The boys are back. In this episode, with a delayed release due to Dubs being equal parts overworked and forgetful, The Outlander, The Commander and The Barrister gather from their disparate locations outside of WNY to discuss, in large measure, the value in recognizing expat stories when we discuss the City of Good Neighbors. We also make bad jokes, curse a bunch and talk about beer, the Sabres and awful sports media, as per protocol. 
Music by Avalanches, streaming below, iTunes subscription through the button below that, download here or here, RSS subscribers hit here. 

The Outlander

Last time I wrote here, it was regarding the depressing, soul-sucking death march to 30th place and the hand-wringing, moral crusading, negative nancies and militant pragmatists that came with it. It was by far the least amount of fun I’ve had following this franchise for the last twenty-five years or so, and that’s selling it short; it was not fun at all. There was zero fun outside of the occasional gallows humor that comes with some of the worst hockey players in franchise history hockeying together at once.

Yet I’ll remember April 10th. I went to Orioles opening day with my girlfriend and her friends, a miserable 50 degree day where the Blue Jays crushed the home team - much like they would to clinch the division title less than six months later - before we started barhopping. Shortly before some hardcore browning and blacking out between the two of us respectively, in the last final seconds before my phone died, I refreshed my score app continuously to see the Sabres lose to Columbus. It was glorious. Aside from the guarantee of McEichel, it was such a relief to just be proven right after doubling down on the certainty of 30th the entire season. As any borderline narcissist knows, things like that are victories in themselves.

The Sabres, regardless of the reasons for excitement that I assure you I’ll get to, are in a peculiar position they haven’t found themselves in for some fifteen years: that of afterthought. This is Bills time, and it will continue to be Bills time until that team’s season has either run its course or stomped on our hearts (nice start Sunday btw), forcing us to return in November or December to the team that has been our salve, our dependable solace for more consecutive football seasons than we’d care to address. It is that dependability, that wins help numb the pain of a previous Sunday’s disappointment and even losses (it’s a long season and what do you want, they were dead last two years in a row) help get us through the time in between those Sundays that for now just seem like such an insufferably long time.

I feel for many of us born in a certain window, who came of age in Western New York at a certain time, have felt more connected to the Sabres than the Bills mostly due to results. On my 15th birthday I watched from my Grandparents house as the Sabres took a 3-1 series lead over the Leafs in the Conference Finals. Two nights later my Mom dropped a friend and I off at the old Tops on Young in Tonawanda (now a Big Lots/Subway) just as Game Five started. The store played the game on the PA system and we got to hear RJ’s voice call the comeback victory and trip to the Stanley Cup Finals. To pass the time throughout the night, a large group of fans taught us Euchre, a game I’d play pretty much every lunch period for the rest of high school.

Despite being numbers three and four in line, the antiquated system at Tops was too slow when the tickets went on sale. Didn’t help that the two middle aged guys in front of us bought four tickets to each home game but when it came our turn, my friend got one ticket to Game Three, me one ticket to Game Four. I was dropped off at the foot of Washington Street while my Mom and Grandfather went to Coca Cola Field to watch the game on the scoreboard. I’ve been to many games afterwards and maybe seen better teams, but the noise when Sanderson scored on a breakaway in that game (the only home Cup Final win in forty years) was the loudest I’ve ever heard that arena.

I was hooked. Seven years later I was on the precipice of graduating college and was #blessed enough to have some of the best weeks of my life tied into the most exhilarating run a Buffalo team has given us in a generation. I got to watch Game 1 against Philly in the last row of the arena, where my first hug was not my girlfriend but the stranger who shared his nachos with me (and brought HIS girlfriend). I got to watch the Sabres murder that finesse team day drinking before a house party, I got to watch Game 1 against Ottawa at a Quad Party at Canisius, Game 3 from the Bonaventure Golf Course Clubhouse with over a hundred folks jammed four rows deep behind the bar to squint at the one small TV in the corner. Game 5 was the night before graduation, slip n’ sliding down a hill in the rain afterwards, warming up that chill at a bonfire until 5am with fifty friends who just didn’t want morning to come before my girlfriend told me “Matt you graduate in four hours.”

I listened to the Drury game in a tiny townhouse bedroom at Penn State, Property book open but used only to rest my elbows as I leaned as close to my speakers as I could, hoping for a miracle that, for once, came. I watched the mad rush to the postseason in 2011 in a dive bar in Barre, Vermont and welled up when the Flyers inexplicably played for a tie. And April 10th this year I high-fived people in Baltimore over a loss, the meaning of which they couldn’t understand. But it started long before all this.

In this slightly (read: very) belated publication of the Buffalo sports podcast you love to hate, we give you a glimpse into the week the was 8 days ago - before James Harrison called his sons entitled pussies, before the Bills signed IK and Tyrod Taylor became a thing, before Paul Cambria stormed Bedenko's Facebook page and gave us a glimpse of the best defense attorney talent Buffalo has to offer. 'Twas a simpler time. 

It's another long one. Take breaks if you need to, but come back so we can finish the job. It's Paul Olczak's first CrapTastiCast, after all, and we wanted to treat him right. 

Music by way of The Jambrones, OK Go, EXGF, Disclosure, and Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats. Some good, good shit in the episode, y'all.

You can streamline this aural methadone below, download here or here. RSS subscription is this, and iTunes button is below and always on the right column because branding. This and all our myriad podcast offerings are generally cataloged in the handy Deeg Podcast Industries tab above our altogether depressing site banner above. 

We recorded a podcast. Our intentions were good, but the first two takes were lost in my computer so by the time any recorded content was created, we were multiple drinks deep and had lost all sense of boundaries. Renn tries to keep it together, SBA tries to imagine being anywhere else other than Long Island, and Dubs tries to be as offensive as possible while pretending he knows stuff about sports.

The episode is available here or here, and can be streamed below. Subscription to all of our podcasts via RSS here or the iTunes button on the right sidebar under Sweet Sally Sunshine's beautiful face.  All of our podcasts are also available via the tab on our header. (including recent ones that I have neglected to cross-post here this summer) 

Sabres. Bills. West Wing. EJ Manuel is a fucking idiot. Content. Cheers.

The Outlander

Rarely does a result go from one inevitable conclusion to an opposite yet still inevitable conclusion. One minute I was penning a post preaching the ultimate palatability of the CFL as a replacement for the Bills and the next minute the very idea was laughable. One minute the Bills were gone, the next minute they weren’t. To be a man so powerful that your mere presence tips the scales of a billion-dollar entity firmly from one column to another, rendering the presence of the other billionaires and media conglomerates impotent in your wake, is a power that I simply cannot fathom. To have the ability, the determination, and more importantly the closing speed to shape the future of a metropolitan area in a way that politicians are unable and entrepreneurs ultimately lack the vision, the benevolence, or as one of the Toronto columnists put it last week, the craziness to do themselves for so many years. Terry Pegula is a force of nature that, if drawn up in a hypothetical five years ago would have been the only way for both teams to have long term security in Buffalo and would have dismissed out of hand as being too absurd, to pie-in-the-sky, too batshit insane to ever actually emerge.

And then, once he did emerge, once we were aware of his intentions, once he sold one of lord knows how many billion-dollar tracts of land that he owns, the endgame was already written, the Buffalo Bills wouldn’t be going to LA, San Antonio, Toronto, not today, not tomorrow, not ever. In the end Terry Pegula is the only person that will allow the Ralph C. Wilson truthers to blather on about how he was really the foundation of this franchise’s future in Buffalo and not get laughed out of the room. In the end Terry Pegula saved Ralph Wilson’s legacy, perhaps collaterally but fully and completely. Once Pegula Sports and Entertainment conveyed their interest to get involved we could have packed up shop, except we can’t do that; this come-from-ahead defeatism eventually gets so ingrained that we refuse to accept the inevitability of success- at least until we can confirm the oasis is not another mirage.

What strikes me most at a time the guy is about to plop around a billion and a half to participate in a crooked, malicious league, is that Terry Pegula is ultimately a bigger person than most of us. I don’t mean his spending power - this is unrelated to how he accumulated that wealth over the years - but the ultimate decision that this was how he wanted to use his money. In the three years since solidifying the Sabres' future and redefining the parameters of success (“just break even,” anyone?), as well as the dedication to win at all costs, he has received an almost constant deluge of tar and feather from the boobs who work a couple buildings down on Washington Street and who demanded he answer about the Penn State scandal as if he was an accessory; who turned his folksy demeanor against him as if he were campaigning for office; who used the hesitancy to clean house to paint him as out of his element, as Mr. Magoo, as incompetent and star-struck; and who convinced a not-insignificant amount (mostly those decrepit enough to prefer their morning paper to turning on a computer) to feel the same way. Despite the most talent-rich prospect pipeline in the league, the losses by the parent club made things like “hockey heaven” something to be used ironically only.

Why I disregarded Pegula for the Bills was simple; I could not fathom a man who would not be so overcome with resentment, regret and anger at those involved that they would even consider doing something like that again. I couldn’t believe that he would get tossed in boiling water for three years and then say “is that burner up all the way?” I found it inexplicable that he would invite more criticism, take more control, that this guy would spend his fortune to make himself the head honcho of one of the most cursed sports cities on the Continent. That is a coolness, an inner calm, a confidence and ultimately a set of stones of a size that I cannot fathom. Western New York is Terrytown, Pegulaville, whatever you want to call it, aand what makes me happy is to know the man wants it just like that. He really would rather be nowhere else but right here, right now.

In the end, the only people who said this wasn’t inevitable were those who get paid by reporting drama. In the end all the noise was coming from only those who could advance their career, pump their byline, attempt to cry and scream just enough to keep enough people tuned in, enough people clicking their links. This was the 2012 Presidential Election; it was never close but until the results were in you could bet your ass everyone paid to write or talk about it was going to make it seem close. The only mistake Tim Graham made throughout this process was what he would probably peg as his finest hour, when he “broke” the “news” that the Bon Jovi had contacted Jim Kelly to form some sort of supergroup. It’s laughable in hindsight and unprofessional in ways that should probably be laid out. First, he used Kelly’s frailty to paint a narrative where the MLSE group was going to use Buffalo’s hero to facilitate moving the team, which was a pretty dick move to Kelly and his family, and then he reported it without confirming- or disclosing- the result of the “meeting.” He managed to make everyone crazy and then the following day reported “just kidding, the meeting didn’t go anywhere.” Either he 1) didn’t know what was said and reported a story without knowing its full scope, or 2) knew what was said and chose to report half of it in order to get clicks. So is he dumb or unprofessional? Well, his writing is too good to be the former so let’s assume the latter.

In the end though, the unprofessional antics of The Buffalo News have simply served to marginalize them further. In a world where relevant Sabres news is broken by TSN, The Hockey News or even a newspaper in Ottawa, TBN can be ensured their relegation to minor outlet for sports news is complete. Sure, the hit pieces will continue but when your swings barely reach the ankles of your target, exactly what kind of damage can you expect to inflict? They can continue to cry about the owner’s availability because quite simply Pegula has shown he doesn’t need them, he can create his goodwill with actions, not words. They can lament that the new owner refuses to play ball like the previous one considering the previous one created the bidding circus that allowed them to act relevant for a few months longer. In the end though, the ultimate end of The Buffalo News as a viable sports reporting entity makes the rest of Western New York media stronger.

2014 has sucked. I mean not so much for me personally what with this move to Maryland, but for the country, the world, the human race generally. Between Ferguson, the Malaysia Airlines flights, Russia trying to start a new war, ISIS, war crimes in Israel and Palestine, Ebola, the continued disintegration of political influence and freedoms for average Americans while the power of the state and the corporate entity continues to grow, it’s been a really shitty year (seriously I just ran those off from memory, what a fucking mess). I wasn’t alive in 1968 but from reading about it over the years 2014 seems the closest to ’68 that has occurred in my lifetime. We’re at war- STILL- and not sure what “winning” can ever look like. Race- well let’s just not even delve into it, police facing off against unarmed civilians like some post-apocalyptic film, and unrest throughout Europe caused by Russia being wildly antagonistic. Aside from the political assassinations of ’68 we really seem to have it all.

It’s been said that 1968 was saved by Apollo 8, the first manned flight to orbit the moon. It came at Christmas that year and allowed everyone to celebrate something, to remember that sometimes good things happen. The purchase of a silly football team cannot replicate that on the same scale, but regardless of our thoughts about Israel’s role, or what to do about ISIS, or whether police have too much power, what we have today is something we can all get behind, celebrate, support, something none of us could have imagined only several short years ago. We deserve it, and while the rest of the world may continue to come apart at the seams, this is our time to forget about all that shit and dance.

What now? Well there will be more than enough time for that because the Bills future is in perpetuity, it is not defined as six years of us sadly sipping blue lights outside trash can fires at the Ralph as our team inches closer to departure. The future is defined in whatever fashion we wish to do so and there will be plenty of time to call for Russ Brandon’s firing into Venus, where he will be flattened into nothing by its heavy atmosphere (I, for one, am eager to know exactly what role Brandon had in this sale, specifically to determine whether my suspicion - that he was the MLSE/Rogers man on the inside, setting the dominoes up just so in exchange for running Toronto’s NFL franchise, deciding to jump aboard what he felt was the winning team once Ralph’s health began to decline - is accurate). There will be plenty of debate as to the fates of the other lame ducks wandering the halls at One Bills Drive, of how best to end the playoff drought, of how best to move the franchise forward. That’s the fun part, though; no more “I just want them to stay,” no more fretting about whether or not the population drain means we can’t be “big time,” no more using sports to drive our regional insecurities. They are staying, and now we can just be fans, which is something we haven't been allowed to be in, well, arguably ever in this town.

Now comes the fun part, just wanting them to win. Thank you Terry. Thank you Kim. Let’s go Bills.

The World Cup starts this week (or has started, depending on how long this post gets/where it falls in the shuffle because invariably the only time deeg posts come is when they come in bunches), but since the Group draws I haven’t been following it much, mostly due to the fact that it seems very unlikely that the US will play more than three games. Normally I’d still be very excited about my backup team (well, 2nd backup since Ireland didn’t qualify) the Netherlands, but two things have dampened that: one, I have been unable to find my Holland track jacket I bought in a haze on the streets of Amsterdam ten years ago (really as safe an impulse buy one can have in such a state in that city) and two, it’s come to my attention Jeremy White also roots for them, which isn’t as bad as sharing the Red Sox with Pats fans but is damn well close. Either way, I like to leave the soccer writing to the more capable.

For me that leaves the Bills, Sabres and Red Sox. I think there’s four or five of our readers that root for the latter, and as the tightly wound machine from last season unspools, I can’t bring myself to get mad at them. I mean, not as a team anyways, of course there’s individual players that are easy to hate (Pierzynski for one, who for a guy who I’ve always heard described as “I hate him, but I’d love him on my team,” is actually really easy to hate when he is on your team), but are really just showing how improbable last season was and how much I should enjoy that. See, occasionally I’ll wonder what we would all be like not just when the Sabres or Bills reach the promised land, but how we would be the year after, after the parade, after the hangover, free agency, the draft, training camp and the preseason. I’d like to think I wouldn’t much care how they did defending their title, or if I did, that I would continually remind myself of the memories from the previous year and to be thankful. This year’s Red Sox team is a perfect example of why that should be the case. It’s a slog again, anemic hitting, a tire fire pitching rotation, a manager that seems completely befuddled on an almost nightly basis. But last season happened, it was glorious, it was more than so many baseball fans have gotten to experience in decades, and to be angry that Gomes and Buchholz suck now would just be kinda dickish, right?

So yeah, that just leaves the Buffalo teams. Don’t worry, this will only be tangentially about one of them, and also don’t worry, I’m not going to go on another “what does this all mean” post about the talent slowing ebbing away from Western New York; I may be in the- what, my town has THREE FUCKING AREA CODES?- but I still try to be as attuned to the Buffalo sports scene as I can without popping facial capillaries in an icy rage. All seems quiet with the Sabres, although that might simply be because half the fanbase woke up a month ago and decided being a Kings fan would kick ass. I don’t know, the draft is soon, plus there’s whatever washed up corpse the Sabres decide to sign in free agency and inexplicably make captain. There’s also the imminent Scott and Weber re-signings because the front office is so insecure in the team’s shittiness they need to make it obvious. Trust me, they’re shitty, you don’t need to push more Scott shirtsies on us to make us aware. Also, it appears the monkeys who run the marketing department at least figured there was no need to put out a “best games of the season” re-run series this summer because there were only two good games, one was on NBCSN, and the other is Miller’s last game which more people would remember as Steve Ott’s last game because again, half the fans of the team need not only a lobotomy, but a full brain scrambling with those tools from the end of Shutter Island.

The Outlander

Hi boys and girls. Before we begin, a quick disclaimer. This post is not all about sports. As a matter of fact, sports only cover a minority of this post. If that is a dealbreaker for you, I understand, and you can scroll down to the final third now. However, this post does contain the usual, if not an above average amount of vitriol, so it may be worth your time anyways.

Some two years ago, after a late night out, I shot an email to the deeg. The debaucherous, angry tone struck me as something I shared and wanted to lend my voice to. I get more ambitious when I’m drunk; some years ago I sent an email to the local paper declaring my intention to run for mayor around three or four am from my apartment in State College. A couple years back I ordered a bunch of shit on Vermont’s Long Trail  because despite the fact I’ve never hiked once in my life I decided it was something I wanted- and more importantly could- do (an example of drunken delusion if there is any). There are other examples but the point is, some people text their ex’s or fight- and although I have done both- I tend to go in the other direction.

Some of these drunken undertakings were doomed to failure but the decision to lavish praise on my favorite blog and ask if I may participate- I hate asking for things- was not one of them. For the last couple years I’ve been the only contributor to a blog revolving around Buffalo sports that still lived in the Buffalo area. This has been helpful for a myriad of reasons not limited to the fact I was able to watch my teams play without having to order a special internet or television package or head to a bar with Center Ice/Sunday ticket. I don’t watch local news or read the local papers but there is just something about living in an area where the vast majority of local sports fans root for the same teams as you. Outside of the soulless front running jagoffs that reside on the opposite side of the Niagara River, there is something to be said about going out and having any sports conversation you eavesdrop into revolve around the same teams you follow and love yourself, even if those having the conversation couldn’t grasp a salient point if they had eight arms apiece. I enjoyed walking to the bar in Barre, Vermont as the Sabres made their playoff push in 2011 but I loved going to someone’s house or a bar around these parts to watch the same thing much more. But that luxury is no longer as the deeg will be an all-expat blog once again.

Like many of you scattered across the country, this move has nothing to do with desire as much as it has to do with cold pragmatics. I understand that 2013 was the first year in decades that the region’s population did not suffer a decrease; every elected official and news organization seems eager to discuss the region’s rebirth, facelift, resurgence, whatever word is on the teleprompter in front of them at the moment. More people are drawn to this growth and I couldn't be happier; my issue lies with what's underneath that. From last April until this February I read every single job opening within 50 miles of Tonawanda, which usually amounted to around one thousand new posts per week. I did not discriminate on salary, title, experience or education requirements, I read every damn one of them and what I discovered, and what anyone in this area who has been job searching recently already knows, is that the reason the quantity of new jobs is discussed so much is because the quality of them is often abysmal and inapplicable to anyone not in the infancy of their working life. In the average thousand openings, I would find anywhere between one and three that were applicable for me and in the 10 months I was searching I discovered three that were truly in my wheelhouse (My “wheelhouse” is not as narrow as one may believe). Still, I applied to dozens, hundreds of positions in this area, many if not all of which I was overqualified for, and for my trouble I got one interview.

Back with actual Buffalo sports talk in a Dear God Why Us? Sports podcast, The Barrister, The Outlander and The Commander form a critical mass of the Deeg and break down what happened with the Sabres over the last few days. Good God, it was messy and beautiful and let's do it again soon.

Musical interludes by way of The Jambrones, The Mooney Suzuki, Talib Kweli, Architecture in Helsinki and Basement Jaxx. Throw your hands up.


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