A sad Dolph-fan after Sunday's game. (Photo from Yahoo Sports)

After a few minutes of him telling me about a play in the third quarter that had gone awry, one that could have definitely changed the tempo of the game, he paused, looking for an encouraging word.  I didn’t know what to tell him.  I’ve been there before – as a Steve Young fan in the late 1990s, there were many early playoff exits that I just wasn’t okay with, and nothing anyone tried to console me with in the days following would make me better.  I usually didn’t recover until I would go on my self-imposed Steve Young hiatus for Lent in mid-February.  (This did include me thumb-tacking a sheet over my bedroom wall shrine to Young.  To adolescent me, this was more of a sacrifice than giving up anything else – giving up my lust of a Mormon quarterback to fulfill my Catholic religious obligations.)

So what was I going to tell the Dolph-fan? “Give up Chad Pennington for Lent?” The Dolphins shouldn’t be hanging their heads. They went from finishing the 2007 season 1-15 to winning the AFC East the next. Sure, having Bill Parcells on your side never hurts – I’m convinced that he could lead a Pop Warner team to beat an NFL team in the Super Bowl just merely by being involved.  But Dolph-fans shouldn’t stay crushed and depressed. So much progress was made, and if they hadn’t suffered some very key injuries at wide-out the last half of the season, I am sure we would have seen a different result this past Sunday.

Thus, there was only one point of solace I could share that would somewhat console the Dolph-fan.

“Look, it could be worse. It’ll be okay. At least you’re not a Bills fan.”

And with that, I think the Dolph-fan finally put things in perspective.

See, it’s after receiving emails like this from your local Bills Backers group that you feel like you’ve reached the lowest depths. There is no place worse than this state of mind in fandom. Even Detroit fans may have more hope than the overall sentiment put forth in the following message.

From the Bills Backers of Boston season wrap-up email, received January 2:

Hi everyone,

A season that started with so much promise ended in yet another disappointing finish.  And to top it off, Bills fans everywhere were insulted by the team that they love with the word that Mister Mediocrity, Dick Jauron, will be returning to coach the Bills in 2009.  With one simple press release, the 2009 season has been ruined even before the 2008 season has ended.

We all sympathize with Tony Bogyo, a member of our chapter since the good-ol days, when he said, “I have truly never felt so low as a Bills fan. I know what next season holds, and it isn’t pretty – it’s the same as what we’ve seen the past 3 seasons.” (Read his entire article on Bills Daily, here: http://www.billsdaily.com/articles/bogyo/2008/jauron.shtml).  No matter what happens in the offseason, the Bills will still be buried in the AFC East basement, their weak and spiritless coach defining their personality.

The Bills Backers of Boston will certainly be back next season, but will the fans?  Time will tell.

Well, don’t we all feel like jumping for joy after that missive.

Despite my initial reaction that this message was a tad on the melodramatic side, after more thought, I understood their point. How can you be a fan of a team that seems to be most interested in exploring depths of depression and incompetence unseen by any other professional sports teams in the history of professional sports teams? I think fans of the Washington Generals carry more hope in their hearts than those that the Bills’ collective fanbase now possesses. We have a quarterback of the future who shows a troubling propensity to injuries. We have a star wide receiver who admittedly only likes playing for the washed up backup quarterback.  Our offensive and defensive line corps are dropping like files. Our owner is elderly, a miser, and might think the year is 1969, not 2009.  His family has already stated that they want nothing to do with the team after he passes on.  We tried to showcase the team to Toronto, who rightfully turned their nose at the inferior product.

At least Lions fans get to scrap it all and start over. While I’m not ready to lay all of the blame on Dick Jauron, I would have been okay with the Bills firing the man my mom affectionately refers to as “Sketlator.” I think getting rid of him, along with Turk Schonert (despite his funny name), would have begun an overall shakeup of the team that may be needed.  As my father kept saying during my sojourn back to Western New York for the holidays, the players only like Jauron because Jauron doesn’t work them hard, doesn’t demand much of them, and was okay with their late season lack of hustle. I think the Bills needed to make an overall statement and send a message that, “The way that this season imploded was not okay.” And the best way this could have been done right away was by firing Jauron.

The Bills could still send this message.  They could make a splash in free agency and move for a big name quarterback, wide receiver or running back.  I love Edwards and Lynch, and don’t mind the wide receivers, but they aren’t the best in the NFL, so the Bills can justify bringing a big name in any of those positions on board. That might announce to the rest of the league that the Bills don’t want to be the next Detroit Lions.  That they’re sick of losing to the likes of the New England Patriots 5000 to 6. But my sneaking suspicion is that such a big deal is just not going to happen.

Let’s be frank about the whole Bills situation. The Bills can’t sign big name players without revenue, and the revenue is no longer there. The Bills are a small-market team without any money who  haven’t won in a long time. They don’t have many, if any, star players.  They can’t win their division. Their owner is a laughing stock because of his age.  The team lacks the keys to make money, and lack the leadership to make needed changes to the franchise. They are not taken seriously.  Thus, merchandise isn’t going to sell, season tickets aren’t going to sell, training camp activities aren’t going to sell, jerseys aren’t going to sell, individual game tickets aren’t going to sell, parking at the Ralph isn’t going to sell – this team will continue to make no money. As a franchise, what do you do when you have this scenario on your hands?

The sports marketing tendency when you have a mess of a team like this on your hands is to gimmick the heck of of the games. Let’s give out Governor Rod Blagojevich bobble-heads. Let’s offer to pay a lucky fan’s mortgage. Everyone bring your disco records and let’s blow them up.  Sometimes, these gimmicks work.  You’re looking at the girl who attended a North Shore Spirit minor league baseball game to get a Doug Flutie bobblehead (it was for my father, I swear.)

But after a while, your intended audience wisens up, no matter what they may have initially fell for. To be blunt, if you are putting out garbage on the field, ice, or court, there’s only so many ways you can pretty it up and spray perfume on it before people notice that it’s garbage. The marketers around the Bills are going to start having to gimmick around the team to make them somewhat viable.

Thus, I fully expect to get all of these coupon deals and buy one-ticket-get-one-ticket free offers from the Buffalo Bills braintrust next season.  I expect Rian Lindell to greet my unsuspecting mother at many a Tops.  And you know what? We’re not going to fall for it.

We’re the Buffalo Bills. We’re led by Dick Jauron. We’re quarterbacked by Trent Edwards. Our owner is Ralph Wilson. And that’s the football equivalent of my mom telling my grandma while bouncing baby me on her knee back in 1982, “We bought a house. But it has no closets, no yard, no driveway, bad plumbing, and only one bedroom.”

So Dolph-fans, put your chin up. You’re a million times better off than us.

For years on end, I’ve watched the NFL Draft from the comfy and private confines of either my apartment, dorm room or parents’ living room. I would applaud picks, criticize picks, and throw things at the screen when the Bills or 49ers made moves I did not like in the privacy of my own – or my parent’s own – home. This 2008 draft was the first in which I found someone to watch with, and went to a bar with potentially other fans around me. This was big – I had never watched the draft with anyone, other than my dad floating in and out of the living room, or a roommate who wasn’t really paying attention because they didn’t like sports. Actually going out to watch the draft, after 14 years of watching it on my own, felt like I was one of those deeply artistic people finally seeing the outside world after spending years so stricken with their emotional genius that they spent years inside their beach houses, lying in bed – like Brian Wilson did (whoa-ohhh.)

Or not.

The only Miami Dolphins fan I could ever be friends with (The Dolph-fan, if you will) and I made a trek to a bar in Allston to watch Round 1 of the draft on Saturday afternoon. We could of potentially had a party that represented every team in the AFC East, but my boyfriend and The Dolph-fan’s roommate both had papers to write and finals to study for, leaving us without our Patriots and Jets representatives. The bar was not at all crowded, and there was only one other person watching the draft – a Cleveland Browns fan. Misery loves company, so we quickly absorbed the Browns fan into our viewing party and settled in to watch the draft unfold.

Miami had decided their first overall pick a few days before (say what you will about Bill Parcells, but the man is not a time-waster), and Cleveland did not have a pick until the fourth round, so my viewing party was waiting with bated breath for the eleventh overall pick by the Bills. Whomever decided that the new 10 minute time limit on first round picks would speed up the draft did not take into account the number of trades that ended up occurring, and it ended up feeling like forever before the Bills made their pick. In the hour or so leading to the pick, I swore up and down that the Russ Brandon (Bills VP who I actually met back in the day because he was an alumni panelist or something of that sort at a St. John Fisher College Admitted Students Day)-led draft team would pick a solely-needed wide receiver, and it would be either Malcolm Kelly or Devin Thomas. Supposedly, Kelly might have had some attitude issues arise during his pro day, but from everything I was reading, the Bills liked him more than Thomas, or did not expect Thomas to still be around at eleven.

The Bills pick seemed somewhat anti-cliamatic to the NFL Network announcing panel, and they decided to spend time discussing the previous picks during the Bills deliberation time. Then, all of a sudden, their reporter on the floor of Radio City Music Hall interrupts to say that he had heard that the Bills’ planned to take cornerback Leodis McKelvin with their pick.

And then I realized what one of the most important positives of watching the draft holed up in the comfort of one’s living room was – the ability to scream when your team makes a questionable move, especially when you loudly claim to everyone in a bar that you are one hundred percent sure they will be taking someone completely different.

I resisted the urge to crumple my napkin and throw it at the HD television directly above our seats. Instead, I muttered to my draft-mates. “Who do they expect Edwards to throw to? The air?” (The Browns fan got a kick out of that one. I let that slide. He once had no team to root for at all – which is far worse than being a Bills fan.)

The biggest highlight of the draft came shortly after, and made me temporarily forget my bad call. NFL Network decided to cut to Foxboro and speak to Bill Belichick about the Patriots early draft trade down. Dressed in a light beige suit and shirt and tie that could only be described as “baby announcement pink”, he stiffly presented a soliloquy on the Pats’ pick and their trade, sounding every bit as boring as Ben Stein (if we young adults weren’t so conditioned to laugh at him.) As you could imagine, our draft party was extremely amused at this, and heckled the screen like we were Boston University fans at a Boston College hockey game. It was the worse possible mix – two fans of bitter AFC East foes, and a fan of the team where Belichick failed as a head coach over a decade ago. The only way this draft party could get any more anti-Belichick is if a Giants fan had joined us and we had found Matt Walsh alone at the bar and invited him to join us.

Having realized that the “Unintentional Comedy Scale” had been broken for the day with that one Belichick appearance, our Browns fan soon left us to watch the long, drawn out, and quite dull outside of the trades rest of round one on our own. No projected top 6 pick was left to mope in the waiting room alone with cameras capturing his every breath. No Vikings forgetting that they had a pick and were on the clock. Despite the lack of drama, The Dolph-fan and I walked away from the bar at the end of round one filled with hope that this season will be the season that one of our teams unseats the Patriots.

Hmm…

Or, in my case, the hope that my team doesn’t lose to them by 46 points.

Urgh…

Or, the hope that my team doesn’t lose to them by 46 points in a nationally televised game. Yep, that’s more realistic.

********

Our Non-Sports Note of the Week, Month, or whatever amount of time between posts: I wish my Nana was alive for many touching reasons. I wish she could have seen me graduate from high school and college, I wish she could see my cousin’s daughters, and I wish my little brother could have gotten to know her. But, in all reality, one of the reasons I think about the most as of late is so she could see the massive star Kelly Ripa has become. Growing up, my Nana was a fan of All My Children, and when I was over there during school vacations, I would eat my turkey and Miracle Whip sandwich lunch while she watched the soap opera. She adored a then teenaged Kelly Ripa. However, I don’t think she could have ever imagined her as a talk show host with Regis Philbin and in tons of commercials for things like appliances, 7Up and who knows what else. She was on All My Children – who would of thought she’d ever do anything else?! Every time I see her on TV, I always think of my Nana and wish I could get her take on Ripa’s meteoric rise. Don’t get me wrong – I don’t particularly like Ripa, but I think my Nana would just get a kick out of it all.

The following thought came to me while walking to the T Friday morning, and I had to share:

It’s Christmas in September, thanks to the Miami Dolphins.

Da-da-da-dum.

Thank you, thank you, I’ll be here all week.

In case you are football illiterate, the Dolphins have always had this tendency to really…how do I put this kindly…suck around December. Several sportswriters always make reference to the annual December downfall of the Dolphins (and not just because it’s excellent alliteration.) But this year, they’ve decided to not have actual ready-for-the-NFL quarterbacks, and therefore, their suckiness has come along four months early. Nice to all of us of fans of other teams in the AFC East, because it means the constant threat of “this actually is the Dolphins’ year” doesn’t exist. Great news to us Bills fans–it means we actually might be better than someone this year. Squishing the fish shouldn’t be too hard this year, providing Bledsoe maintains the limited quarterbacking capacity he has left. It might actually be a good game…and by good, I mean, “evenly matched up.” I didn’t actually mean the teams were good. Oh no, not at all.

But is this game this weekend? No. Do I get to get phone calls from my parents talk about squishing fish and reminiscing about the infamous “Mom causing Dan Marino’s freak devastating ACL injury in 1993″ incident, which led my father for years following to ask us all when we hurt ourselves, “Oh, is it your anterior cruciate ligament?” thinking that was the most witty remark he could ever make? (I don’t even know if it was an ACL injury to Marino–but in Hasenauer lore it is.)

No.

It is a bye for the Pats and Bills. Unfortunately, it is not for the Niners. Can the Niners’ go on a permanent bye until Donahue and the rest of his front office decides that in football, money is for spending, not sitting on? Great, you’re rebuilding your team with draft picks. Fine. That’s a commendable way to go. However…if you don’t have veterans, who are the draft picks supposed to emulate? Sure, they have…like one veteran. Jeremy Newberry, who is now out indefinitely, and who wasn’t the best offensive lineman ever in the first place (he’s the one who missed the block that allowed Aeneas Williams to sack Steve Young to end his career) counts as their like one veteran. Tim Rattay? Not a veteran. Okay, wait, they have a really good cornerback guy that I read about in ESPN the Magazine…and he’s not such the young chicken. Oh okay. I was wrong. The Niners have two veterans. My mistake.

Mind you, due to work, I have yet to watch a good amount of football yet this season, and we are entering week 3. This is a travesty. However, I have set aside this Sunday to wake up at 10, eat breakfast, then sit in bed and watch Steve Young out yell Michael Irvin for two hours while Chris Berman screams random things about frozen tundras. It’s good stuff. For those unaware, that’s the equivalent of watching a debate between that good looking and amazingly successful guy everyone hates because he just knows he’s right and has some kind of debate training to back it up and a frantic drug addict who insists that he’s right despite the fact that he couldn’t tell you that 2 + 2 = 4, all while your middle aged goofy uncle attempts to referee. Oh, and after that I’ll watch some football games, all while writing a paper about the “double edged sword” of community colleges. Ahh, some things never change: Sundays = football and homework. Well, until next year, when it equals just football, which will be amazingly weird.

So providing that I’ve neglected picking games so far this season due to my busy schedule and my need to devote appropriate time to my fantasy standings, I give you my picks for Week 3. I may be rusty, so let me feel it out this weekend.

St. Louis over New Orleans (I am the most iffy about this one)

Pittsburgh over Miami (Go Class of ’04!)

Minnesota over Chicago (I hate the Vikings. I pity the Bears. However, I am realistic.)

Giants over Cleveland (Hate Garcia. The Browns also lost like their whole offense last week, so Garcia must be lamenting that he would of had more offensive weapons right now on the Niners than he does right now with the Browns.)

Atlanta over Arizona (Vick = A cocky Steve Young. Arizona = worst team ever except for Fitzgerald and the fact that their coach is Dennis Green. My family is partial to Green, and I don’t really know why, but we always have been.)

Indianapolis over Green Bay (This is Manning’s league right now, whether he deserves it or not.)

Baltimore over Cincinnati (and if they don’t, I’m screwed fantasy wise)

Philadelphia over Detroit (Love ya Mooch. However, I adore the anchors of both my fantasy teams just a bit more, and after Monday night, I am convinced that I made the right decision with them.)

Tennessee over Jacksonville (Second least sure about. I hope I get to see some of this one–I don’t know what either team is really like this year, and seeing them is ten times better than reading about them after a while.)

Kansas City over Houston (The Chiefs are due. They aren’t as bad as everyone is making them out to be. They just have senile, weirdo, or both coaches and coordinators.)

Denver over San Diego (Bring back Flutie!!!!!!!!!!!! Come on, you know Flutie would beat Plummer. You know Flutie would beat Drew Brees for that matter. Or maybe it’s just I who will still be picking Flutie when he’s 60 and doing Canadian infomericals.)

Seattle over San Fransisico (Sniffle, sniffle, tear. Dorsey’s hot. Rattay’s not bad. Why must they lose?)

Oakland over Tampa Bay (Even though Oakland got rid of Rick Mirer. He’s gone to a better place, and that would be backing up Joey Harrington. Sigh…where did the Class of 1993 go wrong?)

Washington over Dallas (Feel better soon, Brunell. Although I have been told never to pick against Parcells, I think it’s safe to this year.)

I think I’ll be lucky if I go 7-7 this week. It takes a week for me to get into the swing of the season.

******

Welcome to the SAO:

Two weekends ago, I had to take the student group I advise on a retreat, and the car ride activity in the van I was in was to name your Top 5. Of course, I being the new intern, I was one of the first targets. Of the top of my head I named:

1) Steve Young

2) Mark Brunell

3) Tom Brady

4) Jerome Ignilia

5) Gabe Kapler

Not that those are really my top 5, but they were what I could come up with at the time. My boss laughed at me, and when we were talking about it in the office a few days later, said, “To name her top 5, all you do is just name 3-4 NFL quarterbacks and then fill the rest with two random athletes.”

I beg to differ. Gabe Kapler is not a random athlete. He’s the hottest baseball player ever to exist in the history of the game. That’s definitely not random.

******

A short plea to the NHL:

Dear NHL players, owners, and involved parties;

I have recently become single again, therefore I need you to start playing so that I can be easily distracted from my single status. I also have become somewhat attached to writing papers while listening to NHL Radio online, and I fear without that to listen to, my grades will diminish. While I understand I’m probably the last one holding out hope left in America, and that this further proves what a Canadian I really am, I hope that you all take my reasons into account.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

-Katherine

******

So I take the bus to work about 60% of the time now. And they have these prerecorded announcements that order us, the T riders, to “report any suspicious activity to the driver,” like the subway does.

Have you ever taken a bus in Boston? If I followed those instructions, I would be sitting in the driver’s lap the duration of my 20 minute ride.

******

Personal Note of the Week: I am 3 for 3 in “not only keeping all composure while being dumped, but in keeping the guy as a friend.” I need to teach classes in this. I am single handedly transforming the stereotype of the dumped girl, one breakup of mine at a time.

I’ll give you secret #1, free of charge.

1) Have six tons of work due the next day.

It’s saved me quite a few times, if not all.

******

I have yet to catch the new season of Dream Job because I work Tuesday nights, and ESPN is not repeating it yet, but it doesn’t surprise me that the two top contestants right now are Syracuse alums. When I went to the auditions back in July, the guy I thought would definitely make it from Boston was a Syracuse alum. They’re extremely well-spoken and definitely know what they’re doing. This guy had resumes, a tape of his work, references, detailed writing examples…when we hadn’t been asked to bring anything. It was hard core.

It also sounds like the women stink this year. I will make no comment on that, except that you could of avoided that by picking any girl from Boston. It makes me not wonder if they don’t want the women to succeed…but I’ll wait to pass judgment until I can actually see an episode.

Realistically, could I ever make it on Dream Job? Heck no. I mean, in case you haven’t noticed, I stutter. Not the best trait for a sportscaster to have. So I don’t mind sitting back and watching.

If I ever get to catch an episode, that is.

******

Signs that my life is wicked different than it was five months ago:

It’s sad when you get up at 8:30, and you consider that sleeping in.

I can shop at Sephora.

My jeans are collecting dust because I can’t wear them to work.

I can go shopping at the Pru and at Copley on my free Friday nights. (I love Back Bay on Friday and Saturday nights. It’s the epitome of what I dreamed my life in Boston would be like.)

But some things never change: I work either Friday or Saturday night every weekend, and it’s September, and I’m battling laryngitis.

Till next time…