By @pvo78

As a 36-year-old (almost 37) guy who’s lived in the 716 my entire life, minus one year in the dorms at the University of Virginia, I don’t need to tell you how many disappointing sports moments I’ve seen. I know of no other fan base that has put up with as many gut-wrenching moments then we have. I’m not going to rehash them here. You’ve all heard about them or lived them, and the only thing relevant to my point is that I have, and always will continue to support the Bills and Sabres no matter what. As Red Redding said in The Shawshank Redemption, hope is a dangerous thing, but it is also a very beautiful thing to have.

Unfortunately, my “Buffaloness,” for lack of a better term, has carried over into my soccer fandom. I was introduced to the game at a young age, and became interested in the professional game when the USMNT finally qualified for the 1990 World Cup following a 40-year absence, and the subsequent 1994 World Cup held in the U.S. When satellite television and the Internet made it much easier to follow leagues overseas, I felt obligated to pick a team. English football was the optimal league for me, as I fell for the much-marketed “best league in the world” gimmick. I tried the EPL for a bit, but quickly lost interest when it became a race to sign the world’s best players for huge transfer fees. As a Buffalo fan, I couldn’t get behind that. I may be a Yankees fan, but I’ve also criticized them for overspending on free agents (i.e. Kevin Brown, Carlos Beltran, et al.).

Therefore, I tried my luck with the Championship, the second level of English football some time ago and loved it. Every team had more of a chance to win it, and the lack of huge transfer budgets made it a much more pure game to me. The next step was, of course, to pick a side. While reading up on the different teams, one immediately stuck out at me, Millwall. There were several reasons for this. First, Kasey Keller and Bruce Murray, two of my favorite USMNTers of all-time, played there in the 1990s. When I began to follow them closely, American John Berylson had already taken over as chairman, and fellow American Zak Whitbred was on the roster. Secondly, the fans of Millwall share many similarities with Buffalo’s, and I felt a kinship with them. As I’m sure you all know, we Buffalonians have an “us vs. them” attitude when it comes to sports. We may be uncouth, to say the least, at times, but no one can fault us for not being passionate. We care. A lot. It means the world to us. Just as we can be heard cheering on our boys at the Ralph or the FNC, Millwall fans can be heard singing “no one likes us, we don’t care” at The Den as well. It means the world to them too. We know they’re going to lose as much as they win, if not more so, but we can’t help ourselves. Those who have played for the Bills, Sabres, or Millwall, even if only for a short while, always rave about the passion and dedication of the fans. I can take solace in that. No one can call us fair-weather fans. And thus my journey as a Millwall fan began.

As I write these words, Millwall is, unfortunately, going in the seemingly opposite direction of the Bills and Sabres. While the Bills and Sabres have hopefully entered a new era under Terry Pegula with his passion and deep pockets, Millwall has just officially been relegated to League One, the third tier of English football. The seeds of this relegation were planted several years back. It was a slow, steady process, like watching a snake slowly devour a mouse right before your very eyes. Millwall used to be managed by a fine man named Kenny Jackett, appointed in 2007 after having seen nine men precede him during the two previous years. Millwall were in League One at the time of his appointment, but quickly turned it around under his leadership. In the 2008-2009 season, they finished fourth in League One, but suffered a heartbreaking loss in the playoff final to earn promotion to the Championship at the hands of Scunthorpe United. Lesser teams may have folded, but after missing out on automatic promotion by one point on the final day to Leeds United, Millwall won the playoffs via a 1-0 win over Swindon Town to earn promotion. Things were good then. Jackett had total control over the team and the roster, and did a phenomenal job. It was like June 30, 2007 in Buffalo Sabres history, and the fall was just as slow and gutting.

Millwall did finish ninth in the Championship table the next season, but slipped to just barely survive relegation in each of the next two seasons. An FA Cup semifinal appearance in 2013 was exciting, but also merely papered over the cracks temporarily. Jackett left after that season for greener pastures and disagreements with the board.

As fans, we knew hiring the likes of Sir Alex Ferguson or Jose Mourinho was out of the question, but we did want a manager with Championship experience. What did we get? Steve Lomas, former captain of Millwall’s greatest rival, West Ham United. For me, it was like hearing that Zdeno Chara was going to coach the Sabres, or Bryan Cox was going to coach the Bills. WTF?!?!? Needless to say, things didn’t go well, and Lomas was sacked after winning just 6 of 24 games. Eventually, Jackett recommended his good friend Ian Holloway to manage. Holloway did manage to narrowly escape relegation again last season, and had a hot start to this season. But the signs were there. The board had made the mistake of thinking both Lomas and Holloway were capable of running the squad from top to bottom, which they were not. So it’s now back to League One.

Though it’s certainly depressing, Millwall does have some bright spots to talk about. After a brutal stretch when the team lacked commitment as well as talent, Holloway was finally let go. Youth team manager and former player Neil Harris was given the interim job, and immediately put his stamp on the team. Players on loan were left out of the side, and several younger players were given a chance to play. As a former player, Harris knows what Millwall means to the fans, and instilled this attitude in the players. They were much better during the last spell of the season, but still lacked the talent to stay up following years of mismanagement and poor transfer decisions. While being relegated is never fun, I hope Harris is given the job full-time (and have no reason to believe he won’t at this point given the squad’s improvement). He has much talked about having a young side that is hungry to win next season and the seeds of that have already been seen at the end of this season. Also, the board appeared to have learned its lesson, and are now seeking to help Harris out by appointing a director of recruitment so he can just concentrate on managing as he’s still young and relatively inexperienced. So here we are. Like the Sabres, and Bills it’s a fresh start with new players and a new coach. I’m excited for the future despite Millwall’s relegation and the utter horror that was the last two seasons of Buffalo Sabres hockey.

You see, while hope can inevitably lead to disappointment, it can also lead to sheer euphoria when things go well. Having something to be proud of means more when you’ve witnessed the valleys that came before the peaks. I was tickled to death while listening to the Achtung Millwall! podcast the other day and hearing that fans “expect the worst and hope for the best.” That sums up being both a Millwall fan and Buffalo sports fans up perfectly for me. We brace ourselves for the inevitable disappointment, but are always there to support our team. No matter what happens next season for the Bills, Sabres, and Millwall, I’ll be there cheering every step of the way. And until next season, go Red Bulls!

The Ronin

Where I work, we use an outside agency to clean the bathrooms and provide general maintenance duties throughout the building. For some reason, they've sent some seriously incapable individuals to do this job for years. Cleaning a shitter shared by 90 people is a fairly important - and simple - task. Somehow, though, time and time again we deal with people so incomprehensibly bad at holding a mop and emptying trash cans that you have to wonder how they made it this far in life. The last kid even broke a fucking toilet seat trying to clean some curly alfalfa sprouts from under it. I'll say it again - he broke a goddamned toilet seat. Anything is an improvement over this neverending cycle of smarmy creatures.

They recently brought in a new body to throw on the pile. This cat's in his sixties, can't hear a thing, and skips half of the shit he's supposed to do every day. We like him, though, because he he's a little quirky, he's got some wonderfully creepy mutton chops, and he does the essentials. After clearing the trash in the break room, before scrubbing the johns, he'll dance and sing some shit that none of us can understand a word of. We don't care, he's entertaining. We're cool with it, he does enough to get by. The guy won't be here forever, but he's all we need for now.

If that lede didn't make it blatantly obvious enough, The Apologist isn't available this week so I've been called up in his absence. The janitorial situation we're now all aware of is all too similar to the wonderfully incompetent American football team we all share an interest in, and that really saddens me. For years (let's say fifteen of them), we've been through some serious shit as Bills fans - most of it stemming from their complete lack of comprehension when it comes to finding and developing a quarterback. 

Jumping from clogged toilets like JP Losman to vomit-soaked carpet akin to EJ Manuel is really leaving us wanting here. We all do our part to get excited for the new guy, with hopes he's at the very least a slight improvement over the last. Unfortunately, most of them fizzle out before you get a chance to really give a shit about them, which is what happened to Manuel. This city is so thirsty for relevance that the majority of fans were calling for his head after a shortened rookie year. Given four more starts this season with average to terrible results, EJ was benched the reigns were turned over to journeyman and noted good-time machine known as Kyle Orton.

At every stop in his NFL career, Orton has been unspectacular if not boring, but still managed a .500 record which is a lot more than most in his situation could say. The dude took over last week and won us over with a decidedly mediocre game. Sure, he threw for 300 yards and touchdown, but he also threw a pick and a ton of short passes against a strong Lions defense. Point is, he did what he could and what his team needed. A snazzy catch by Sammy "The Glen" Watkins and a magical field goal by Special Teams Jesus were what decided it, not Orton's play. He moved the offense, took what the defense was giving him, and kept the club in it. That's all they need right now.

He's not ideal, and it's just one game, but he's (Christ... so, so sadly) the closest thing we've had to everyone's wanted in a Tom Brady figure in years. Speaking of Tom, he's coming to town this weekend with his New England Patriots and is more than welcome to go fuck himself. With the history these teams have had since Brady's been at the helm of the former doormat of the East, it's always satisfying to think about topping them and taking a win to wear as a badge of honor for the rest of the season. Every blogger's expert analysis when this matchup comes around is that the good guys have to get to Brady. At least that's what they write. Get them a few slugs of fireball, and you'll find that the more apt advice is to get him to the hospital. I'm not usually one who cheers for injuries to any athlete, but the thought of Touchdown Tom breaking his leg again in Orchard Park this Sunday got me to half mast quicker than David Carradine in a belt factory.

I love sports, but I have never truly been an athlete or a coach.  The only legit sports team I ever played on was the Orchard Park JV Basketball team.  I also played soccer for 2 years when I was like 7.  All I remember was my mom yelling “Go get it Jeffrey…RUN….GO!!”  She told me later that I sat down on the field during a game and picked a dandelion.   (Awesome, If true...)   My dad?   His favorite book to read me was “Ferdinand the Bull," so yea, I became a musician.

So, when I took my 7 year old son to his U8 Soccer game a couple Saturdays ago and they told me our team had NO COACH for the day and would I please coach THREE 15 minute games, I shuddered.

“All you have to do is keep telling them to spread out and stuff like that," they said.   As I heard the Bill Conti bell ring inside my head, my fear turned to determination.

“Oh.  Ok.  I know kids.  I teach kids band lessons all day, every day. I preach about how sports and music are the same thing.  Prove it!  I know coaching.  I have read several books on Bob Knight.  So this will be fine. “

As the Deeg's official music education correspondent, producer of the “BroneCast”, co-author of “Dear God Why Us?” the Craptasticast theme song, esteemed founding member of the DEEG “House Band”, the Jambrones, and Beatle expert, I feel it is my sacred duty to at least chime in today, Feb. 9, Beatle Day USA, the 50th Anniversary of the first wave of the British Invasion: The Beatles’ historic series of Ed Sullivan Show performances.

I am aware that it’s way trite of me to say The Beatles are the greatest. It’s a little like being a Yankee fan or something, I admit... It's not an original concept. But it’s my truth. They are the reason I do what I do in life.  I only hope I don’t get anyone so fired up to the point Yachtsman has to go on a maniacal rant on how the Beatles dissed Jesus, suck at music, and Whitesnake or whoever is the greatest.

It was a fun weekend (for some) of EPL action this past weekend, and since the Bills are in the hunt for draft position despite their stupid ability to win down in the Panhandle, and since the Sabres are just terribly, terribly shitty and should all die in a fire, I'll be shifting gears to soccer, my love of the EPL and, in particular, the Liverpool Football Club. If you don't like soccer, I get it, but this season is bonkers so it's a good time to try to jump in.

Consistent with my tunnel vision for foot, I digitally gathered together some producers of hot fire takes to talk about the EPL. Since we all ramble, and since there was a lot to get through, it's a two part episode this week. This all was an enormous amount of fun. I did barely any editing, so apologies in advance for rambling, WNY/Roch-style pregnant pauses, random static, and foul language.*

As with all of our podcasts, you can subscribe via iTunes (handy button below), or via the RSS link here. 

In Part 1, my good buddy Phil and I talk almost exclusively Liverpool. We're both Reds supporters and after Sunday's 5-0 win at White Hart Lane, there was a lot to enjoy.  Part 1 includes music from Chiddy Bang, Queens of the Stone Age, and Calvin Harris. Yes, that Calvin Harris, lay off. You can download here or here, or stream below. 

In Part 2, Phil is back again and we're joined by The Outlander, the Deeg's resident Citizen, and Peter Berkes, who supports Tottenham and couldn't bring himself to watch the entire game on Sunday.  We talk more generally about the EPL, listen to Peter as he bemoans his squad and Outlander as he predicts an away victory for Manchester City, and Phil and I continue to dry hump LFC.  Part 2 includes music by A Tribe Called Quest, Pusha T, and Frightened Rabbit.  You can download here or here, or stream below.

*Apology revoked for foul language

By Peter Berkes

I’m going to try to keep this brief. Last year, they lost me.

Fresh on the heels of another mediocre season and a prolonged, acrimonious, and completely avoidable lockout, the Buffalo Sabres started out the 2012-13 season like dog mess stuck to a boot. At that point, my frustration with the franchise reached critical mass, and I cashed out. I think I actually said to a TV, “Look, call me when you’re interested in being good again, because this shit is not working for me.”

That was somewhere between games five and ten last year, and since then, I haven’t watched more than a stray minute or two of the Sabres. To be perfectly honest, I haven’t missed them. Sure, I stayed up to date with what was happening on twitter since there’s no way I could unfollow everyone in Buffalo twitter, but I was pretty much completely disengaged from the team.

It’s a really and truly weird thing to actively dislike your favorite team. Sure, we all have that on some level with the Bills, but it was different for me with the Sabres. And it all came back to God damn Darcy Regier.

I can handle failure. I mean, Jesus, I’m a Buffalo sports fan. Failure happens, but this franchise has been a walking, shambling corpse. It felt like Terry Pegula, the man we all thought was going to spend this team to a championship in short order, was nothing more than some stammering Whiner Line regular who was still stuck in the 90s. But after finally pulling the plug on Regier and Ron Rolston, it feels like there may actually be something good that comes from all this.

The thought of Regier attempting to rebuild this franchise after he personally steered it into the ditch was, for the lack of a better term, completely fucked. We don’t know if Pat LaFontaine and whoever he hires to be general manager will be any better, but it’s different, and that’s enough to get my attention. Yes, that’s pretty sad, but that’s where we are. This is Progress. Capital P. I don’t really care about Ted Nolan. He’s not going to be around next year anyway, so just play the kids a lot every night and get the team working hard and I’ll consider his return a success.

There have been a lot of people that think this move is just more bullshit from the Sabres because they brought back two guys with ties to the team. It’s certainly possible. LaFontaine doesn’t have any real experience as an executive, but he at least realizes it. He seems smart enough to hire someone who has done this before. But the larger point is this: Just because someone has ties to the organization doesn’t mean they’re clueless. It makes for an easy joke because hurr durr Buffalo, but anyone who says so is more interested in humping away at narrative than assessing the situation honestly. I want the best possible people to be the coach and GM of the Sabres, and I don’t care where they’re from. Hopefully Pat can put those people in place. If not, hopefully it doesn’t take a billion years for him and everyone else to be replaced.

So am I back in? I don’t know. What I do know, though, is that they have my attention. Let’s go.

The first of many takes on this news... Guest contributor, former full-timer...


The Defenseman


This is all very odd. It probably has something to do with my fever-ridden brain, but all of this feels as if it may vanish next morning. Am I going to wake up in bed with Susane Pleshette? Is Patrick Duffy going to be in the shower? Am I a kid with autism staring at a snow globe?

Terry Pegula finally took full ownership of the Buffalo Sabres on Tuesday night when he relieved General Manager Darcy Regier and Head Coach Ron Rolston on their posts. Regier had been GM for the Sabres for 16 years, winning no championships. In their places: Pat LaFontaine as President of Hockey Operations and Ted Nolan - TED NOLAN WHAT THE FUCK - as interim Head Coach. Now the last vestiges of Golisano and Rigas are gone. This is the real Pegula Day.

I've always kind of wondered about Pegula and his level control with this team. He took charge in a bath of glory from a desperate fanbase and then immediately proclaimed that nothing would change. There was no new vision. There was no grand strategic plan. It was the men he retained, finally being free of inept management. Pegula found out, brutally, that the ineptness resided within the room. 

It could not be easy for the man. He showed deep emotional committment to Lindy Ruff and Regier on the day he took full vestment. He had to believe deep down in their abilities. To come to the realization that maybe your heroes cant save the world is, to borrow from Ruff's dialog, a tough one. But controlling a sports team means, quite often, having to dispense with the people you love and respect most in order to maintain peak performance. Pegula's sentimentality got the better of him. We should hope its a mistake he never makes again.

The Sabres have maybe acquired something they haven't had since the lockout of 2004, and that is vision. The infusion of LaFontaine may bring that grand plan the team had desperately been lacking for so long. Since Pegula bought the team they have wandered from one half-assed strategy to the next. They thought they could turn it around right when he bought the team in 2011, but couldn't quite make it work. No one could agree as to whether they were rebuilding or not after that. Did they start rebuilding last year? When they fired Ruff? When they hired Rolston? When they traded Pominville? The ship was without a captain. 

Regier was always good at holding a thing together, but it felt like he was taking direction from elsewhere. He did well when someone else wrote the rules of engagement. Both Rigas and Golisano set financial goals for the franchise and had direct impact on personnel decisions made by the team. Pegula was adamant that wouldn't happen again, but assumed that the man taking orders was being restrained by the financial constraints as opposed to fulfilling the job at which he was his best. Pegula got a chance to see Regier's style of management for himself, free of interference, and saw a void. "Fuck. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe I just wanted to believe in this guy." 

Hey man, you always said you were a fan first. Well this is a first rate fan fuck up. We do this shit all the time. 

The blessings of unimaginable personal wealth is that you can fuck up without any personal risk. Saying Pegula is getting a second chance at this isn't quite phrasing right, because the guy never really took the helm, nor does he necessarily have a finite number of chances to take. This is where the guy is giving it a shot. This is where his mark is to be made. The fact that LaFontaine and Nolan both have been with this franchise before and worked together on Long Island in a similar capacity should not be mistaken for another bout of crippling sentimentality (although there is a great risk of it being just that). The two of them bring definitiveness.

No one would ever accuse Ted Nolan of being ambiguous. His goal and ambitions are clear to the point of friction. He causes intense heat in organizations. Lucky for him he joins a franchise where all the boilers are out. There maybe isn't a greater myth, in the classic sense of the word, in Buffalo sports than that of Nolan's ability to draw blood from stone and passion from the uninspired. His team was The Hardest Working Team In The NHL. They may not be good, but at least they will beat the shit out of somebody. Plenty of the old schoolers will be out in force clamoring for the days of the mid-90s. They'll march down Washington Street carrying signs that read "Corsi Who?" and "Math Can't Win In The Streets." They will be put to bed by a lullaby of Bob Boughner and Brad May, sleeping to dream of an end to analytics. 

Seeing this element pop up makes me uneasy. I could hold my breath comfortably within the time one of these 90s hockey-worshiping mastodons calls an opposing player a faggot. Not the classiest brigade in the order of battle. Perhaps though, this is part of the myth building. Nolan's last gig was Head Coach of the Latvian national team. International hockey is not the best arena for rock'em sock'em hockey, yet Nolan got his squad into the Olympics. Maybe the man has more than just a bag of hammers in his toolbox, even if that's not what many Sabres fans care about right now.

LaFontaine got fired from the Islanders for telling them what he thought. That act should shine as an act of bureaucratic valor unparalleled in hockey. He is now on the outs on the Island. Their loss. I don't quite know what his game plan is. He never got a chance to put it into effect with the Islanders, but whatever it was it pissed off Charles Wang to the point of termination. Tell me more, Mr. LaFontaine.

We are in a position of potential energy maybe unseen in Buffalo sports. U.B. football is on the rise and Bulls hoops has a new lead. The Bills have completely turned over, Ralph Wilson is incapable of fucking it up, and just maybe they have a quarterback. And now the Sabres have finally, mercifully done what they should have done three years ago in releasing Regier. 


Happy Pegula Day.

Guest Contributor, @jambrones

I don’t get fired up about things enough to violently berate them on the internet very often.  In fact, I only have done that once.  And it was a private matter.  Hashtag Bills Mafia is no exception.  I am not fired up, offended or even the least bit anxious about this hashtag and its wake.   This is exactly why I must write about it.  I am completely centered, here.  I am in #BillsZen.

The Continental

Alright, so the reason I never write about "sports" is because all of my teams are steaming piles of dog shit.  Writing about them is tantamount to watching the dog shit: cool, harden and turn white on the corner every day when I walk to work.  And Barrister has been begging me to write something for once in my life.

This thought process started with the Buffalo Sabres Twitter account tweeting about some Dancing With The Stars contestant.  So turns out she's on Terry Pegula's record label (diversify yo bonds); mystery solved likely.  I was sincerely afraid this was part of a "pinkification" operation to reach out to female fans.  Because let's be honest, I'm sure no one has learned anything from While the Men Watch or the Ranger's Girls Guide to Hockey.  

Hey, the Sabres account might not be on the same snark level as the Kings, at least they're not handing over the account to people I've never heard of who make shitty "jokes" about sexual assault.

What else really pisses me the fuck off?  Keep reading.