Posted on 04/17/2006 3:38:52 PM PDT by mainepatsfan
Concern for Buffalo Tagliabue to meet Schumer, Russert to talk about Bills
Posted: Monday April 17, 2006 3:39PM; Updated: Monday April 17, 2006 3:39PM
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The head of the National Football League will meet later this week with Sen. Charles Schumer to discuss concerns about the financial future of the Buffalo Bills under a new labor pact with the players.
Outgoing NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue will meet Thursday morning with Schumer and TV newsman Tim Russert, host of NBC's Sunday morning Meet the Press program, and an avid Bills fan.
"I'm looking forward to this meeting because keeping the Bills in Buffalo is vital to western New York," Schumer said in a statement. "This is going to be the first step of a long process to do everything we can to help the Bills and small-market teams."
New York politicians have rallied around 87-year-old Bills owner Ralph Wilson after he complained that the new collective bargaining agreement with the players could ultimately hurt Buffalo's franchise.
Buffalo congressman Brian Higgins, a Democrat, has called for a congressional hearing into the matter, and Rep. Thomas Reynolds, R-Clarence, is trying to drum up support among lawmakers in areas with other small-market teams.
Wilson is worried about two components of the new labor pact owners approved last month. Only Buffalo and another small-market team, Cincinnati, voted against it.
Part of the agreement could exclude small-revenue teams from fully taking part in the NFL's new revenue-sharing model.
Although the collective bargaining agreement has been approved, the NFL is still determining how teams will qualify for more money. One proposal could count local government subsidies to teams as team revenue, which also would hurt the Bills' bottom line.
(Excerpt) Read more at sportsillustrated.cnn.com ...
Buffalo is a small market, but not the smallest. Sure the Buffalo, Rochester, and Syracuse market is only about 3 million, but they also draw from the Toronto-Niagara region, which has more than 6 million. A total of 9 million puts them in the top half in the league.
The problem is the product and marketing, not the market.
Correct. I believe KC has among if not the smallest market in the league and they seem to be doing just fine.
They'd probably stay in your division after a move anyway. Remember when the NFC East went all the way to AZ (heck it still goes all the way to Dallas to keep the rivalries)? Sometimes I think the NHL was on to something naming the divisions after people, sure it confused newbies but team moves didn't cause the division names to get silly.
Hmmmm. Can you say Super Bowl winner five times.
Yeah but did you get there four straight times?!! Never mind the outcome of those games of course.
I knew that wasn't going to happen, given that we were already in the most grossly overloaded division (6 teams, with a good argument makable that Houston should make it 7 if there was no realignment) it was going to be nothing but bleed unless they went to 4 divisions of 8 teams. Once word came out that the league wanted to maintain the biggest divisional rivalries we knew the 4 teams that were the core of the AFC Central would stay together. Kind of like how we knew the realigned version of the NFC East would have Dallas, Phil, NYG and Wash inspite of the silliness of Dallas being considered part of the East.
The most laughable one I heard was a proposed Gulf Coast division that would have been made up of Houston, NO, TB, and Miami.
Not too bad as a concept, expect Houston was promised they'd be in the AFC and with the AFC already over populated moving two NFC teams over would have made the rest of realignment psychotic. It's interesting to think back on that because there was SOOOOO much discussion on the realignment but in the end they went with a rather obvious plan with very little change.
Gag.
Keep Hillary away from the Browns, thankyouverymuch.
I can see her wearing the dog mask now....
They had to move somebody from the AFC and Seattle made sense, they never really developed much of a rivalry with the rest of the AFC West (did Seattle fans even know that you're supposed to hate the Raiders) and the NFC West needed a massive redo anyway. They really went with the obvious plan that any 5 year old with a little knowledge of NFL rivalries could have come up with in 10 minutes, which is of course part of why it worked so well. Ignore some of the geographical weirdnesses like Dallas being "East" while KC and St Louis are "West" and Indy being "South" inspite of being North of most of the AFC "North" and these divisions make a lot of sense. Lots of traditional rivalries, good travel balance for most of the divisions, and most of the domes in the NFC where they belong.
It also didn't help that Seattle was AWOL from the post season for about a decade.
Hitlery will never be a Browns fan, they're Condi's team.
That would be an improvement.
Perhaps she'll focus on Florida and go with the Bucs.
TayRayZah was addressing a rally right near Cleveland Browns Stadium and started babbling about being from Pittburgh. She had no clue why the handpicked audience started booing her until an aide whispered in Jean Francois's ear.
-Eric
Hillary loves the Buffalo Bills..they are named after her hubby..right????
LOL! That just shows you how out of it they are.
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