There isn't anything I love more than watching two up and coming quarterbacks go down to injury during the preseason. You could hear the collective crash of fantasy football plans and strategies collapsing upon each other.
The problem is that the injuries will continue to happen, and there is little to do about it. Most teams make you buy preseason tickets along with your season tickets, at full price. The fact that you have to pay full price on those games is a whole column in itself. To the owners of the teams, there is little difference in the bank account between regular season and preseason. Full price is full price.
"Excuse me Mr. Owner, would you mind cutting back on the preseason a little? We've lost about eight quarterbacks already," the fan said.
"Get lost kid," replied the owner as he pulled away in his Delorian.
I don't know, you just don't see anyone driving a Delorian anymore. If I owned an NFL franchise, I'd be driving a Delorian, flux capacitor and all.
Regardless, I'm still watching this crap. I myself hate the fact that there is a preseason and yet I still watch it, simply because it is football. I have nothing against baseball or soccer. I like baseball and I don't watch enough soccer to have an opinion about it. Football, however, is clearly king in our sports world now. As sports' aging fathers take their children out to baseball stadiums to recapture some of the magic of their youth, we will one day take our kids someday to Ralph Wilson Stadium. It's either that or Wrestlemania.
Someone totally bought the Sabres! And he's a billionaire, that's right, billion with a B. He's going to have to be. An old joke in the NHL goes as such.
"How do you make 10 million in the NHL?"
"How?"
"Start with 20 million!"
Yes, the minor league sport that wants to be a major league sport is coming down to the wire. The Collective Bargaining Agreement between the players and the owners will expire after this season. Everyone including dead people are expecting a strike or lockout to wipe out most of the 2004-2005 season, if not all of it.
Well, it is desperately needed. The NHL has to be slapped out of its current economic plan if it is to remain a viable product here in the United States. Canada is fine. It would take Canada being sucked out into space for the NHL to die there. Here, teams are failing all over the place.
It's easy to blame teams like the Avalanche and Rangers for payrolling opponents under the table, but that is how the system is setup. The system favors money over balance.
You can solve this with a salary cap, with revenue sharing, and on and on. Whatever the league does, it needs to happen soon and fast, because they are losing TV contracts and sponsors, and after that, they will lose teams.
UB travels to Rutgers this weekend. I myself am excited to see the team. Like I said, football is football. I also understand that it takes years, and by years I mean multiples of ten, commonly referred to as decades, to create a program. In the middle of a selection for a school President, and after that Athletic Director, the team might not only be playing for the jobs of their coaches, but for the existence of the program. They don't have to win a championship to stick around. Just improve.
Winning usually helps with that.
Photo: Courtesy of Laron Fomby
