It’s safe, ladies. The NFL Draft is over. Take down your yellow ribbons. Your prognosticator has come home.
 
Every guy seems to know the NFL Draft better than the next guy. They read, and re-read pages of recycled scouting information from real football experts and writers and twist and regurgitate it enough to call the ideas his or her own.
 
Watch enough NFL Live on ESPN, draft specials, SportsCenter vignettes and NFL Network and you could be as good as your team’s next general manager.
 
We’ve all done it. However, some of us eventually outgrow the idea that we can prophecize the success of our team or any team with letter grades and commentary on players who haven’t even touched the football without the white stripes.
 
The NFL Draft can be fun to watch. It’s fun when New York Jets and Giants fans cheer and jeer their team’s selections. Philadelphia Eagles fans are also heavily represented, as the proud patrons whom once booed Santa and celebrated when Michael Irvin lay nearly paralyzed.
 
Then there’s the collective clapping of hands and smattering slapping of heads. If you’re STILL a fan of the Cincinnati Bengals, the Oakland Raiders, or the Detroit Lions and have lived in the doldrums of awful teams yearly stocked with early picks leading to thugs, or unfulfilled promise, you’re allowed to kill your franchise if you disagree with management. You’ve earned it.
 
One condition, please: be fair.
 
Fair criticism is questioning when a team drafts several projects. Fair criticism is when a team with character issues drafts another player with character issues. Fair is ripping a team for trading their entire draft for one player, or failing to trade-out of a spot when offered and immediately reaching for a player with the pick in question. Fair is killing a team for drafting more skill position players when they already have a glutton. Fair is killing a team for trading up into the early first round to draft a player nobody’s heard of, or taking a quarterback from a system offense in a weak conference.
 
Here’s what’s not fair: skipping college football season altogether, then reading publications that rank talent back in January and ripping your team for not falling in line with your particular draft guide.
 
Not fair: believing everything you read and calling it your own.
 
Not fair: killing the Buffalo Bills for not getting “value” for their picks. Based on what? YOUR prognotications?
 
This one’s for you “draftnicks” crying over the Bills taking defensive end Aaron Maybin from Penn State at eleven, and NOT Brian Orakpo from Texas.
 
Hmmm. Texas players have made quite an impact on their respective NFL teams. After getting traded from New Orleans to Miami, Ricky Williams traded the cash for the cashcrop.
 
Then there’s Mike Williams. Taken by Buffalo fourth overall in 2002. The Tony Mandarich of his time.
 
Then there’s defensive back Roy Williams. The 2001 Nagurski and Thorpe award is still looking for work.
 
Chris Simms: has never been a consistent quarterback.
 
Michael Huff: underachiever.
 
And the crown jewel of the Longhorn alumni: Vince Young. The poster child for Madden jinxes.
 
All but Simms were selected in the top ten.
 
Those stats don’t lie. They’re all bigtime athletes from the same school, same coach, who all have failed to live-up to their top-billing. Maybe those stats with proven NFL results (albeit bad) weighed a little more heavily than Orakpo’s Nagurski, Hendricks and Lombardi awards.
 
Four picks into Saturday’s selections, and one local sports talk show host ripped the Bills for not selecting for value.
 
The difference between that guy, the couch quarterbacks, and Mel Kiper, Jr. is simple. Mel watches college football DURING THE SEASON. Then he watches the same games throughout the week ON TAPE. Then he reviews his tapes, goes to the combine and ranks EACH PLAYER, whom he’s seen with his own eyes. He also studies each team’s needs. 
 
In other words, he doesn’t spend half the year watching Sabres games, too. Too many fans worry about their own teams, watch zero tape, go to zero combines, casually watch college football if they do at all, and watch way too much television, garnished with opinions. Turn on the radio during the draft and you’ll hear callers spit out some of these pearls:
 
‘Kiper said…Todd McShay said…Pro Football Weekly said…Adam Schefter said…Ron Jawarski said…My brother, who played in college said…’
 
Ugh. Everyone forgets these players still need to be coached, too. As the adage goes, “Everyone’s a Hall-of-Famer on Day One. Championships are won on Day Two.”
 
Here’s a new one: Everyone’s a GM on Day One. Then they take Sunday off.
 
The Bills needed to address their lines and they did. Whatever happens now is between the players and their desire and how they’re coached. Period.
 
Which brings us to the next issue. If you’re a Bills fan and lack even the faith of a tiny French’s mustard seed in the coaching staff to begin, then the draft shouldn’t make much difference to you anyway.
 
Then again, if the Bills do one thing right, it’s marketing hopes and memories like insurance companies market fear.
 
Which brings us back to the draft. Then back to minicamp. Then to the Bills Store. Then to Pittsford. Then to Orchard Park. Then to the Bad Word Jar. Then to the drawing board.
 
Then back to the draft. Do you still have a girlfriend?

Two weeks is not enough of a sample space to make a snap judgment on a season that lasts 162 games. But in New York City, that’s how they sell newspapers. Everybody who saw CC Sabathia’s atrocious pinstriped debut against the Baltimore Orioles could tell you how bad it looked. However, the next day, the New York tabloids all but suggested Sabathia should refund his $161 million contract after his lone Yankee loss.

Then, after two starts, those same papers dubbed A.J. Burnett the stopper the Yankees have longed for since the late 1990’s. Just two years ago, he was compared to Carl Pavano.

All this after two games, not 13. But wait, there was more.

Joba Chamberlain has drawn comparisons to Kenny Powers, the fictional pitcher from the HBO original series “East Bound and Down” – a hard-throwing, relief-pitching phenom who burst on the scene only to succumb to injuries and burnout, thanks in part to excess. Chamberlain’s speed and control haven’t been what it was a year ago before getting ping-ponged from the bullpen, to the rotation, to the disabled list, back to the bullpen and now back to the rotation. Throw in a DUI as well.

Then there’s Chien-Ming Wang. The man who won more games than any pitcher in baseball with back-to-back 19-win seasons in 2006 and 2007 has now surrendered 23 runs – all earned (34.50 ERA) – in only six (official) innings of work. Somehow, however, only two of his famed sinkers have become souvenirs for outfield patrons.

Of course, the Yankee bullpen continues to follow suit during each of Wang’s three nightmarish starts, tiring from combining for 18-innings pitched, which doesn’t include Nick Swisher’s first-career relief appearance. The pen tires during Wang’s games, then collectively impersonates the starter on his off days, thanks to the inherited workload.

Then there’s the new stadium, which now has already earned several nicknames of its own. According to Yankee lore and pinstripe-blinded beliefs of imminent domain, the Yankees were supposed to win that game. Apparently the ghosts got lost admiring their own Fathead banners along the concourse area on their way to the diamond. Then again, after 20 home runs were hit in four games, perhaps The Babe himself invaded the bodies of both the Yankees and Cleveland Indians alike and took some extended batting practice. Either that, or he was too busy sampling the new restaurants, rather than spooking the competition.

“The House that You Built” is a nod to taxpayers. “The House that Mute Built” is a dig at corporate fans who’d prefer wearing sweaters tied over the shoulders of their monogrammed button-downs, offering golf claps over high-fives. “The New Launching Pad” is the name dubbed for the vapor trails left behind each of the 20 roman candles that left the yard over the extended weekend.

Much of this – fair or unfair – could be corrected with one move.

Every sports car owner takes pride in his vehicle. He washes it. Waxes it. Details it. Houses it in a nice garage during the winter months. Never lets it see snow or rain. It’s an expensive hobby.

It’s much like owning the New York Yankees. The only difference here is, with the Yankees, Hank and Hal Steinbrenner and general manager Brian Cashman for that matter, have decided to equip their Porsche 911 with tires found at a junk yard.

The Yankees may finally have a rotation rivaling the great ones of yesteryear, but their pitching coach is a guy whose two “can’t miss” kids from his days in Triple A, won as many games in the Yankee rotation as The Break Room.

In only his second year, pitching coach Dave Eiland needs time, but these are the Yankees. Even their deep pockets can’t stop the world’s rotation so they can fix their own.

Legendary pitching guru Leo Mazzone is available while manager Joe Girardi can’t be thrilled with his pitching staff. Even Joe Torre had an all-star team of coaches to complement his roster. Eiland’s only claim to fame (or shame) is from the dark days of pre-Steinbrenner exile. Not to say Mazzone wants to return to baseball, but money, along with rectifying his two-year blip with the Baltimore Orioles, could be tempting.

This isn’t to blame Eiland for the troubles of all-star caliber pitchers, or shoddy stadium design. Simply put, it’s the Bronx, where sacrificial lambs are easier to find than Monument Park.

If things don’t change, Girardi may have to make a move before somebody moves him. Payroll aside, the Yankees have over one billion reasons to fix their pitching problems. Some of them may be yours, taxpayer.

The Yankees have a new home, oddly with the same 161st St. and River Avenue address. They also have some new Steinbrenners running the show. But like the address, their father’s win-or-nothing mentality has been passed down to the next generation.

Forget about the ghosts of The Babe and The Mick making appearances at the new park. If the Yankees pitching continues to struggle, the ghosts of Billy Martin and countless other former managers will be the only ghosts that count during those late nights in Girardi’s office.

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The Buffalo Bills could replace this year’s 50th Anniversary patches (if they decide on wearing them) with commemorative badges that mark a decade since Rob Johnson led the franchise to its last playoff appearance. That alone is the only real reason Bills fans have to cry, whine and bitch.

If you’re shortsighted enough to think games in Toronto are bad now, realize that the team’s future in or out of Western New York has nothing to do with games being played in Canada last year, this year, or in the next four years, and the money the Bills make makes them much more solvent in today’s NFL. Heck, if they had a real general manager and head coach, they could be a playoff team.

Some fans’ braindead jock-ocracy continued this morning with outcries of fans and media alike ripping the organization for scheduling another divisional contest along the other side of Lake Ontario rather than Lake Erie. The kvetching (yes, it’s a word, spelled properly) continued when they learned the game would be on NFL Network, NOT on Time Warner Cable.

My, my, my. For a team that hasn’t played one-and-done January football since Frank Wychek’s lateral to Kevin Dyson sealed the Bills’ Super Bowl dreams to a single decade–perhaps for eternity–fans are still awfully spoiled. Entitled even. They shouldn’t be.

First, let’s tackle the latter controversey. You can a) purchase DirecTV with all the complaints regarding cable prices; b) Go to a bar December 3rd and watch the Bills and the J-E-T-S; or c) Find a friend who owns a dish and watch the game there. 

We used to complain when a game was blacked-out. Talk show lines were loaded with redundant hacks saying the NFL should obliviate the 72-hour sellout rule, to which few free-thinking hosts ever disagreed. Except this one little detail: if your stadium can’t sell games out, maybe you SHOULD move the franchise, since NFL blackouts are about as a rare a Detroit Lions victory.

Sellouts are less frequent in other pro sports, so blackout restrictions would kill them entirely in today’s on-demand world. If an NFL owner actually has seats remaining for a game that sells out everywhere else, he should be allowed the necessary incentive to sell those seats–that, of course, being the threat of a blackout. More simply: supply and demand.

The Bills-Jets game will be sold out. Rogers Cable will see to it, simply from a public relations standpoint. The Canadian media giant has already doubled the amout of seats sold for under a hundred bucks from 4,700 to 11,000. They want football. The dome will be filled. Period.

The question is where to watch it. Well, it is only Tax Day, so consider yourself warned, a little over seven-and-a-half months in advance. Find a place. Find a way. Watch the game. But first, stop and ask yourself: Heck, what makes me think I’ll even want to stay-up and watch it in the first place?

Again, another example of fans taking football for granted. There’s nothing in the last nine years that suggests this team will be worth our precious Thursday night prime-time hours, or warrants cutting into our sleep. Go one step further: do you know what you’re doing next Thursday night? Let alone 33 Thursday nights from now?

Sure, it’s the NFL. Our rite of passage. Only the NFL could not snap a single down and infuriate an entire country seven months before kickoff.

Then there’s the Jets, who have no idea who they’ll start at quarterback that cold, domed day in Toronto. The Bills pulled a Bud Selig for a second straight year and “leaked” a rumor about who they may play, to justify to fans when they book the team they may really have in mind when the schedule officially makes its way to the printer.

Last year, Browns backers in western New York were angered that they may have to forfeit their quick jaunt to Orchard Park for an expensive trip along the QEW. So the Bills and the NFL decided to give the Canadians the 1-15 Miami Dolphins instead.

Rabble! “How can they give ‘em the Dolphins game?” Apparently, even any 1-15 team would be good enough for those (dang) Canucks, just not Miami.

This year, NFL Network reported the Bills may “host” Peyton Manning and the Indianapolis Colts…

Rabble!

So, the Bills and the league got together again and settled on the New York Jets.

Rabble! (Again.)

Aye. How about giving the Canadians the Saints? Or the Bucs? Or the lowly Texans? Sure, those will boost ticket sales.

Rogers Cable is spending roughly $76 million for these eight games, and reportedly are inquiring about more. Sorry folks, they’re the only real vote that counts. If a nationally televised night game shown in the league’s largest market is the best way to showcase the game, that’s just smart marketing. From a paper standpoint, the Jets are the perfect team on the slate to put there.

If Bills fans want something to complain about, the Indianapolis game January 3rd is probably worth a gripe or two. If the Colts continue being a playoff team, there’s a good chance Peyton won’t be playin’ in Buffalo that Sunday afternoon.

Meanwhile, it’s just a schedule, a brutal one at that for a bad, bad team. But as ABC, ESPN and NBC have learned over the years, this year’s schedule based on last year’s records doesn’t guarantee good games. This is the parity league. Remember? So forget the schedule for now. You have more important things to worry about, Bills fans.

Nine years of research proves it.