Vinny Testaverde signs with the Carolina Panthers, Alex Rodriguez will likely opt out after Yankees fail again, Michael Vick owes Falcon 20 Million, Curt Schilling to start game 2 for Boston, Marion Jones admits steroid use - Those are the headlines around the sports world, but you need to scroll all the way down the ESPN webpage to realize that the 2007-2008 Hockey season has begun. More and more we see that the NHL is falling out of favor with American fans. All we care about lately is the MLB Playoffs, Week 5 in the NFL, and exhibition games starting in the NBA.The NHL has many storylines in this season so far, but nobody cares! In fact, The New York Islanders had a huge upset over the heavily favored Buffalo Sabres. But what were the headlines in the respected cities? Yankees Lose ALDS Again, and Buffalo Gets Beat at The Last Second on Monday Night Football… nothing about hockey!
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October 13th, 2007 at 7:28 am
I like your blog a lot. It’s timely, attractive and well written.
About the Buffalo media’s apparently relegating the Sabres/Islanders home-and-home to the back burner, this may have had just a *little* something to do with the circumstances of the Bills game and its over-the-top outcome. The MNF matchup was not just another game for long-suffering Bills fans; it was a Super Bowl in all but name and actual significance, the first appearance for the franchise in the Monday night national showcase in almost a decade and a half and one that featured the return of Wade Phillips to Orchard Park. But more than that, the visitors were *the Dallas Cowboys,* perennial NFL royalty and this season playing like it. And oh yeah, this was the team responsible for the last two of the Bills’ four consecutive failures to bring home the Lombardi Trophy.
But beyond the setup, how ’bout that game? Two interceptions and a kickoff returned for Buffalo touchdowns? A pass for a potentially game-tying, last-minute two-point conversion knocked away from none other than T.O.? An onside kick recovered–how often does *that* happen? A rookie placekicker making two–count ‘em, *TWO*–53-yard field goals on consecutive plays; even if only one of them counted as time expired, just the final of the 9 points scored in the last 20 seconds to give the ‘Boys the win by *one* friggin’ point.
In my Literature of Sports class here, I assign a football short story titled “56-0″ that ends in a similar melodramatic, ironic fashion, but no hack writer of fiction could have concocted anything like what happened at Ralph Wilson on Monday. This and the fact that it was a particularly spectacular example of the Fates sticking it to Western N.Y. sports fans once again (the Sabres themselves last season fell on their faces when the smart money was on them to bring the Cup to the Niagara Frontier) I think pretty well explains why it drove everything else off the front pages.