Beyond the Xs and Os , livre ebook

Beyond the Xs and Os
Beyond the Xs and Os
Keeping the Bills in Buffalo
MARK C. POLONCARZ
Cover image of the stadium from Wikimedia.
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© Mark C. Poloncarz
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
Excelsior Editions is an imprint of State University of New York Press.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY www.sunypress.edu
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Poloncarz, Mark C., 1967– author.
Title: Beyond the Xs and Os : keeping the Bills in Buffalo / Mark C. Poloncarz.
Description: Albany : Excelsior Editions ; State University of New York Press, [2019] | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018045849 | ISBN 9781438475936 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781438475950 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Buffalo Bills (Football team)—History. | Football stadiums—New York (State)—Buffalo—History. | Football—Economic aspects—New York (State)—Buffalo. | Sports and state—New York (State)—Buffalo. | Poloncarz, Mark C., 1967–
Classification: LCC GV956.B83 P65 2019 | DDC 796.332/640974797—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018045849
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This book is dedicated to the fans of the Buffalo Bills.
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1 The Stadium in Orchard Park and the 1998 Lease Agreement
Chapter 2 Starting from Scratch
Chapter 3 The First Meeting
Chapter 4 Finding the Right Team
Chapter 5 Viability = D × P³ – C
Chapter 6 Enter Populous
Chapter 7 G4 or 4G?
Chapter 8 Should I Stay or Should I Go?
Chapter 9 Percoco
Chapter 10 The More Things Change, the More They Remain the Same
Chapter 11 At Least They Fed Us
Chapter 12 The Letter
Chapter 13 Thank God We Got Schumed!
Chapter 14 It’s Pronounced Like the Bread
Chapter 15 They Want a What ?
Chapter 16 Well, Those Were a Crazy Few Days
Chapter 17 The $400 Million Bomb
Chapter 18 Detroit
Chapter 19 Sandy and Troubles at Home
Chapter 20 In the Red Zone
Chapter 21 They Might as Well Go Now If That Is the Case
Chapter 22 I Probably Just Lied to the Media
Chapter 23 Touchdown
Chapter 24 I Think I Made Jerry Sullivan Speechless
Chapter 25 The Legislative Interlude
Chapter 26 Blue Tick Hounds
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Index
Prologue
I cannot tell you from memory the final score of the first Buffalo Bills’ game I attended, nor can I recall who scored touchdowns for the Bills that day, but I do remember attending my first game.
Just like every other boy in my hometown of Lackawanna, New York, I was a Buffalo Bills fan. Joe Ferguson was the quarterback of my childhood memories. O.J. Simpson—not yet the sad, sordid person he’d later become—was the best running back in the National Football League. O.J. wore number 32. I was seven years old when my father turned thirty-two years of age. It seemed to me only the best running backs wore number 32. So when my father turned the same age as O.J.’s number I knew it meant something special because only the best get to be 32.
I watched every game I could and for years pestered my father to take me to my first game. Finally, in 1980, when I was just shy of my thirteenth birthday, my dad told me we were going to my first Bills game that fall. I knew this would be an experience I would never forget. And I never have.
We were playing our conference rivals the New York Jets. It was a beautiful day in early fall, the sun shining brightly. My dad told me to make sure I brought my football with me so we could toss it around before the game. While on the drive to Rich Stadium he said he was going to stop off at the store before we got to the game to pick up some food and drink for tailgating in the parking lot. I vividly remember wondering, “What is tailgating? And what does it have to do with watching the Bills game?”
It didn’t take long for me to understand that attending a Buffalo Bills football game meant more than just watching the game. It meant grilling hot dogs and hamburgers in the parking lot before game time, playing touch football with other fans, and then entering Rich Stadium, a hulking behemoth. It meant sitting five rows from the top (I clearly remember that because I counted how close we were) and looking out and seeing eighty thousand fans, more people than I had ever seen in any one place—all there, like me, to watch the Bills.
It meant watching Joe Ferguson throw the ball to Jerry Butler and hand it off to Joe Cribbs or Roland Hooks. It meant hearing the Bills fans taunt the Jets fans and vice versa (including both sides saying a few off-color words I was not allowed to use). It meant watching Fred Smerlas and the rest of the “Bermuda Triangle” swallow up running backs who dared come up the middle. And ultimately, it meant leaving the game with a smile on my face after the Bills posted a 20 to 10 victory.
Of the years that followed, many of my most vivid memories revolve around Bills wins and losses: lying on my parents’ couch with an icepack after hurting my knee playing street football, watching the Bills beat the Denver Broncos on a last-second field goal by Nick Mike-Mayer; sitting through the dismal sleet and cold rain of another loss during the back-to-back 2–14 seasons in the mid-’80s; driving to Cleveland’s old Municipal Stadium to watch the playoff game in which Ronnie Harmon let the winning touchdown pass from Jim Kelly slip through his hands, thereby ending the Bills 1989–90 season (yes, I was there, in that end zone, and the pass went right through his hands); attending a Super Bowl XXV party at the West Seneca Moose Lodge where everyone was absolutely silent, holding hands, as Scott Norwood lined up the kick that every Bills’ fan will remember him for.
Each of us who bleed Buffalo Bills red, white, and blue have these memories, these shared fan experiences. And when it comes to attending a game at Ralph Wilson Stadium, it is the entirety of the fan experience that makes it more than just a Sunday afternoon spent watching football, but a communal event all Bills fans have shared since Ralph C. Wilson, Jr. placed his team in Buffalo in 1959. It is that experience of being Bills fans that binds us together as western New Yorkers through the good and bad times that mark the history of our region.
Little did I imagine on that bright Sunday in 1980 that more than three decades later I would be involved in another type of game involving the Buffalo Bills—a game that could decide whether the team I grew up loving and, all too often, agonizing over would still call Buffalo home. But when I was elected Erie County’s eighth county executive on November 8, 2011, I knew my legacy would be linked to one particular transaction: whether I could negotiate a new long-term lease to keep the Bills in Buffalo and continue building on what had been the region’s cultural foundation for the better part of the last century.
When the people of Erie County gave me the privilege to serve as their county executive, I knew the task at hand would prove difficult. Having served six years as Erie County Comptroller, I was more than prepared to take on the position. I knew Erie County’s finances like the back of my hand. I believed I was elected to restore government to its core principle, to serve its constituents, and I felt I had the support of those constituents to do so.
Yet, I knew no matter what I accomplished, my administration would be measured by our ability to successfully complete a new lease transaction with the Buffalo Bills. Even if I succeeded in every other goal of my administration—helped to rebuild our economy and grow our population—I knew if I failed to close a new lease transaction with the Bills and the team left for greener pastures, my administration would be deemed a failure.
The effort to complete that challenging task started almost immediately after I walked off the stage at the Adam’s Mark Hotel on election night in 2011. When I left the stage, I turned and told my staff that if they thought winning the election was the hard part, they were wrong—the hard part had just begun.
This book is the story of how getting a long-term lease negotiated and signed by Erie County, New York State, and the Buffalo Bills proved to be an extremely difficult but ultimately very rewarding task. It is also the story of how our administration was able to navigate the turbulent waters bound to drown any negotiation by a billion-dollar football team, a county that owns the stadium where the team plays, and the fourth-most populous state in the country, all the while dealing almost daily with the local media’s feeding frenzy for news.
The following narrative about the Bills negotiation is based on my memory, my written notes of meetings and phone conferences (including the exact words used by parties as written in my contemporaneous notes), letters exchanged by the parties, as well as hundreds and hundreds of emails between the parties. Any spelling or grammatical errors contained in the original letters or emails are included here without alteration.
In a transaction as complex as the Bills lease was and continues to be, many people were involved in making it a reality, but in my view none was more important than my former Deputy County Executive, Richard Tobe. Rich was Erie County’s Commissioner of Environment and Planning during County Executive Dennis Gorski’s administration and, more important, he was County Executive Gorski’s main negotiator during the 1998 lease agreement. Rich’s institutional knowledge of the previous lease terms