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I didn't get up Sunday morning until about 8:45, which for me these days is really sleeping in. Early ice times and a different lifestyle make that so. Straggle downstairs, coffee already made, grab the newspaper and head for the living room.
Love Smith? That's what the cover of the sports section looks like.
Ugh.
Fortunately I didn't waste 5 minutes reading something that only would've bummed me out. I reached for my phone and there it was in beautiful WGR text form.
Doug Marrone.
And the NHL lockout is over, by the way. That was the other message from the station, but that's another column for another day.
The Bills didn't land a revolutionary like Chip Kelly. When it was looking Friday night as though that dream was dying my fear was that the Bills would fall back to their safe comfort zone and hire some dude who had just been fired on Monday. Experience and Pittsburgh connections and blah blah blah.
At Syracuse, Marrone won 15 more games over his four years than SU won the previous four. That is a turning something around. No they were not a national power and in fact that 15 game improvement still only gets Marrone to .500 for his time with the Orange.
Still, Syracuse football was a joke. The brand had been badly tarnished. Sound familiar, Bills fans?
So while Marrone doesn't bring the reputation for innovation Kelly so richly deserves, he does bring having orchestrated a revival, which the Bills are sorely in need of.
Despite all the words from Russ Brandon on Tuesday I was still expecting that they went out to Arizona to hire Ken Whisenhunt and were just doing their due diligence talking to everyone else. Years of watching the Bills operate can beat you down, lead you to erroneous end games.
On Tuesday Russ Brandon talked a different game. Sunday morning, he backed it up.
Hey guy who hates everything, find something new to say. This is not the Same old Bills.
And by the way, the NHL lockout is over. And Derek Roy doesn't play for the Sabres.