Buffalo Ills

I became a Bills fan through a series of unfortunate childhood events. My father is from Hungary so he doesn't really understand or care about most American sports. For instance, he tried to convince me that it would be cool to learn how to fence. As in swordplay, not turning stolen goods into cash (which might actually be cool, in a Vito Corleone type of way). I managed to convince him that tennis lessons were a better idea.

As a result, I didn't watch sports much until I was about 9, when my mother met my stepfather, who grew up outside of Rochester. And although my stepfather is a kind and decent man, he and his family committed an atrocious sports crime upon me: they turned me into a Bills fan.

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We flew to Buffalo for my stepgrandparents' 50th wedding anniversary in February of 1991. The airport stores had "Buffalo Bills Super Bowl XXV Champions" t-shirts for sale. It was like being kicked in the groin right after recovering from being kicked in the groin. In retrospect I should have bought a shirt but I was an irrationally bitter 16-year-old at the time and my only thought was to burn them all.

Thus I have fond memories of time spent in Buffalo.

As previously noted in this space, times are tough in the Rough Buff. Fortunately though, SUNY Buffalo is hiring -- check out these two jobs.

Although these employment opportunities good for the Queen City, they're bad news for fans of UB football. It seems highly unlikely that top-flight D-I football coaches get their jobs through Monster.com. I suspect that instead they hire the best representatives in the business and rely on connections.

Luckily I'm around to help. Here's my list of top candidates to fill these vacancies:

Alex Van Pelt

AVP knows his way around the Rough Buff after rocking a #10 Bills jersey for 9 years, and serving as Buffalo's offensive coordinator in 2009. Of course, the Bills scored the third-fewest points of any team in the league in 2009, but beggars can't be choosers and schools that advertise OC jobs on the internet sound like beggars to me. AVP's career game log is the stuff of legends; clearly he'll be great at consoling QB's after they have lousy games.



Turk Schonert



Turk Schonert is the guy Dick Jauron fired and replaced with Van Pelt just before the start of the 2009 season. Schonert is doubtlessly used to disappointment and thus should fit right in at UB.

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Mike Mamula

Turns out Mike Mamula is from the Buffalo area. Apparently he scored a 49 on his Wonderlic test. I administered a few Wonderlic tests in college and no one received a 49 out of 50 -- but I think the scoring criteria were different. At any rate, Mamula is famous for moving up in the draft based on his combine performance, and this has to be a decent recruiting tool: "You won't win many games, but you'll score very highly on the Presidential Physical Fitness Exam." And he'll get you free tickets to the water park.



Wolf Blitzer

I tried to find a famous UB alumnus but they don't appear to have any. Wolf Blitzer is the best I could come up with. I guess that guy Starks who plays running back for Green Bay might be famous but he already has a football job. Wolf Blitzer sounds like a good name for a defensive coordinator so it's too bad that UB is looking for an OC. Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed went to UB too. He's Somalia's Prime Minister, which means he's likely used to coordinating offensive stuff. I doubt he'd take the job though.



Charles Mingus

The link in the Blitzer capsule says that Charles Migus was a UB prof. I did not know that. But I also thought Maceo Parker was dead until he took a couple solos at that Prince concert a few weeks ago, so I'm not too up on my elderly jazz men. Fortunately Maceo is alive and I got to yell "Maceo what goes on Maceo what goes on!!" and thereby confuse the hell out of the middle-aged people in the luxury box. Unfortunately, Mingus is dead. But now I have an excuse to post my favorite DJ Premiere sample of all time:



Snow

Laugh if you want. Snow is from Toronto, so he's willing to live in a depressed frosty town like Buffalo; it's practically his home already. And who wouldn't want to hire a 42-year-old white Juno-Award winning Canadian dancehall reggae star to fire up the players and fans. C'mon, tell me this wouldn't make you run through a wall of would-be tacklers:



I know rob loves this hire.

Kris DeBlasio

A number of our editors, the editors over at our sister blog The Wheelhouse, and our readers think they know a lot about college football. More than anyone else, in fact. But they're wrong. Kris "Willy Lump Lump" DeBlasio knows more about football in general, and college football in particular, than anyone I know. He spent the past 10+ years breaking down and reassembling game and practice film for Lou Holtz and Steve Spurrier. He knows hoops too, as he was a film guy for Tubby Smith and Dave Odom. He also has a couple of great stories about going to noodie bars with famous athletes, so he knows lots about naked ladies, Cristal, and making it rain. And he briefly had his own AM call-in sports talk show, to which I called in once, asserted "first-time-long-time" status as "The King" from Teaneck, told him and his cronies that they were morons for ignoring Mariano Rivera in whatever conversation they were having, and then flubbed the rest of my call. Thus Kris knows how a quality D-I sports program should be run. This is the smart hire. UB likely won't make it.