I don’t want to sound like the old groggy man, but when I was a kid in the 90’s the Sabres had a really hard time selling out the building and they were still good. You could make the case that the late 90’s Sabres teams were more successful than the 2-year run they had in 05-07. The biggest difference was the building didn’t come close to selling out then, like it does now.
Heck, Rigas gave away tickets during the late 90’s. The Bills on the other hand had a ton of blackouts during their superbowl run, hell the comeback game wasn’t even seen on TV. And what about when the team was worse. I can remember in 1997; the Bills, lead by Todd Collins had only 44,300 and 47,000 people for their last two home games of the year. The reason being the team sucked.
Now things have changed, are you going to tell me the fans from 13 years ago were douche bags (pardon my French) and today’s fans are loyal? That’s the point sully and Bucky have always brought up, how during the 90’s and 80’s, fans would stop going to games if the teams sucked.
The reason fans flock to games now isn’t because there love is stronger, it’s because the sports scene in Buffalo represents the big time. The city has changed over the last 13 years, and not for the better. It’s getting smaller and smaller, while the sports scene gets bigger and bigger. Golisano and Quinn are business men, hence the reason they didn’t pay for Drury and Briere because they thought even if the Sabres tanked, the fans would keep coming. They won’t say that, but I didn’t have to goto college to figure it out.
I agree that Sully and Bucky sound condescending when it comes to talking down to the fans. But you just can’t fault their logic on the scene. They are paid to be critics of the team, not fans.
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