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Buffalo wins big with lackluster attendance at preseason game
Scalpers were having trouble selling tickets at half price and most of the people who filled the Rogers Centre were imports from Buffalo and Pittsburgh. They'll fill it up when the Bills and the Dolphins play a regular season game there in December but most of the fans will be imported from New York.
The Bills are getting $9.7 million a game from the event organizers and Buffalo fans are afraid that Toronto is going to steal their football team.
They should be a lot happier about the empty seats than the empty win. Step one in the potential move to The Great White North was a dismal failure.
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A local columnist shook things up when he referred to Smith's habit of making big hits on wide receivers during non-contact drills as "thuggery." Mike Tomlin came to Smith's defense and so did many of his teammates.
Why is it that guys like Smith, are considered tough, anyway?
Who's tougher, the 190-pound wide receiver who's willing to go over the middle and concentrate on the ball, or the 215-pound safety who waits until the receiver is airborne and then tries to separate his head from his body?
Who's tougher, the 265-pound defensive end who gets a running start on his way to driving his helmet into the small of a quarterback's back, or the 220-pound quarterback who knows he's coming and stands in the pocket and waits for his receiver to come open?
A defensive back shows his toughness when he takes on a runaway 250-pound running back in the open field and makes a tackle. Let me know the next time you see Smith do that.
n Steelers safety Ryan Clark raised the issue of race when he asked if the columnist would have accused a white player of being a thug.
A Google search using the words Bertuzzi and thug will get you 10,700 hits. Try Chris Simon and thug and you'll get 547,000. In case you didn't know, Todd Bertuzzi and Simon are white hockey players.
Okay, so Simon is Canadian Aboriginal but you get my point.
n It was smiles all around when local politicians and the Penguins broke ground for Pittsburgh's new arena on Thursday. But Pennsylvania taxpayers should be asking why Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl, Allegheny County Chief Executive Dan Onorato and Gov. Ed Rendell didn't do what so many other city, county and state elected officials did and get behind the Isle of Capris plan.
That plan would have saved the taxpayers $290 million and prevented the fiasco on the North Shore that was created when the state gaming board awarded the slots license to Don Barden.
n I wonder how Evgeni Malkin and Sergei Gonchar feel about Russia invading Georgia.
n You know that sports fans have gone over the edge and maybe even forfeited the right to call themselves humans when you hear about the abuse that Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers has been taking from Packers fans since Brett Favre left.
Rodgers told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, "The things I can't understand, the things I really take personally, is when I'm driving up to the parking lot gate and punching in my punch code and somebody says (expletive) to me. That kind of bothers me. Or when a little kid is yelling swear words at me. That kind of gets to me."
Little kids?
If there are little kids hanging out near the Packers facility, doesn't that mean their parents are there, too? The stupidity that it requires for someone to abuse a guy for doing the job that he was brought in to do and blaming him because somebody else decided he wanted to play somewhere else is breathtaking. The fact that there are parents who would let their kids do it is terrifying.
n If we have another Cold War, will Russian players in the NHL be viewed any differently? Will they have to defect?
n I know it's early but Rashard Mendenhall, who was the Steelers No. 1 pick in the draft and banked a multi-million dollar signing bonus, hasn't come close to being as impressive as Willie Parker was in his rookie season.
Parker, who signed as a free agent and received a bonus that barely paid his way to Pittsburgh, was the Steelers' leading rusher in the 2004 preseason.
Mendenhall, so far, reminds me a lot of Tim Worley without the fumbles. It's only been two games, but I'm still waiting for him to make somebody miss. Backs who are drafted in the first round shouldn't go two games without at least one jaw-dropping run.
John Steigerwald hosts a nightly radio show on KDKA-AM and writes a Sunday column for the Observer-Reporter.
