What do Mitt Romney’s D-quotient, Mother’s Day, the Washington Capitals and me have in common? They are all involved in this podcast. I love you, Mom and my kid’s mom (and her mom… and their moms…)

Email: nick@fcbuffalo.org

Head to Highwatermarkfilms.com to learn more about Mike’s 30-minute documentary about resettled refugees in Buffalo. It features a soundtrack by local mainstay Roger Bryan & The Orphans. There’s a free screening at the Buffalo and Erie Country Historical Society at 6p on May 23.

The Bills led a press conference in to announce they’ve cloned Fred Jackson.

Email: nick@fcbuffalo.org

See, Florence is not a made man nor an O.G. (that does not stand for offensive guard, which he also is not). Rather, Florence is the Johnny Roastbeef of this mafia’s “Goodfellas,” condemned to death for buying his wife a pink Cadillac after he was told it was a poor idea.

Florence was poor in coverage and constantly-flagged for pass interference and holding. He also Eric-Kinged (celebrated having nothing to do with an incompletion) like there was no tomorrow. And while his interception return for a score in the streak-breaker against New England will live on in Bills lore forever, his inconsistency is a main reason the Bills went so aggressively at corner (the other being Terrence McGee’s age and injury issues).

Put plainly, business in business and I doubt Florence’s prickly personality was going to lend itself to competition at the No. 1 or 2 cornerback slot. Even if it was, I doubt the Bills felt like spending close to $5 million on him.

There have been a number of complaints among Bills fans regarding Florence’s release. Perhaps its due to his embracing of the Bills Mafia moniker on Twitter, interactions with fans and a Monday morning stint on WGR’s solid morning show with Howard Simon and Jeremy White. In any event, my opinion on Florence is that in three years with the team, he did a real Eric Moulds act: one year-on, one year-off. The argument in this instance could be that this was the time for the year-on, I suppose.

On WECK, I’d regularly invite the advanced stat fellas at ProFootballFocus to join my show. I respect the heck out of their breakdowns for football, so I headed to their site before I typed this little number.

Florence ranked in the Top Ten in the entire NFL in a category: highest QB rating allowed when targeted.

What's an E.J. Biggers?

Surely one stat does not make a tenure in town, but Florence had only seven interceptions in three seasons and was a less-than-ideal tackler (though by no means poor). He also rated a -10.4 (that’s a negative there) on their overall ratings for 2011.

As Bills fans, we’re going to need to comprehend the fact that a lot of the  lovable underdogs we embraced during poor seasons won’t have a space on a good team, particularly if the Bills continue to spend money locking up top talent. I’m a huge UB Bulls fan — one of the biggest, I’d guess — but I think it’s going to be a super difficult task to see Naaman Roosevelt make this year’s receiving corps. Arthur may turn out to be a great linebacker, but it’s just as possible that where the Bills are going, there is no Moats.

So this is my long-winded explanation for being pleased that the Bills cut dead weight in Florence. For $5 million, they can sign 2-3 vets to compete for his job.

Email: nick@fcbuffalo.org

]]> http://www.nickmendola.com/addition-by-subtraction/feed/ 7 http://www.nickmendola.com/the-late-nick-mendola-seas2ep38-bryce-harper-fever-plus-a-heady-topic/ http://www.nickmendola.com/the-late-nick-mendola-seas2ep38-bryce-harper-fever-plus-a-heady-topic/#comments Thu, 03 May 2012 17:05:54 +0000 Nick http://www.nickmendola.com/?p=3885 AB Podcast Thirty-Eight: Bryce Harper’s boogers plus a heady topic: depression & head safety

An appetizer on Bryce Harper fever in the media, followed by a heady discussion on how we deal with head trauma and depression in life.

Email: nick@fcbuffalo.org

This is a story I told more often when it was funny, which is a more polite way of saying ‘before it scared the ‘$#!+” out of me.

It’s February 2000 and I’m 18-years-old. There isn’t much I care about more than hanging with my friends, seeing my girlfriend and — most of all — playing ice hockey. I do the latter for the Kenmore East varsity hockey team and I am mediocre at-best.

At that point, my hockey heroes are Mike Foligno and Matthew Barnaby, the latter to whom I pay homage nearly every game by being a pain-in-the-ass and attempting to hit everything that moves. So I suppose you can be forgiven if you think I got what was coming to me.

It’s a late season game and we’re playing at Hockey Outlet against the Lancaster Redskins. I’m jockeying for position in front of the net, getting the living crap beat out of me by some giant oaf. As the puck leaves our zone, I give him a no-look lovetap with my stick. The next thing I feel is my legs going out from under me. The next thing I see is an elbow coming straight down on my head.

My short-term memories of what follows are exactly this:

1) Feeling really dizzy and sick on the bench, telling my coach I was ready to go back in.

2) Getting checked out by the team trainer after the game and being told I have a concussion and not to go to bed.

3) Driving home in a teammate’s truck and going to bed.

The reality is I was knocked out on the ice for a while before my teammates helped me to the bench. I wouldn’t go to the locker room and appeared “drunk” to my coaches. I barely made my way back home before mumbling something to my mom about getting hit and then spent the entire night on the phone with my girlfriend, who was afraid to let me go to sleep (that part of concussion tale turned out to be fable, which stinks cause I was tired).

Here’s where things get extra dicey. The next morning at school I get a hug from behind from my girlfriend, who I don’t recognize at first despite talking to her for hours beforehand. She takes me to the nurse who calls my mom, who cannot pick me up in a short period of time. Being ever the young punk, I convince the nurse to let me walk home. It’s only 1.1 miles and four turns (Thanks, Google Maps). I’ve lived there nearly my entire life, but I get lost and it takes me nearly an hour.

Once home, I climb on the couch and cover myself in blankets. I’m freezing, shivering and every time I move I want to puke. The slightest move of a blanket sends my stomach into flip-flops and I feel like Scottie Ferguson at the top of the belltower in “Vertigo.”

At some point in the evening, my mother gets me to take a shower (since I hadn’t the night before). I turn the shower up as hot as it goes, but nothing is keeping me warm. I’m shaking, heaving violently. I’m screaming for my mom, who doesn’t want to come in the bathroom considering, well, I’m a young punk kid 18-year-old and I’m naked and they generally don’t favor their mom coming in. But I’m a kid who needs his mom and she comes to get me, helps me put a lot of clothes on before my father and she takes me to the emergency room.

As you can imagine, it was my last hockey game in high school. The doctors, still new to the concussion game, told me to sit out until I felt better. Hindsight being 20/20, I should’ve sat out a half-decade, if not forever.

That sounds pretty lousy, I’d imagine, but it’s been cakewalk compared to some of the long-term effects. First off, it’s a heckuva lot easier to suffer a second concussion, which I have several times (but not since 2003). The one that put me out of contact hockey for good — yes I was stupid enough to come back — was on the final morning of try-outs for UB club hockey, when I laid out a winger coming into our zone yet left the ice in a daze despite being the guy who was still standing after the hit.

My mom will tell you that I went from being a young smart-ass to a dark, brooding person who holed himself up in his room. Thanks to braver souls before me like Elliott Smith and Woody Paige, I have the guts to admit that I did think about going “Pi” on my temples to stop the horrible thoughts and depression. I suffered through headaches. I talked to psychiatrists. I got tested for ADHD, OCD and a number of other acronyms that aren’t a lot of fun.

The entire time in that darkness, which I’ve learned to live with by embracing the beauty and blessings that abound in my life, I could see myself from the outside. I watched myself be a total d——- to people that I loved. These are the people who stopped me from doing something stupid just by loving me. And yet while I knew I was being a pejorative term, there was a part of me that couldn’t stop it.

The worst part, by far, was the lack of resources for people being suffering from post-concussion issues. The closest thing I had were articles about Pat LaFontaine or Eric Lindros and their head trauma issues. Even at the turn of this century, we were dealing with a society that told us to “man up and get back out there.” I remember vividly a hit during freshman football practice where I clocked a guy — a rarity indeed — and the coach said, “Ha! You’re seeing stars right now. Wrung him good. Watch your head next time.” No one followed up. It wasn’t a big deal in 1996.

***

It’s a really big deal today. There’s no use being paranoid about it, but I look at some of the pro football players who are literally losing their minds. Every now and then, that darkness rears its head and I wonder if my ignorance to the pivotal nature of my brain will cost me time with my grandkids. Heck, I wonder if it’ll cost me time with my own son. I’ve considered writing a book of letters to him “just in case.”

Most days, though, I’m just smarter about how I take care of myself. When I play soccer, I don’t go in the wall. When I play hockey, I’ve learned not to do anything too stupid (on occasion in any sport I can’t get out of my own way, further proof of my idiocy).

Regardless of where you fall on the Junior Seau emotional spectrum, what happened to him is terrifying. Personally, I ran the Seau gamut; I loved him as a Charger and even owned his jersey in high school, but I hated his needless Patriot celebrating of a sack of JP Losman with :58 left in a meaningless game.

I’m not going to tell you we need to stop football, but their reputation as gladiators is for a good reason. It’s not because of how tough they are, it’s that they are risking their livelihood for riches, glory and entertainment. I personally believe the world would be better off if football went back to wrestling helmets. Players would stop feeling invincible with a tank on their dome.

Seau was known as a man who would do anything to help the community. He went out of his way for underprivileged kids. Yet the story that lived in my brain up until today was the domestic abuse incident that lead to him “accidentally” driving his car off a cliff (and surviving. Tough emmer effer).

So when I heard that Seau, like Dave Duerson, shot himself in his chest, I knew that depression was concussion-related. I knew Seau wanted everyone to know that he was not a violent madman. He wanted his ex-wife and kids to know how much he loved them.

Who knows how vicious his demons were, but I know how mine felt. Whatever you need to understand what’s going on in your brain, get it. Need counseling? Don’t let some meathead tell you it’s for the birds. Need medicine? It’s a heckuva lot better than  being obsessed with ending your dance on this green place.

Take care of yourself and realize that someone cares about you, and you’ve got as much chance as anyone to play a pivotal role in making this world work for the good people. If you’re reading this, no matter who you are, know this: I’m in your corner.

Any time, email: nick@fcbuffalo.org

Talking Buffalo Bills draft picks, the Coyotes saving their franchise, NBA Playoffs and Osama bin Laden… micromanager?

Email: nick@fcbuffalo.org

"Danny Gare now or Danny Gare 1974?"

more interested in keeping Chris Drury. Now, I’m just sick of it. He’s an annoying pest of a super-clutch hockey player who suits up for a team I like just slightly more than the Black Plague. I’m no Darcy Regier fan, but the only time I want to hear Darcy and Danny in the same Sabres sentence again is, “Who would win in a fight: Danny Gare or Darcy Wakaluk?”

Here’s a comparison that worked for a few Sabres fans on Twitter after Briere scored another of his game-winning playoff goals:

“Briere for me is like an ex-girlfriend you’re over but your friends won’t stop talking about.

“Remember how hot she was?”

“Yep. I dated her”

I know absence makes the heart grow fonder, but I’m continually amazed at how Briere’s absence from Buffalo has folded over into an obsession that would blow the minds of TV cops. It’s even more absurd than the acting on this season’s “Law & Order: SVU” (As an aside, is it possible Chris Meloni was entirely responsible for keeping the writers and actors in check with a series of “Are you effing kidding me?s” each season during the writing process? Could anyone at NBC have expected the show to become this ludicrous?)

I’m not debating that the Sabres would’ve been better off keeping him around past the 2006-07 flame-out, but let’s not pretend everyone loved him while he was here. Briere’s Buffalo death is turning him into some sort of halfway-decent rock musician who’s become a legend simply by not making more product.

This is a guy who co-captained the biggest disappointment in Buffalo Sabres history and picked up a whole three goals in his final playoff run with Buffalo. He’s a guy who was in an NHL-distributed video on the definition of diving. He’s put up regular season stat lines in Philadelphia that would’ve had him burnt in effigy should he have received that contract with Buffalo. In the year after Briere split town — still his choice, by the way — Derek Roy had more points than him. Briere’s best regular season point total is one point less than Jason Pominville had this season. He regularly took nights off in Buffalo, back-checked about as hard as Max Afinogenov and was Roy’s mentor.

Back to the ex-girlfriend thing (or boyfriend, if you like). You remember that Briere used to take you out to dinner, but forget that he constantly played with his iPhone. You wistfully recall the time he bought you flowers, but never mention how he would ignore you for hours if he didn’t get his way. You picture what your kids would’ve looked like, but forget that he never proposed.

When was the last time you high-fived yourself because Chris Drury isn’t on a massive contract with the Sabres? Do you often think, “if only Chris stayed here and produced very little?” No, because he’s gone.

Yes, he’s super good. He’s might become a Hall of Famer. But he’s a Flyer. And I’m over it.

Email: nick@fcbuffalo.org

Turns out they both stunk. Story of the majority of Buffalo sports debates, past and present.

Paul is stepping away from Channel 4 after nearly a quarter-century this week, so he’s seen his fair share of debates: Trent/JP, Flutie/Johnson… perhaps even Puppa, Cloutier or Wakaluk. But as P-Squared steps away from that microphone, I wanted to take a minute to salute his years of service and also to mention how pleased I am that he’ll stay a part of the UB Bulls radio broadcast team.

You see, Paul’s one of the nicest, most respectful people I’ve been around and he’s thrived in a sports climate where the easiest way to climb to the top is to be boisterous, a jerk or a boisterous jerk. Anyone who’s listened to sports radio or read an incendiary sports column or blog can identify the guys who keep positive in an oft-poisonous climate. As Paul’s beloved Springsteen sings, “It’s hard to be a saint in the city.”

When he told me he was leaving WIVB, he joked that he hadn’t had a weekend off in 24 years. At least, I think it was a joke. To be good at sports broadcasting, you’re on the clock all-the-time. Miss a story and you look like a turd. After all, who doesn’t want to watch sports for a “living?”

(Clockwise from left): Brad Riter, Jim Kubiak, Paul and myself in Akron, Fall 2010.

Paul appreciated that opportunity and the admiration that comes for doing a good job bringing people their sports, but he’s never done sports for a living. As with his Channel Four cohort, John Murphy, conversations with Paul are only about him if you force him to talk about himself. He’d rather talk about: his family, your family, you, sports, movies or 900 other topics than the job he was doing on play-by-play or the story he broke on the news that night.

I’ve been watching with great interest as people online salute my friend Paul’s career in the news business. The Bills surprised Paul with a No.4 jersey (though I cannot confirm whether or not PECK is written in marker on a Tyler Thigpen shirt). It’s great to read the compliments and well wishes for a guy who is a role model not as a reporter, but as a person. There’s nothing acidic about him. On the rare occasion during UB Football road trips when Paul spills any vitriol about anything near two potty-mouths like Scott Wilson and myself, we explode like little kids whose parents didn’t know the movie they rented for their kids had swearing.

Surely it doesn’t mean a ton what gets typed in this space, but there’s a huge part of me that wants to do what I can to ensure people like Paul Peck get their due for breaking their proverbial backs at their job. The cynic’s role is the easiest to play, so here’s to a man who takes the more difficult part. Upwards and onwards, Paul Peck. Congratulations on a great first career.

Email: nick@fcbuffalo.org