with some google searching and, as needed, blatant fabrication for the sake of jokes. 

I feel like the picture is all I need to put here, but also that's superficial and prejudice to simply assume that my perspective on Marc here is justified by his punchable face and the look in his eyes that screams "YES, I KNOW, I AM FIRING MY HAIR STYLIST AS SOON AS WE'RE DONE HERE." 

Marc Scaringi was just added to Trump's legal team in PA this week, having replaced Linda Kerns, a Philly lawyer who revised Trump's federal lawsuit in PA to remove the request that 682k ballots be thrown out because they were processed without campaign monitors present because that request was entirely based on a lie. Kerns and others have moved to withdraw as counsel due to the apparent conflict. Can't have that! So, Scaringi was pulled into the fray and the early reports were that he would be adding that claim back to the lawsuit, because, sure it's unethical to plead claims that are entirely unsupported by the factual record as it exists in the actual world, but it's also unethical to do so as part of a large scale political grift aimed at extracting the most value out of MAGA donations as possible. With Marc Scaringi, you get what you pay for. 

Marc's first big moment on Team Trump's Litigious Fuck Squad was a five hour oral argument on the PA case yesterday, and let me tell you, he thinks it went GREAT and he thinks Rudy Giuliani is an amazing litigator. He licked Giuliani's boots hard and he licked them good after Rudy did what Rudy does best and made the President's legal position more precarious. Marc is fitting in just fine.

Did I mention Marc Scaringi is a conservative talk radio guy in Harrisburg, ran for Senate in 2012, was a staffer for Santorum? I feel like that's relevant here. 

Anyway, unlike the lawyers he is replacing on the Trump legal team, Mr. Scaringi runs an election law practice that makes him well-suited for the task of representing Trump's interests in these election challenges, and certainly makes him a great judge of whether Giuliani nailed it during Tuesday's hearing. What's that? [mumbles into earpiece] Sorry, strike that and reverse it. Scaringi doesn't know shit about election law and runs a two person firm with his wife, specializing in commercial law, and the lawyers pushed out of the PA team were actual election lawyers. Read: Scaringi has no fucking idea what's going on here. You can add "practicing in an area of law in which he has absolutely no experience" to the list of ethical breaches. 

Maybe he should just start a band and call it "Mark" and avoid the judicial oversight.

Then again, if he did that, we wouldn't get this kind of compare and contrast AP English problem.

HYPE TRAIN SOUNDTRACK

I don't have to justify this. Ever.

DROPPIN Rs AND SMOKKIN Ls

With more states legalizing the good shit lollipop, our matron saint Mary Jane, and with my current residence in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts about three years into its post-prohibition journey to the land of milk and honey, let's talk buds. I'm not sure what this space is going to be used for beyond just telling funny stories or dropping recs for strains or delivery mechanisms, but I guess that's enough? 

Anyway, one of the strains I've been gravitating back to - both in flower and vape forms - is my now-beloved Alaskan Thunder Fuck, aka ATF. Leafly's write-up, which tracks strongly with my experience, describes ATF as "usually present[ing] large, beautifully frosted buds with incredibly strong odors of pine, lemon, menthol, and skunk. Known for possessing a relaxing yet intensely euphoric high, it is also described as having a “creeper” effect as well as pronounced appetite enhancement." Also, it's a fucking GREAT name. 

Sativas are where I spend most of my time under the influence (distinct from the 1:1 medicated edibles that I take for anxiety management) and ATF is one of the best I have ever had. (I also dig that the vape oil manufacturer I have been finding for sale at my local shop makes oil that is very true to the flower's flavor palette, which is a testament to it not being fucking wretched black market knockoff garbage that was literally killing people last year.) If you like your high to be one that gets you energized and creative (if a little unfocused), rather than sinking into your couch like a useless slob, sativas are always going to be the go-to. Not that there's not a place for indicas and also being a useless slob every now and again, especially when dealing with chronic pain, insomnia or loss of appetite, but it's more of a special occasion kind of thing for me these days.

FINAL SCORE PREDICTION:

Bills 34, SF 17. 

I don't see the Niners scoring a lot tonight, and honestly you are out of your goddamned mind if you thought I was going to come back for a game preview for Monday Night Fucking Football and not pick our Bills to run roughshod over just about anyone in the league. LETSFUCKINGGOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
​

The Barrister 

As it happens, I’ve been writing a lot lately.
 
We’ve been in the new house since April and with the head start we got on unpacking over the course of a Lenten season spent getting the new space settled while prolonging our stay with my in-laws a few weeks longer, things that had been packed up for well over 16 months were suddenly thrust back into my life. Things that I’d forgotten we owned, some things that have been discarded since, and some things I’m surprised I’d lived without.
 
When I came upon the journal I’d been keeping on and off since 2001, about a third of it as-of-yet unfilled, it immediately occurred to me how much it constituted the latter, the kind of thing that is good to have around for those moments of existential crisis that require a well-rolled joint and a trip down memory lane. A marker of the kind of habit I always promise myself I’ll form but only succeed in doing briefly, in spurts.
 
It being a pandemic and the late 30s version of myself being an aspiring adult human with adult coping mechanisms, finding a leather-bound journal with pages to fill was too tempting to pass up. Even for someone as notoriously lazy and scatter-brained as me.
 
So, I’ve been writing. Usually a couple times a week. Sometimes briefly, sometimes at length. I’ve been reading things I wrote years ago, too. Things I wrote stoned on my friend’s couch in Riverside while procrastinating on law school applications. Things I wrote after passing the Bar exam, after getting married, after finding out I was going to be a father. Shitty things and embarrassing things and things I barely remember feeling and things I remember like they’re still happening right now. And the additions I’ve been making, the rambling mess of apprehension and fear and hope and desperate longing for something to break through this flimsy sheen of contempt I feel towards [gestures wildly] everything.
 
I’ve been playing with ideas for a story I’m developing. A story about the son of Clarence, the angel from It’s a Wonderful Life, a half-angel, half-human staffer at a private agency that has been hired to handle outsourced miracles and other moments of heavenly grace following God’s decision to retire. It’s a stupid idea that makes me laugh and I love spending time on it.
 
I’ve been writing about what it’s like waking up every day in the midst of global and national disaster knowing that the government is riddled with not just incompetency, but the kind of rank commitment to debased human indecency that we used to only read about in history books. I've been writing about the ever-present malaise of hopelessness that has settled in among people I love and admire and how desperately unfair this whole fucking country insists on being. 

And, as it’s been since I graduated law school – and, in a way, for a while before that, too - writing remains my craft, the way I help pay the bills and make myself indispensable as an attorney. 
 
All of this is a roundabout way of noting, yes, I know it’s been a while. It’s not that I haven’t had anything to express, it’s just that I haven’t cared much to share it. Well, not here at least. 
 
Truthfully, the idea of operating a sports website during a global pandemic while America cries out for justice has seemed trite, at best. And truthfully, it’s been on that track for a while, so I can’t make any promises about words I write finding their way to this corner of the internet with anything approaching frequency. When Deadspin crumbled and then was rebooted as a shitty Disney Z-O-M-B-I-E-S version of itself, it was hard not to take it as a sign that maybe that era of the internet is over. The era where longform writing could be the thing that saves us from the heavy burden of mediocrity that has invaded legacy media; where we find online friends who bond with us over our love of obscure prose covering topics trivial and enormous and everywhere in between. I had at least two early drafts of pieces saved, mid-thought, from the Bills run last season but finishing them seemed pointless after my hangover the next day. 
 
And that's not even counting the various, pressing life events that have found their way into my chronology, making the practical question of how to find time to write here all the more complicated. Two hospitalizations, almost dying three times in 12 months, a move from New Jersey to Massachusetts, with new jobs to boot. Yet operating this site, even its skeleton crew version, remains a thing I insist on doing much to the annoyance of my wife who rightly questions the random hosting fees and domain registration fees since, well, “I thought you guys had quit that nonsense already.” Babe, you see what had happened is, we haven't? 

It’s hard not to be nostalgic for a thing, even if it’s mostly nostalgia for the idea of what it could have been.
 
So why now? Who knows. Surely part of me sees this 5-2 Bills team and wonders whether I shouldn’t start scratching that itch since it could be fun to get frisky with some wordplay over the course of a wild Josh Allen playoff run. Surely part of me also sees Liverpool, playing twice a week in front of stadiums empty of fans, defending Champions of England, and wonders whether I wouldn’t get some cathartic release out of running on sentences about how the pandemic has forced us to confront just how crucial sports and the celebration thereof can be as one of the last places where community bonds can breathe and thrive.
 
Surely part of me sees how isolating life can be from our little corners of this world in crisis, and wonders whether giving the words I write a little sunlight might be part of how I get through these next few months.

Surely all of the above. For the time being, maybe it's just that one of those blog hosting fees just auto-renewed and it felt a little bit like finding that journal except I’m not sure whether it’ll be the death rattle before we fold this thing and pack it away forever, or the moment I relearn what it was about writing in this space that made it the thing I chose to do with so many of my free hours during one of the more fun times of my life.  The moment I take note of my surprise at how I lived without.
 
I suppose we shall see.

We're back, babes. ​It was time. 
​
So crack a beer or four and get the pregame started. Go Bills. 

​For the uninitiated... Direct download here. Embed stream below. RSS feed here. All of our archived episodes are also available on iTunes here; this one should be available there soon as well! 

Cheers,

​Dubs

The Outlander

A few weeks back our office FedEx guy came by. Our Operations Manager usually handles them; there’s numerous packages arriving daily that need to be exactly what he expects not just for our sake but the sake of our customers and the various third party agencies that run communications between those customers and ourselves (very Office Space, but that’s advertising). Occasionally the Ops Manager is out in which case the FedEx guy comes to my office for a quick signature and confirmation of my name to cover their ass.

The guy was probably late-40’s to mid-50’s and while I signed the tiny screen with the matching tiny stylus he said “I think I have that exact same pennant.”

I wheeled around as if I have multiple pennants behind my desk but no, still just that one, a Buffalo Bills Super Bowl XXV champs one purchased off eBay for in the early to mid-aughts. I was in school and didn’t have a credit card at this point so I called my Mom, explained to her that no, eBay wasn’t going to rob her account for this $6.99 relic to an era that never existed and she assented. It’s been in various offices and apartments throughout the northeast before landing here in my office in Rhode Island in my mid-30’s.

While I’ve always had a little “no, you don’t have this one but ok” response in the past I decided to let this fellow Bills fan have his moment (besides in the years since I’ve found more than a few of these "Norwood makes the kick" bizarro penants around). I smiled and asked how he felt they were going to do this year.

He didn’t miss a beat. “Oh I stopped watching them after they benched Flutie for Johnson in the playoffs.”
​

At a time when the foundation of everything we were taught- at church, at school, by parents, professors, colleagues and cops- has been shown to be nebulous at best, the Buffalo Bills are a zeitgeist petri dish. At times this seems to be due to an organized effort from the top down to implement a franchise that represents specific subgroups and entities that elicit goodwill and hero-worship from the demographic of “Buffalo football fan,” while at others it appears to be an organically cultivated shift from the fanbase themselves, saying the quiet parts out loud at the realization that not only are they not alone in their groupthink but there’s enough to change the very fabric of what America is in 2019.

This blog is as close to “writing for fun” as I get these days- in a cliché of mid-career average guy I too have a novel I need to get back to- though writing and communication is also my career. I work in real estate negotiation, hashing out leases with folks that run the gamut in education, income, business type and location (with a noticeable skew of nearly all being white males of course). Over the past few years I have seen a shift; one that was barely perceptible at first but has snowballed into the status quo in business discussions to the point where what was once the rule is now the exception and vice versa. It is abandonment of fact, abandonment of reason, abandonment of the mutually beneficial agreement. Not long ago I could sit down with a property owner, explain that we’re offering X because our profits are Y and while there may be hemming and hawing and some movement in one direction or another, discussions would be amicable because everyone deals in facts and figures and we want a partnership as opposed to an adversary. Deals would move quickly because they existed in a vacuum devoid of emotion and were conducted professionally because after all, we’re both just doing our jobs the best we can. The best way I can summarize this is quite simply that words meant things.
​
Emotion has replaced reason. Where lessors previously saw a partner, they see an adversary. The concept of mutual benefit, of win-win has been replaced with zero sum antagonism. “Let’s crunch the numbers and see what we can do” has been replaced with “fuck you, pay me.” Every negotiation, every cent to claw is a symbol to them, a symbol of what they deserve, of who they are as people. They can only feel good about something if someone else feels bad about something. It’s not enough to have something; no someone else must go without in order for them to feel fulfilled and even then, only for a moment. Nothing is “just business,” just like nothing is “just football.”

I think by now we can admit that the Buffalo Bills as an operating business entity have placed an onus on symbolism not as a football team but as a civic operation espousing the meaning of what it is to be not just a good Buffalonian but a good person. This is a problem because what I want is a well operating *football team* that succeeds at *playing football,* which is not something that has occurred very often, arguably not at all during my adult life. They are not subtle about this, not with their talks about culture or handing out literal lunch pails to corporate sponsors who aren’t eating their lunch on steel beams in the sky but in air conditioned conference rooms.

They are not subtle about this, not with their flyovers, not with their weekly troop worship, not with their revolving door of mediocre players whose faith is stronger than their field awareness. They are not subtle when they draft not the most talented quarterback on the board but the one most malleable to fantastical brand speak, to say with a straight face that a Sabres Stanley Cup is the sporting event he’d most want to witness, fifteen months after learning what the Buffalo Sabres even are.

Josh Allen was drafted because he is a facsimile for what those who run the franchise thought Buffalonians want from their franchise Quarterback, of what they thought Buffalonians would identify with. He was not drafted based on his accomplishments but in spite of them. He was drafted because even if he didn’t work out, the fans would like him so much they wouldn’t blame the powers that be for wasting their time or missing an opportunity to turn the franchise around. Evidence (four years of Mountain West Conference play that resulted in merely an Honorable Mention), reason (accuracy is largely at its end stage of development by the end of college), facts (completion percentage, INT figures, passing yard totals) have been disregarded in favor of emotion (he signs autographs for kids and wears shorts in cold weather).
​
If Josh Allen was drafted as a representative for what Buffalonians want and identify with then most should be offended. They believe you identify with someone who talks the talk but doesn’t walk the walk. They believe you identify with someone who is style, not substance. They believe you identify with someone who has never succeeded at any meaningful level in their career getting an opportunity over those that have proven more worthy of the opportunity. They believe you identify with a loser because that’s what you are. 

Those who make the decisions for this team do not identify with you, they laugh at you. Sure, it comes behind closed doors at One Bills Drive but make no mistake, they do not identify with you and they do not respect you. They tell you how blue collar you are despite the fact you were the first in your family to get a degree. They tell you how bad the weather is despite the fact you only needed a light jacket for those December games. They tell you a player’s failures are secondary to his faith because they don’t believe you ultimately care about results. They tell you all about how *tough* the area is, despite the fact that when you think about it you grew up in a pretty safe suburb with non-descript doughy white friends and have a pretty successful career. They tell you how someone is a “Buffalo” guy when all you know about the guy is how he’s a replacement level nobody cast off from some other franchise he couldn’t succeed with. Is that what you want to identify with? The team may call themselves the Buffalo Bills but they have formulated a roster and culture that would be better off called the Tonawanda Bills; a culture of mediocrity, of entitlement over merit, of emotion over reason where success is defined by vague terms such as “values” and “effort” and not results. They are a team made for people who have given up, for those sitting at the bar at 3am on a Wednesday, for those who think winning is too much to ask.

It does not take very long for an objective mind to identify massive red flags around those running the franchise from top to bottom. The owner is on tape calling one of his own former players by the wrong name and fretting about losing advertising dollars for his shitty hockey team. The GM drafted the current quarterback. The collection of dunces before his arrival felt Patrick Mahomes wasn’t worth as much as “draft capital,” used to later select the inaccurate arm the franchise has pinned its future on. The coach came aboard talking about “faith-based winning” yet still can’t summon up the courage to go for it on fourth and short. The offseason acquisitions are verifiable improvement based on their performances elsewhere but based on an offense averaging less than twenty points a game it’s debatable whether that improvement is meaningful. An objective observer would likely come to conclusions similar to what appears to be the overwhelming majority of national media: they may be better, they won’t be good.

There is one place seemingly devoid of anything resembling these fact-based predictions from the media: Western New York. Specifically, the gaggle of bros who find themselves covering the team on a daily basis. As someone who grew up during the halcyon days of Bucky, Sully, Harrington it is disorienting to see the problem not be pessimism but blind optimism. These aren’t weathered old men spewing out resentment that they’re never getting a bigger gig than The Buffalo News, but millennial chuckleheads playing the content game where being bullish, where being optimistic (*cough* where toeing the line for management) is sure to be shared throughout social media and result in a cacophony of likes and shares.

Perhaps these people are genuinely bullish on the Bills; I’ve had people who know some people I bash consistently speak to their goodness and value as individuals. I don’t doubt those assessments from people I trust, what I do assess are those whose jobs revolve in sports coverage refuting, disregarding or denying facts in favor of what will make their audience feel good. These are guys operate as a collection of sports Ben Shapiros, making bad faith arguments and using words with zero substance behind them, posting gifs of swirl routes and eight yard outs as evidence of growth, who push the Mad Money button and fire off confetti guns any time some guy with ten concussions talks up the Bills on NFL Network. The fastest growing non-corporate entity covering local sports seems eager to play the role, buying into the cult of agro-idiots that run the team, the goofy never-will-be’s that wear the uniform, mugging for the cameras and lobbing meatballs the second they hold a microphone to the face of someone with any actual influence or power. They make a town that was always a fishbowl become less a fishbowl and more The Truman Show, where reality is manufactured and Truman is hundreds of thousands of Bills fans.

So how will they do? I suppose I should say, as this is called a “preview” post and I did talk about word usage earlier. The easy answer is I don’t have the slightest fucking clue as I watched 1.5 games last season but I think there’s more than enough out there in 2019 to give a reasonable look at the roster and attempt to peg their upcoming season. The defense is going to be pretty good- when McDermott isn’t in a prevent defense that hasn’t worked since the 40’s. The receivers are better but I wouldn’t say good. The line is better but I’d also not necessarily call them good. The backfield is old as shit and unless the drafted kid thrives or McCoy and Gore do a bros trip to Europe for some stem cells, they won’t save us. The inaccurate QB that can run well is still the inaccurate QB that can run well; I’ve watched and rooted for that guy before when it didn’t cost us two first round picks and people couldn’t stand him. I guess this inaccurate QB that can run well throws more picks but since he can throw them farther downfield I should be bullish about his development.

There’s little more I love than being right but I’d like to make this clear for the sake of clarity: I’d LOVE to be wrong far more when it comes to Josh Allen and the Buffalo Bills. Maybe accuracy can be taught. Maybe you can go from Mountain West Honorable Mention to above average franchise QB. Maybe. If this happens I’ll own it; it’s more fun to be wrong and high fiving fellow fans at the Bills bar than it is to be right and spending Sunday napping because the season was lost in October. I’m really excited to watch Ed Oliver, the first draft pick I actually liked in years.

While we’re on the topic of truths, while most of my online followers and real-life friends know, I am a Bills fan. I’m looking right now at the hat I wore to work and shelled $40 out for last month. I have a Bills magnet on my car. I used a Bills koozie when visiting in-laws last weekend and will have Bills stuff on at least one of the days on our honeymoon at the end of the month. The fucked up thing is I won’t be surprised in the slightest if someone else is doing the same thing at the same resort in the Adriatic Sea. The Bills got me back with the fun season of 2014 after a decade of ambivalence and for better or worse as an ex-pat they serve as that symbol of where I am from. As we get older and dreams begin to die we cling tighter to those entities and symbols that have remained constant throughout your life as educational benchmarks approached, as jobs came and went and as people who mean the world to you come crashing into and then suddenly drift out of your life. As calculating and rational as one professes to be, there is a connection there that lingers in site of itself.

And yet it is hard to believe the Bills are for me anymore because they have mutated into something that is recognizable on the surface but underneath is filled with more carcinogens than the deepest wells Terry and Kim reaped their billions from. They are a symbol of all that is malignant and twisted about the world around us. They are a billion dollar gaslighting apparatus and shockingly, after decades of failure, a million sad simpletons throughout the region have bought in because the team makes them think that they’re part of something when they’re nothing more than pay pigs to a billionaire. This happened at astonishing speed with the assistance of those paid to talk and write about them. 

It makes me miss my grandfather, an actual blue collar fan who spent decades toiling away at Spaulding Fibre with a real lunch pail, watching and listening to the Bills every week from their inception. He would have smelled the shit and seen through the transparent yammerings of these rich interlopers before Beane and McDermott finished their first offseason. He would have been offended that these slick nobodies thought they could strut in here, talk about faith, culture and process and pretend to be one of them. He’d have seen through their cynical use of a fan dying from cancer to advance their status as a civic entity as opposed to a football team. He wanted a Super Bowl, not a mural for a Texan in a Mexican wrestling mask. He didn’t need to be part of “something special,” he had a family for that. He just wanted to see some fucking wins and know the team was working their best to do so.

That said, on a grand scale this era is about the death of community, the death of concern about your fellow man and woman. It’s about using the law to justify physical, financial and emotional horrors despite the fact that “the law” has quickly shown its fallibility as a human construct. It’s where wanting to make the world better and enriching those suffering has fallen out of favor under the guise of “personal responsibility.” It’s a world where people go to the trouble of running and winning election on the school board so they can tell parents they’ll have their kids taken away if they can’t afford to pay for their child’s lunch. It’s where every undeveloped piece of wild land on the continent is for sale, where Supreme Court seats are for sale, where the weak, shattered and lost are to be mocked, not healed. It’s an era where the Today show reviews bulletproof backpacks as if they were air fryers. It’s an era where sports are about everything other than and at the same time nothing but sports. It’s an era of committing the most unchristian acts in the name of Christianity, of monorail salesmen at all levels of government and an era where no one anywhere has the power, the money and the decency to bother fixing it.

It’s about desperation, desperation to save our waterways, our coastlines, save our ideals that were espoused by imperfect men and then twisted until those words were used to justify the exact opposite of their intention. Desperation to find that sense of community again, to find a group you can believe in, take pride in, believe you are making the world better with. It’s an era where literal, actual deaths are occurring daily at the hands of policies championed by millions of people who look just like you. It’s where we worship the powerful and vilify the powerless.
​
It’s an era where words and results don’t matter so long as you can contort yourself enough to appear to be for whatever your audience thinks is good and just at a given time. It’s an era made for failures to become kings, for cowards who project strength, for people who look not play the part, for style to replace substance and an attention to community that only embraces a caricature of community. THAT, is the Buffalo Bills “culture.” The tragedy is that this is the perfect and really only time for it.
​
Go Bills.

The Outlander

Dear Terry,

We’re okay on first names here right? I’m Matt, PSU Law ’09 (We are!). Anyways, you and your wife first came across my radar some nine years ago not for any Buffalo association or prospects regarding their two professional teams but because of your Penn State associations. I’d played intramural floor hockey there with a team of classmates, a collection of hockey fans of the Pens, Flyers, Islanders, Rangers, Flames and yes, the Sabres. We’d occasionally talk about how Penn State had the ideal student body to support a D1 hockey team and now here you were a year or so after graduation, fresh from cashing out on a lucrative career facilitated by Pennsylvania’s lack of environmental regulations to provide that. Your philanthropy at the time seemed to be a godsend that occasionally but not often happened from Nittany Lion alums and seemed tailored to us specifically. There was to be a cash bomb to hire the best staff, recruit the best players and most of all, provide a state of the art arena, a student section with bleachers as steep as the fire code would allow, an arena tailored to enhance crowd noise and intimidate schools steeped in tradition like Michigan and Minnesota. The facilities were to be the best for training, practicing and teaching the players the game.

And you delivered. The arena that bares your name has one of the loudest atmospheres in the collegiate game. The coach is fantastic. The players are not merely consistently good but they consistently find their way to NHL rosters. They were a game away from the Frozen Four five years into their existence and this year merely two goals away from another tournament berth. The team has provided an excuse for reunions with my friends that may not have otherwise happened so for that cash bomb I will always be thankful.

I’ve been a Sabres fan as long as I can remember. The nuances have been discussed here before but I think having an absent dad, raised by my grandfather and mom, plus the affordability, easier commute and less debaucherous atmosphere contributed to me going to Sabres games much more as a kid. I had my first girlfriend in 1999, attended game four by myself, game five the next year with my grandfather in the last game we’d attend together. I attended game one against the flyers in 2006 with my college sweetheart, graduated college on three hours sleep from the delirium of Pominville’s winner. So many wonderful moments of my life are intertwined with that franchise, a proud one that for their first forty years only missed the playoffs three years in a row once. Family, friends and times now long gone that can be remembered fondly with that team.

A couple months after the Penn State announcement your name started to be floated around regarding the Sabres. This was welcome for numerous reasons but at the core it was that we’d become discouraged as to the state of the franchise and what its purpose was. Ownership and management had made very clear back in 2007 that success was not worth paying above a certain amount. They took the best team in the league and languished, a team without its leadership, without a reliable backup goalie, narrowly missing the playoffs two years in a row. Sure, they followed that up with a division winner but even that team was missing something. We weren’t being unreasonable, we just had a standard. In ten years they’d made the Stanley cup finals once, been 20 minutes away from it again, won a president’s trophy, made another conference final and been some 77 seconds away from another one. To then take their foot off the gas, to try to cobble a couple seasons together with a mishmash of spare parts and vets wasn’t acceptable. We needed an owner to whom success wasn’t merely the easiest way to turn a profit, it was the entire point.

I listened to your press conference in the car, on the lonely eight-plus hour drive back to Barre, Vermont. After the press conference I listened to WGR the rest of the way back. In early 2011 I extremely did not have my shit together, sleeping on a mattress on the floor above an insane fundamentalist Christian family, listening to games on my phone while sitting in a camping chair playing video games, digging my car out from a new snowstorm every two weeks, drinking a bottle of wine or two a night. But listening to you wax poetic about the Sabres role in your life, your love for the French Connection, the sole purpose of existence being a title, the deprioritizing of profits in favor of bringing in the best and the brightest, it brought tears to my eyes and chills up my spine. Here was this unfathomably rich couple and somehow their connection to the team was the same as mine! These weren’t cold, calculating venture capitalists, this were people with an emotional connection to the team. I trudged in the snow to watch you be introduced before the Ottawa game, trudged to that same bar to watch the vast majority of games the rest of the way, having honest to god tears watching them run the clock out against Philly and then win it in overtime. Gutting game 6 and 7 aside, hockey was back and we couldn’t wait for more.

The local press was a bit unfair to you at the start weren’t they? Some were deeply condescending to Kim, others had this bizarre obsession with somehow tying you to the Penn State scandal, trying to follow the hockey program money as if it would end up in Sandusky’s legal fund. It was gross and upsetting to me both as an alum and as a Sabres fan; you’d made this amazing gesture with your money, rescued my favorite team from the dead and now some pencil neck like Mike Harrington or sausage neck like Bucky Gleason felt like taking potshots? Fuck that.

After narrowly missing the playoffs in 2012 you didn’t hesitate during a slow start in the lockout season to fire an icon in Lindy Ruff. This was fine, many of us thought the modern game had passed him by (despite his success with the modern game 05-07 and 09-11) and with the mid-aughts core slowly aging out of their prime it was time for a full reset. We were all on board with this; it showed you were paying attention as much as the fans, were frustrated along with the fans and unlike the fans, had the power to make clear that the fans deserved better. We knew things might get ugly. We were still with you.

When Ralph Wilson died five years back I actually thought it was unfair and unappreciative for fans and media to run to you and urge/question whether you would buy them. After all, you were a hockey guy. You’d kept the hockey team here, pumped it full of cash, given the sign off to chase the best and most expensive coaches and free agents, and here were all these Bills-first pissants whining about the Bills leaving. While I’m certainly a Bills fan, my thought was Ralph was the one who left this open-ended and if Rogers was going to swoop in, pay a nominal penalty and move the team out in 2022, lying about viability and stadium requirements while setting things in motion in Toronto, so be it. I wrote about life without the Bills, about downgrading to something with lower stakes like a CFL franchise, picturing summer Friday nights with open air tailgates and a big rivalry with Hamilton. After fifteen years of failure it seemed frankly a little quaint.

The point was you didn’t have to buy them, nothing you’d ever said led anyone to believe you would buy them, and besides your interest in the NFL seemed passive anyways. That said, I was ecstatic when you came out of nowhere with your offer and blew Toronto and some television blowhard away. Both teams were safe and that was because of your finances. Despite the last place Sabres finish the previous year there was a plan. They grabbed the best offensive prospect in Sam Reinhart and word was there were two kids coming out the following year that could change the trajectory of whoever was lucky enough to draft them. I was sold.

It’s been five years. I guess the only thing that’s up in the air now is to ask which one is it? Were you lying to us in 2011, or did your priorities, your expectations, your goals for this club change? It’s either one or the other. Whichever one it is begs the simple follow up question, why?

Last season was the most disappointing season in franchise history, at least comparing expectations to results. The team had shown growth under Bylsma, albeit slow growth hampered with a few big whiffs by the general manager. You had your core but development was too slow. This highly touted Nashville assistant and former star was to get things on track. What happened was the team fell off the cliff; the season was dead by Halloween, they finished worst in the league yet again. It was baldly obvious that this coach was not the answer- you can’t improve in skill and get worse. The time for losing was over and while Dahlin was a hell of a silver lining, at some point wins have to be expected. To me and many fans, the 17-18 performance could not have shown more clearly that Phil Housley’s vision was not cut out for this league, at least as a head coach. Your reaction was to do nothing.

During this time you’ve been quite busy. You tag along on college pro days, you follow the Bills GM and coaches around to meetings, you acquire massive swaths of property throughout Buffalo for presumably a modern NFL stadium. You pop up in the New York Times on owner transcripts, fretting about the impact of the Black Lives Matter movement, calling Anquan Boldin by the wrong name, complaining about sponsorship issues with the hockey team (which had been at the bottom of the league for several years by this point). You’re there in the locker room in Miami when they break the playoff drought with the third coach of your short tenure. It would appear that you’re obviously smitten with the level of influence financially and otherwise that comes with being part of the NFL owners club. It would appear that you’ve realized it is this the real ticket to gaining more property and business influence in Western New York and otherwise. Of course, when we all met you eight years ago we didn’t think that real estate, business development or influence were your goals. We didn’t just assume that- you told us explicitly, in probably the clearest press conference you’ve ever given in your life. So did you lie? Or did you just change?

It’s hard to describe the damage that these Sabres seasons have done to the fanbase, to the discourse, to the actual love of hockey in the region. Last year for the first time I canceled my hockey package, before Thanksgiving; the prospect of spending three hours feeling sad or angry didn’t appeal to me, not in a world such as today’s with children being kept in modern concentration camps, mothers, fathers ripped out of hospitals, courtrooms, car accidents and shipped to countries they’ve never set foot in. Mass shootings of students, movie buffs, concert goers, night club attendees, churchgoers. A world that we know will be worse for our children than it is for us and will likely be worse for our grandkids than it is for our kids. This year I canceled it just after Valentine’s Day.

Something that was once nearly as much of my identity as my loved ones (what I wouldn’t have done to have had gamecenter as an option as a 1L in 2006-07) was for the first time not worth my time. Did you notice any of this a year ago? Did you follow the season? Did you see the empty seats, hear the silent, discouraged crowd? Did you hear about the collapse of the secondary market, people unwilling to pay $10 to take in that team?  How many listless performances did you watch? I ask because you sold yourself as a die-hard Sabres fan, a lifelong Sabres fan, a fan desperate to bring a Stanley Cup nay, multiple Stanley Cups. Certainly you had to have watched, had to have solicited viewpoints not just from your employees but from the fans, from the media. Surely you must have listened to WGR once in a while, read The Buffalo News recapping yet another dreary night on Washington Street. Surely you must have heard from your accountants about the failure of the World Juniors, been surprised since that had been such a boon for the economy and fanbase back in 2010. Surely you must have heard about season ticket figures. Surely you knew one year ago that things were dire.

So did you lie? Or did you just change?

After hitting on Dahlin and getting Skinner I don’t think it was unreasonable for anyone to demand a competitive team. While I thought I may have skewed close to unreasonable- I wanted meaningful March hockey and 5 points or less from the playoffs- it seemed everyone was at least demanding improvement-marked improvement- from such a disappointment. After the opener I was prepared to cut my subscription in the first month of the season but a funny thing started happening- they looked competent.

It’s hard to describe the win streak aside from just so needed. It was the month before my wedding, they demolished Ottawa during my stag and despite a loss the next day didn’t lose until my parents were at our place putting together gift bags the night before heading to the venue. Once again I was screaming, jumping off my couch, wearing my jerseys and gear out to the bars, blasting DJ Kool when it came on in my car. Were they back?

When it ended they were in first place and honestly anything but a total collapse would result not just in meaningful March hockey but a playoff berth for the first time since you came into the picture all those years ago. They’d have their first fifty goal scorer since I was a kid. They may not have the depth to roll through the playoffs, they may be unpolished and a little young but a message was going to be sent to Boston, Montreal and most of all Toronto that the Sabres were going to need to be considered moving forward. When we moved at the start of 2019 I had early April pegged for my first trip home centered around a party in the plaza, showing my wife over four years after we met just why I was celebrating those losses the first weeks of our courtship, taking in playoff hockey not as a student or as a flailing entry level employee desperately trying to find his way, but as a happy newlywed whose career had finally carved a path of modest comfort. The Sabres had always been there and I was going to be there for them.

Not only did this not happen, everyone involved in managing the team and everyone in charge of overseeing that management did nothing. As the team clung to their playoff spot, the shortcomings and holes obvious, your General Manager did nothing. When he made call-ups, your coach- whose wife’s doomed senate campaign you eagerly opened your checkbook for- refused to play them outright or played them with his boat anchors. As they sunk in the standings these same two men refused to take action. The things their very job descriptions call for- building a roster and implementing winning strategy- did not take place. By the time a trade was made they were fading from contention and the coach never modified any of his philosophies even as his players proved they needed to be changed.

Did you ever dive into the facts and figures of this season? Did you ever watch and notice how the coach played his worst players immediately after scoring goals? Did you then notice that they had a problem with immediately surrendering goals after scoring, killing their momentum? Did you notice he had the same tendency to do this in the closing minutes of periods and games and that it elicited similar problems? Did you follow the fact that when he was called up Pilut immediately looked like the second best defenseman on the roster? Did you notice the coach greeted that revelation with ping ponging him between the ice and press box, eventually adding Rochester into the mix? Did you notice goalies were decided based on results, not performance? Did you notice the dismay of the fans? Did you feel frustration when the coach would bring out the same tired platitudes about effort, about chances? Did you hear your GM talk about this season as a success merely because it was better than the previous season? Did you watch as your new star went from a shoo-in for fifty to not even reaching forty? Have you noticed your GM has failed to sign that star long-term? Certainly a die-hard, lifelong fan would feel dismay, anger at the coach and GM standing idly by as the season drifts off the road and then off the cliff. All the ones I know sure did.

So did you lie? Or did you just change?

Last week, you granted a rare interview. Symbolically Arizona could have been a trillion miles from Buffalo where the hockey team was going through yet another listless performance in what would end up being a two-win March. You were asked about your team, this team you have loved since you were a young man, this team you supposedly went to see with your wife the day after your wedding. This team for which nothing but a Stanley Cup was once the goal but who had not sniffed the playoffs in seven years. Certainly this was unacceptable. No one expected you to fire folks over the television but certainly you empathized and shared the frustration of your fellow fans?

Instead, you lauded Housley’s playing days, days that ended before one generation of fans entered school and before the newest generation of fans was even born. You called him a young coach which I assume referred to his coaching career and not his actual age. You said the team was young, that they would grow despite the fact that the team isn’t that young anymore. You deferred to your GM, the same one who refused to call for help when the ship was sinking, alluded to the coach being safe, saying things needed to change but you “didn’t know what.” You made vague statements about Tim Horton’s, McDonald’s and the New England Patriots that alluded to the importance of continuity. For the first time you sounded like what you are, an aloof owner whose team is simply not a priority. You were busy, busy talking up a new football stadium and gearing up for the fights that will bring. You wanted to tag along with Brandon Beane, talk shop, you seemed like the hockey team was literally the last thing you wanted to discuss. It was a long way from “where’s Perreault?”

There can no longer be any debate that these are the darkest days in the history of the franchise. The roster is stocked with exponentially more talent than it was five years ago but their performance has not improved. No one associated with the team has had the temerity to say that this is not acceptable. That in itself is unfathomable based on the franchise’s first forty seasons or based on the path taken in 2013. This is a zombie franchise far more under your watch than it ever was under the watch of hucksters like Golisano or criminals like the Rigas family. Frankly, you seem over their failures as much as fans who have checked out. You have more positive things to do than worry about your hockey team! You can talk up Josh Allen, your coach everyone seems to love, the new signings. You can talk about property development and growth in the canalside area.

Meanwhile your hockey management team seems to have picked up the “culture” and “process” buzzwords in a vain attempt to spin the massive failure of the past two seasons as things just going according to plan. The hockey-first fans don’t buy it of course as they aren’t rubes like the football-first crowd but that matters little, right?

I’m not sure you realized when you presented yourself as a die-hard, lifelong fan how many people actually met that description. I’m not sure you realized how many Buffalonians, spread all over the continent, settled in on their couches three times a week, six months a year to watch the hockey team. I’m not sure you realized how many fans devour stats and performance metrics of your team, how many can easily discover that excuses provided by the coach failed to hold water. I’m not sure you understood what was happening in the city in November, what was happening over Thanksgiving weekend as a region and a fanbase dared to dream the darkness was over. I know you don’t understand how it felt the weeks and months after that, as the team and those leading it plunged themselves and us along with them right back into the abyss, the light gone again. As the season ends that light disappears permanently for another group of fans who say “no more,” leaving fewer of us to attempt to muster another season of hope, recycling memories long gone and not knowing if those memories are strong enough to make it through another winter, a car battery on its last legs. The legions who will sign on to be disappointed, embarrassed, patronized will dwindle yet again, leaving fewer of us to muster yet another season, pilot lights barely flickering, ready to be extinguished before the first snowfall.

Did you lie? Or did you just change?

You are the worst case scenario. You are so far removed from what you presented to the world in early 2011 that anyone predicting this back then would have been dismissed immediately as not just a pessimist, but an idiot. I defended the manner through which you obtained your riches to my more woke friends because to me you were no different than a close friend I disagreed with over taxes or guns. You were a Sabres fan goddammit and so long as you were working to bring a cup to Buffalo then I couldn’t give a shit as to how you made your money. I warned people five years ago that you didn’t owe the city anything more, you didn’t need to open your pocketbook for the football team because Ralph made the bed and after all you weren’t even a football guy! As people fretted over the hiring of poor coaches I told my friends something like “you don’t get to be that successful without knowing to kick people out when they aren’t doing their job.” Turns out I was the idiot.

Your reign has created an atmosphere where something as exciting and big as the Frozen Four is coming to your arena and no one cares to go. It’s not merely their love for the team that is suffering, it is their love for the sport. If you are concerned about continuity in coaching, if you are concerned with your reputation in the league, let me assure you that every minute that passes with Phil Housley in charge of that team only makes it worse. You know what’s worse than firing people willy-nilly every 18 months? Keeping the worst coach in franchise history because you’re afraid of your image. That’s what cowards do and that’s what people who ultimately do not care about the success of their franchise do. You have taken a franchise that for people of a certain age holds far more of a connection and brings up far more fond memories than the football team and you have effectively watched it slowly die. You’re nothing more than a 19th century British MP watching the Great Famine unfold and brushing it off because after all, there’s stadium blueprints and a football draft coming up.

I watched No Goal in ninth grade at the house of a friend who would nearly 20 years later be my best man. After the shock- and being unaware of the conflagration whipping up over the goal call- I hopped on my bike to go home. I remember saying to myself that it was okay, they’ll just win it all next year. I said something similar to myself in 2000, in 2006, 2007, 2010, 2011. Failure is a part of every aspect of life and sports are of course no different; being a Buffalo fan has always made that clear. I’ve only grown stronger in my appreciation for my fellow fans and those who we share these experiences with.

What has also become clear as I’ve grown from a 15 year old to a 35 year old is that powerful people lie. They lie to get what they want, they lie to avoid questions or scrutiny, they lie because they can. I’m not sure if you lied because the Sabres were your way in, I’m not sure if you lied because you felt it would ease the scrutiny from media, I’m not sure if you lied because you just wanted to be the hero. But I know this:

You lied.

The Outlander

I hope to have a proper post to discuss the Sabres season- rock bottom for yet another season in a row- when I'm no longer cross-eyed and in need of drugs to dull the rage about it. Luckily one Bills beat writer, one Matt Parrino provided us with some content with yet another asinine post whining about Antonio Brown. I've saved you the time of FJM'ing that with your own incredulous remarks below. 

Why can’t Antonio Brown let go of Buffalo? Fans are so over him (Commentary) There are LOTS of things that call for commentary right now in Buffalo sports. This isn't it. 

So this whole Antonio Brown thing just won’t go away, will it? You’re literally the only one on my feed talking about it

Buffalo is ready to move on. Good! Finally! The QB still can't throw, the RB's can be carbon dated and that doesn't even begin to get at things like children in cages and the special olympics of all things being defunded. Let's talk about those things, or that new brewery in North Tonawanda.

Nobody likes to feel unwanted and Brown has made it clear he didn’t and doesn’t want Buffalo. He’s been persistent in his efforts to remind Bills Mafia of his feelings.

But why? Who cares.

Why is Brown posting memes poking at the fan base and revealing private conversations with his agent to prove he didn’t want Buffalo? You know Instagram has other athletes. Celebrities too.

There isn’t a lot of clarity about the why but there is some irony in the melodrama. Is the irony the fact that you and half the fanbase are whining about being thought of as small time while continuing to be hung up on some random athlete’s social media, thus proving you are small time?

When Brown decided to rock the foundation of the Steelers organization — no-showing the 2018 finale and demanding a trade, while setting fire to his market value — rocking the now infamous yellow mustache, he explained why he wanted out of Pittsburgh. Employers are not your friend and maximizing your value should be paramount for the employee.

Brown did an interview with ESPN in the midst of the saga and before the much-maligned wide receiver was traded to Oakland (the Raiders won four games last season while the Bills won six) The raiders have a quarterback who can throw straight and don’t have to get their dicks kicked in twice a season by the patriots. Also I really wouldn’t use the fact that the Bills went from nine wins to six and averaged about 15 points a game while doing it as a positive. He had issues with Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger, and Steelers general manager Kevin Colbert didn’t seem to agree with Brown’s frustrations.
 
“If our guys were smart, they would listen to (Roethlisberger) because he’s been there, he’s done it,” said Colbert, who believes Roethlisberger was within his rights as a leader to question Brown’s play publicly last season. “He has 52 kids under him. I want them to step up and say, ‘Ben, what do I have to do? Can I do this better? What do we have to do to win a Super Bowl?’” We can already tell which guy at NY Upstate will be against unionization.

Brown responded to Colbert and gave insight into why he wanted out of Pittsburgh.

“What grown man is calling another grown man a kid? 'Fifty-two kids.' Like, you don't have no respect for these guys? Like, these are the guys that go to work for you, Brown told ESPN. “And that's what I'm telling you guys ... that's my issue. You know what I'm saying? It's all about respect.”

Is it, Antonio? Respect for the employee, not some jorts wearing shitbag from Gowanda who has a stick family of assault rifles on their car and throws half empty blue lights at fans wearing opposing jerseys on Autumn weekends

Is it all about respect?

If it is then why are you slinging shade at a city that only ever wanted to embrace you? Buffalo covets great players and they treat them like gods. It was pretty clear that fan desire for Brown was lukewarm at best but it’s nice that you ignore that here to continue your false narrative pity part. Why was this the case? Well it seems that by attempting to maximize his value and hold some control over his employment situation he was seen as a “troublemaker” and “controversial.” He also danced after touchdowns, a big no-no to the tiki torch crowd that piles into RWS parking lots every weekend.

Also, do they really covet great players? How would we know? You don’t have to go very far to find complaints about Jack Eichel’s work ethic. Folks were ready to ship Shady out until he started donating his seats to local terror agents in badges. The QB to end the drought was hated- not disliked, hated- by a slew of folks now eager to talk about how completion percentage is meaningless in football. The next “great” Bills player will be the first since Lynch…how was he received here, by the way?

Brown put out the first episode of his new podcast “The Boomin Experience Podcast.” This sounds like an inapplicable thing to cover as a BUFFALO BILLS BEAT REPORTER. On it he released a conversation with his agent Drew Rosenhaus, which detailed the teams that were interested in trading for him. New England, Philadelphia and Oakland were all mentioned and discussed as landing spots, but when Rosenhaus mentioned that Buffalo had shown interest he told Brown he wouldn’t even give the team a number on a potential new contract because his client had no interest in playing for the Bills.

“Yeah, don’t waste any time,” Brown said. Sounds smart. When I was looking to move regional offices in my company I didn’t send Knoxville an application because fuck that.

The podcast was a clear and direct message aimed at the city of Buffalo to clarify Brown’s position: he never wanted to come here. Again, as the sovereign in charge of where he wants to go, this seems not only well within his rights but completely reasonable considering:

1. The offense sucks
2. They haven’t won a playoff game in over 20 years
3. The last time they made the playoffs they got rid of nearly every skill player who had a role
4. The quarterback who ostensibly has to get Antonio Brown the ball is
   1. Not accurate on short passes
   2. Not accurate on medium passes
   3. Not accurate on deep passes
5. Was picked by the Bills without any credence given to the fact that the number 4 was true throughout a college career facing such staunch defenses as Colorado State and Hawaii
6. The coach and GM have made clear that they wish to rely on the run game, erroneously and publically stating that the local climate is colder, windier and harsher than elsewhere in the league despite this being demonstrably false
7. The franchise has shown and spoken to a need for “their guys” which seems to be a very specific type that does not rely on
   1. talent

Antonio Brown shared audio of a trade conversation he had with agent Drew Rosenhaus. #Patriots, #Eagles, #Titans, #Bills and #Raiders all discussed in the audio. AB makes it clear he didn't want Buffalo. Belichick and #Steelers GM Kevin Colbert did speak. In the process of doing this post I noticed he used those hashtags to actually link to the team twitter accounts of each of those teams. This has nothing to do with content but I find it funny.

Thanks, Antonio. Buffalo needed that extra jab. What extra jab? Transparency from star athletes and the machinations of sports labor is something fans are rarely able to see behind the curtain. This level of candidness and transparency is frankly refreshing. Then again it’s probably something we should hate because it gave you an example to make this all about Buffalo.

It was a nice follow up to that meme he shared with him hand-gesturing away from a Bills logo. Memes!
​
Brown also said on his podcast that he’s enjoyed feeling the love from everyone in the aftermath of the trade.
Glad to hear it. It’s nice when we’re spreading love in this world.

So why are you spreading hate when it comes to Bills Mafia? Again, he didn’t spread any fucking hate. Buffalo is currently the 81st largest city in the country so I think you are woefully overestimating its importance in the world. The story is far more about Brown successfully orchestrating an exit from Pittsburgh and his- perhaps false!- belief that Jon Gruden and a team that’s going through an ugly extrication of its own is an upgrade. It’s not hard to avoid checking social media posts of athletes, they’re usually remarkably lame or brand based nonsense and the fact an athlete uses his to a) show transparency in the shadowy world of professional sports business and b) have some fun for once in a fucking while is not an insult. It is refreshing.
Listen, this situation is played out and everyone involved, especially Bills fans, are more than ready to move on Lmao bro you’ve spent a week highlighting corny platitudes from team employees, complaining about social media posts and claiming that Buffalo is horribly ridiculed by everyone who encounters a mere mention or former resident of the place. But don’t ever let anyone make you feel bad about sticking up for your city. Actually if you’re super aggressive and touchy about your city you probably should feel bad for being such a baby.

I think Bills general manager Brandon Beane and coach Sean McDermott put it best.
“Don’t speak about Buffalo if you don’t know what this city and what this fan base is like,” Beane said. Brandon Beane knows Buffalo so well he designed a roster based on a climate that Buffalo doesn’t have and drafted a quarterback for that non-existent climate. As a matter of fact, Brandon Beane has built a roster that seems solely based on Johnny Carson and Jay Leno jokes about Buffalo.

McDermott added: “Perception and reality are not always the same,” McDermott said. “Spend a day, spend a week in Buffalo. Get around the people, get around the city, get around the energy in our city. People that say (Buffalo is undesirable landing spot for NFL players) haven’t spent that time and really maybe don’t want to spend that time. To me that’s on them.”
 
At no point during any of this exhausting bullshit was it said or implied that the spurning of the Bills had anything to do with the city or the people. I have lived away from Buffalo for most of the last thirteen years (if we count Bonaventure, kick it up to half my life). I studied abroad for a semester in college, I traveled abroad a couple years back. I’m married to a non-Buffalonian. I have never, not once heard an insult about the city beyond the fact that its sports teams are shitty (accurate) or that the suburb I grew up is racist (VERY accurate). I spent most of these years actually wearing Buffalo gear and every single conversation usually goes something like:
 
Them: did you grow up there?
Me: Yep
Them: that’s cool
 
Occasionally they’ll change it up and it’ll be:
 
Them: so you a Bills fan?
Me: unfortunately
Them: that’s rough I’m a [team that has not even remotely as tortured a past] fan
 
If I’m wearing Buffalo stuff I am 100% more likely to encounter a fellow ex-pat than I am anyone even remotely negative about the area. Everyone- including the author here who made it sound like his travels have been a Locked Up Abroad level nightmare of insults and confrontations over his precious home- prefers to believe they’ve been insulted because that would mean they matter outside their area.
 
I’m here to tell you that’s false. I have a Bills magnet on my car (in New England!) and all I got for my trouble was a fellow Bills fan giving me a thumbs up. No one cares.
 
Ultimately this is more pathetic than if Antonio Brown held a Facebook Live stream and proceeded to spend two hours trashing the Darwin Martin House. For about half a decade now there’s a new article out every month talking about how great Buffalo is. The Guardian sent someone. The New York Times sent someone. The Washington Post sent someone. The Boston Globe sent someone. Every fucking month there’s another piece published talking about the affordability, the resurgence, the upswing, the rebirth, every damned cliché you can think of. They go to the waterfront. They go to the wing joints. They go to the Albright and they return to their metropolis and write about HOW FUCKING NICE YOUR TOWN IS.
 
The desire not to play in Buffalo is fine but it’s Brown’s consistent disrespect in the aftermath of his trade to Oakland that’s also on him. Fuck you it is.
 
When the NFL official Instagram account posted the initial report that the Bills were close to a trade for Brown, he commented on the post: “fake news.” But in the end the only thing fake in this entire exasperating drama is Brown himself.
 
Antonio Brown is the only one in this entire cursed narrative that has been honest. He immediately squashed erroneous reports. He confirmed his desire not to go to Buffalo. He thanked his fans. He was honest about his problems with his former employer, honest with his agent about where he wanted to work and released actual fucking audio of those conversations. He is less fake than every national and local writer who had him heading to WNY. He is less fake than every Bills mafia loser who photoshopped him in a sexy blue jersey in the middle of the night. He is more real than any and everyone who made this a civic matter. He is more real than a beat reporter whose job description calls for objectivity but in practice is little more than a PR lackey for management and ownership. He is more real than someone whose position calls for holding people accountable but merely acts as hype man for a 6-10 franchise and a NFL quarterback who can’t throw a ten-yard out. He is more real than someone who claims fans are little more than petulant babies who can’t accept a grown man desiring to work elsewhere.
 
Years ago we used to complain about sports reporters being too negative; Lynch and Stevie got ran out of town, honest to god playoff hockey was derided as the “heroic march to 8th,” GMs and owners were excoriated for their frugality and the writers seemed to have open animosity not just for their readers but for the town THEY found themselves working in.
 
They are gone thank goodness but in their place is a new crop of jabbering hucksters who serve not to criticize but to placate and compliment at the worst possible time. We are in the worst era in Buffalo sports history, make no mistake about it. Yet the GM and Coach who were handed a playoff team and petulantly shoved it away are “privately complimented throughout NFL circles.” I’m not sure who started it, maybe Jonah Javad with his insecure rantings about Stephon Gilmore desiring to play for the greatest team in league history instead of one of its most forgettable. Hucksters like Nate Geary, claiming Nate Peterman could make throws Tyrod couldn’t and first refusing to back down before pretending that he wasn’t posting preseason gifs and jabbering about back-shoulder throws. Hucksters like this guy, who I’ve been aware of for about six months but has in that time become the spokesperson for insincere homerism.
 
Christ, at least Ed Kilgore was transparent enough to actual work for a Pegula institution instead of doing its work for a quarter of the price.
 
There is a case to be made that the Pegulas are the worst thing to ever happen to Buffalo sports. They have destroyed the team they purchased first twice over and seem to care little about it beyond the role it played in them getting their NFL team. There is no reason to have any confidence that a single hire they have ever made was smart or will ultimately result in on-field or on-ice success. They have received a pass because the fanbase is too pathetic to realize that merely existing isn’t good enough, there must be success. And the people who are supposed to tell the fans that yes, they should demand success, they should demand heads on pikes when that doesn’t happen are instead too busy telling you that a player wanting to go elsewhere is a deep civic insult, that the autonomy one person has over their career is something to be upset about, that not only does this person hate your city, everyone else does too.
 
It’s pathetic.

The Outlander

The role of the Buffalo Bills in my life is one of those odd things that became larger when I lived away from WNY. Their descent into the league’s also-rans coincided with a parade of new and exciting things to devote ones time to- the Sabres had the best player on the planet, my mom got us our first computer, there were dances, dates, practices and games to focus on. All those Sundays in high school, I can’t think of a single Sunday spent gathering friends together for a Bills game. Sure, there was a Super Bowl party at someone’s house every year where we would root for whatever random ass team we felt like (Remember Giants-Ravens? Woof)- we even rooted for the Patriots to beat the Rams which I promise made sense in January 2002. When it came to the Bills there was just no real enthusiasm, not when our childhood memories were filled with Super Bowl parties where the stakes and the extravagance were much higher. However, the Sabres were a different story. 1999, 2000, 2001 we’d find ourselves at someone’s house for playoff games, yelling at the television and having our first experimentations with the host’s father’s liquor cabinet (I can still taste vodka and Pepsi whenever I think about it).

This dynamic rarely changed in the years that followed. Sure, the 2004 playoff push brought things back slightly but how much of it was assisted by the NHL lockout? My only Bills-related memory I have from college took place my senior year in 2005; I was eager to sleep off the previous night during the game as usual when my roommate knocked on my door. He was regretting the girl he brought home the previous evening and dismayed that she not only had not yet left but that she seemed to be showing all intentions to watch the Bills game with him; he wanted me to join so he could have someone else to talk to. So I trudge out and we watched yet another terrible game in a terrible season while having 4-8 beers to dull the previous evening. By the fourth quarter he had revived his beer goggles to the point that he brought this girl back to his room, still the only mid-afternoon occurrence of beer goggles that I have ever seen. Point is, as a lifelong WNYer by that point the Bills were always an afterthought.

Here’s a weird thing when you leave the area: if you are from a town with an NFL team, that is oftentimes the number one thing people will associate you with. On fall Mondays at Penn State, classmates would greet me with Bills talk. Working in Vermont, Maryland or Pennsylvania, coworkers often did the same, almost requiring you to pay more attention to the Bills, lest you seem aloof (which I am at work anyways), weird (why would you hate a team from where you’re from), or un-relatable. At the same time, outside of WNY the Bills serve as a conduit to connect with people from home in whatever strange new town you find yourself in. I made friends in Baltimore, ran into a college friend in D.C., shared a crushing loss in Burlington and enjoyed $5 blue light pitchers in Harrisburg. Most notably I shared the moment that ended the drought with a bar full of Bills fans in the very city where the drought ended. The Bills provide a sense of community that is almost stronger outside the 716 than it is inside and if you don’t believe me, head down to Baltimore for opening weekend.
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The Bills play a more prominent role to me now than they did then (the Sabres sad state certainly plays a role in this); I’m marrying into a family and friend group of NFL fans and in a place as economically depressed and socially backwards as the 717 having a bar full of 716ers as an option every Sunday is a relief. It’s also what makes what the current administration of regressive, short-sighted, arrogant hacks have done to the franchise so unforgivable.

Ownership and management were handed a team that broke the drought in a season they hoped to pick top-10 and instead of building upon that set them on a course that will inevitably end in disaster. There is no debate about what will happen, there is no process deserving of trust, there are no developments that will cause any different result than what is going to happen:

-Brandon Beane will be fired in the next three to four years
-Sean McDermott will be fired in the next three to five years
-Josh Allen will unceremoniously become a free agent when his rookie contract expires and will likely never play in the NFL again

These are set in stone and all three were avoidable. These men will leave the franchise at a lower point than at any time during the drought and will leave a fanbase trudging along, only closer to death than they are right now, hoping the same incompetent, befuddled owners can somehow, someday hire the right people. The only course of action for us to do is hope it plays out as quickly as possible so we can get it over with and hope the next team of dunces is somehow better.
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Brandon Beane can be admired for having a plan and refusing to deviate it in the same way people like Robert McNamara and Donald Rumsfeld can be admired for doing the same. His hubris will serve as a cautionary tale in the same way hubris destroyed the reputations of the above men and in a football sense Beane will be inextricably linked to the disaster he is about to lead, no different than George Pickett. He will be remembered in Buffalo as a misguided fool whose arrogance wrecked the Bills closest return to relevance in twenty years. Sean McDermott will be remembered as a well-meaning simpleton whose humility smacked of disingenuousness, who tried to piece together a team of projects, busts and players who are simply not good enough and lead it to actual success. The Western New York media and the more naïve and pathetic portions of the fanbase are spinning this as an underdog team. This is not that, this is a terrible team. This will not be exciting; this will be a massacre. All goodwill that could be mustered from a team dragging their coaching staff and DISAPPOINTED General Manager to the playoffs will have long dissipated after years of McDermott’s tepid gameplans, regressive field position strategy and incompetent challenge acumen. These men wanted full control to prove what they can do and you better fucking believe they are about to show their what they can do.