Sports Then and Now

Former Dallas Cowboys and Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets head coach Chan Gailey will become the new head coach of the Buffalo Bills.

I had heard the buzz yesterday, that the Bills would be announcing Chan Gailey as their new head coach. I’ll have to admit, it was underwhelming at best. Then I looked at his record and was almost impressed.

For instance, I did not know that (with the exception of Kansas City in his most recent brief assignment) every NFL team that Gailey has worked for, has gone to the playoffs each year he was there. So, I was starting to convince myself to be at least cautiously optimistic.

But then, as I was eating breakfast today, Chicago’s morning sports anchor announced the same story, ending with the comment in quotes above. The sick feeling returned.

Yes, I’m a die-hard, you might say many times dead, Buffalo Bills fan from childhood. I bleed red and blue. My scabs and scars always take the faint, understated shape of a buffalo. And while disappointment is a staple in the Bills fan’s diet, the club’s inability to land even an A-list coordinator for its head coaching vacancy, when so many A-list head coaches are available is one of the worst blows to the gut we Bills fans have ever had to endure. Bar none!

If we take our 91-year-old owner seriously when he said he would spare no expense to get top tier football people into all aspects of the team’s operation, and especially in the general manager and head coaching positions, then it appears that no amount of money or autonomy was enough to entice any of a “Who’s Who in Football” list to accept, or in some cases even interview for the job.

Buffalo News columnist Jerry Sullivan put it in print– that which most of us would have preferred not having to say, hear, read, or think out loud– that the Bills’ inefectual leadership search indicates that the Buffalo Bills top job is not even the 32nd best coaching job in football (there are 32 teams in the NFL). Sullivan based this on the fact that at least six potential candidates turned down the position or refused to interview for the positon. Read the rest of this entry →

The Author thinks he can convince Bill Cowher to come coach in Buffalo.

That’s right, give me 10 minutes with Coach Cowher. I don’t care where, as long as I have a monopoly on his attention and he can’t leave until I’ve had my say. Put me in the urinal next to him—it doesn’t matter. Just give me the opportunity for a brief intervention.

That’s right, I said intervention. That’s what we call it when we corner someone we care about to slap some sense into their head before they continue down some ultimately self-destructive path.

In the coach’s case, if the information on the rumor-coaster is even 10 percent true, the man who’s steel jaw came to symbolize the steel-mill, hard-hat, failure-is-not-an-option outlook of the Pittsburgh Steelers, even when the steel mills themselves were long gone from Steeltown, is apparently addicted to something that is clouding his judgment.

What is the Cowher drug of choice? I don’t know, glamor maybe? Now that he’s won a Super Bowl and has enjoyed celebrity TV status as a pigskin pundit he may think he’s no longer in the same league with another former steeltown. Maybe the white on his collar from the broadcast booth is blinding him to the true blue that will undoubtedly bleed through the next time he breaks a sweat—if he breaks a sweat. Read the rest of this entry →

Is Jim Kelly the person who can help bring a big name coach to Buffalo?

Hall of Famer could win for Buffalo as an emissary what he could not achieve on the field

Remember when Head Coach Dick Jauron was fired and Bills owner Ralph Wilson pledged to spend $10 million per year to get a A-List coach and general manager. Remember when Mr. Wilson interviewed Mike Shanahan, contacted Bill Cowher, and it appeared he was determined to do whatever it takes to get good football minds in the top positions at the franchise?

Do you remember, barely? It was only a month ago, but it seems like an eternity. Since word of the snub from Bill Cowher, nothing else has happened, unless it has been so far under the radar that even the press’s rumor hounds haven’t gotten a scent.
Meanwhile, Mike Holmgren has signed with Cleveland, and all the rumors point to Shanahan going to Washington. Today ESPN’s pundits have Cowher playing Carolina and Tampa Bay against each other, with Ron Wolf, the brains behind the Favre era success at Green Bay, likely to reunite with Holmgren in Cleveland.

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On December 16, 1973, O.J. Simpson rushed for 200 yards against the New York Jets to become the first player in NFL history to pass the 2,000-yard rushing mark for a single season.

In the wake of the continued dismantling of the Tiger Woods persona, I can’t help but think of another prominent African-American athlete who like Tiger was once an advertising force and one of the best known and most popular sports figures in the country.

While I am certainly not comparing anything that Tiger has been accused of doing to what led to the downfall of O.J. Simpson, I do think there are obvious comparisons in both the swiftness of the fall and the subsequent revelations that the public persona was really little more than a false facade.

This week marks the 36th anniversary of the greatest on-the-field accomplishment of O.J.’s Hall of Fame football career.

On December 16, 1973, Simpson rose to a level of greatness that had never previously been reached. In the final game of the regular season against the New York Jets he not only broke Jim Brown’s single season rushing record of 1,863 yards, but went on to become the first player (and only in a 14-game season) to eclipse the 2,000-yard rushing mark for a single season.

While I recognize that it is now difficult to separate the on-the-field greatness of O.J. with the off-the-field actions, I do still believe that his 2,000-yard season was one of the greatest individual performances in the history of professional sports.

In another installment of our occasional series looking at great athletes and moments through video, here is a look at O.J. Simpson’s march to a 2,000 yard season.

Are the Bills becoming the Cubs of the NFL?

I would venture that a higher percentage of the population of Buffalo, New York actively follows their professional sports teams than any major league city in North America. This is especially true of Buffalo’s women, who may be more knowledgeable and fanatical about football and hockey than any women in the world.

Perhaps this is because Buffalo isn’t just a place, it’s a state of mind, a religion, a cultural overlay that works like ethnicity even though it isn’t exactly. It isn’t but it is.
 
Being Buffalonian is like being Jewish in a way. Being Buffalonian outside of Buffalo, is like being Jewish in Tehran.
 
And therein lies the bulk of my experience. The ex-pat. The diaspora. If there is a Jewish bar in Tehran, I can imagine the comraderie there. Pretty much like what you’d find at the Nickel Bar in Tampa or the Buffalo bars in a hundred other cities that get less snow. It’s instant kinship.

Run into someone with a Bills or Sabres cap or jacket– in the airport, on the beach, in some other city’s stadium when the Buffalo teams are not even playing– and it’s always the same. It’s like meeting the twin you never knew you had. All you have to do is say, “Wide Right,” or “In the Crease” and you’ll keep buying each other drinks until you both need a designated driver.  Read the rest of this entry →

The Bills dramatic victoy over the Jets is the lone highlight of their young season.

So far, at least, it’s been a very strange season in the NFL. Some have called it bizarre.  I think that adjective applies.

The one thing that distinguishes the NFL from other major professional sports is its parity. That is no accident. The league has gone to great lengths from its straight bottom up draft (compare to the NBA’s lottery draft) to revenue sharing to salary caps, the league has done everything other than working a handicap into game scores to establish and maintain relative balance. The result is that the NFL is the most watched professional sport in the United States, and pro football has supplanted baseball as America’s pastime.

That being said, what’s going on this year? We’ve had a string of lopsided victories, including a 59-0 routing of the Tennessee Titans by the less than peak-performing Patriots. And what’s more, how have the Titans gone from winning 13 games last year to being unable to score 13 points this year? In addition, we have as many as five other teams that threaten the maxim that on any given day any given team can beat any other. More than once, sportscasters have said of the game they were reporting, “this doesn’t even resemble the NFL.”

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