Sports Then and Now

After a last second loss to the Dolphins, Mark Sanchez and the Jets will look to get back on track against the Bills.

There hasn’t been much talk around Jets land this week about this upcoming game with the Buffalo Bills Sunday. I can think of two reasons for this. One, the last time Jets players opened their mouths about an opposing team, the Miami Dolphins put a 31 on their pie holes and the talking suddenly stopped as fast as it started.

The second thought is that nobody is taking Buffalo very seriously. They have the 25th ranked defense in the league and their offense has been virtually non-existent. Ever since they blew a fourth quarter lead against New England in week one, the Bills have looked like they don’t even belong in the NFL.

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The heroics of David have become symbolic for sports success by teams and players generally seen as having little chance at victory.

For those who are the tireless supporters of teams, towns and players who are forever against the odds, it might be helpful to have a formula for ranking underdogs. Normally no analysis is needed to sort the Davids from the Goliaths but what about sorting the Davids from each other?

Our criteria include more than just team statistics. They include demographics and subjective factors related to the market they represent.

First is team history. One point is given for each year since a given team has played in the Super Bowl.  Another point is given for each year since the team has qualified for post-season play. If the team has never advanced that far, points are doubled. For each Super Bowl championship, 10 points are deducted.

Next is market size.  The largest market in the league receives a zero score. In descending order, each smaller market receives a score equal to its numerical rank. For example, New York/New Jersey would receive zero, Green Bay would receive 32, Buffalo 31, Jacksonville 30, and so on.

Next is the overall degree of sports dominance in the respective markets. For instance, Boston has had world championships in professional basketball, baseball and football multiple times in its history and in all three sports within the past five years. Therefore, 10 points would be deducted from Boston’s score for each world championship the city has had within the past decade and one point for each championship in previous decades.
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The author is convinced that the best female fans in the NFL reside in Buffalo.

Time to throw down the gauntlet. Let’s start a gridiron cat fight over which NFL team has the best female fans. My submission, The Buffalo Bills.

My inspiration for this article came as I was enjoying a triple decadent dessert with a friend at the Chocolate Bar in Buffalo’s Theatre District. My friend recently relocated to Buffalo from Chicago.

He observed that there seemed to be more female sports fans in Buffalo than in other towns—especially Bills fans! “And in Buffalo they really seem to know their football.”

When he said that, it was one of those epiphany moments that only happen occasionally, when someone speaks a truth you have known intuitively and subconsciously but haven’t consciously pondered or acknowledged.

Fully convinced in my gut of the truth of his assertion, I set out to collect anecdotal evidence to support the thesis, and explain it.

I interviewed several women I know who are rabid Bills fans to see what their perspective might be. Some still live in Buffalo, some are expats, and one never lived there, but caught Bills fever from her mother in law.

I asked them what they thought. Do the Bills have more female fans than other teams? And are they better fans? Read the rest of this entry →

Is the new Dallas Cowboys Stadium a model for how to build a sports venue or a temple to greed and gluttony?

Are the Dallas Cowboys still America’s team, or are they America’s bad dream?

I recently watched Jerry Jones show off the monument he has built to American excess on the Today Show. It struck me as hauntingly ironic that Dallas, one of the demographic icons of the excesses and extravagance of the recent bubble, is opening a billion dollar stadium, in the middle of the debris of the bubble burst, and that Jerry Jones, owner of the Dallas Cowboys, is chatting it up with Matt and Al on what is supposed to be a morning news program.

It is news of course, but not in the way it is being covered.  NBC is just whoring their Sunday Night Football coverage in an infomercial disguised as news. And to think the Today Show used to be serious about journalism. But that’s another topic.

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