craig crowley

hockey players sure do say obviously a lot.

[craig crowley @cnjcrowley]

@TheSeriesFeed They are just a glorified crew anyway lol

[craig crowley @cnjcrowley]

@DumpThePucks @DuaneS39 As a Sabres fan I really hope you’re right. He’s easy to root for. I was bummed it didn’t work out here

[craig crowley @cnjcrowley]

@BillsMafiATL New scheme new coach and they can’t be worlds better by week four ludicrous!

[craig crowley @cnjcrowley]

@BostonCream I’ve endured the drought. The last several years has been fun. I’m fine with the results. You patriot people have had it too easy for too long. Now you are like us. Hope for the best.

[craig crowley @cnjcrowley]

@letstalkksports No

[💛🖤 KINNICK NORTH🖤💛 @KinnickNorth23]

In A'ja's defense, these players are still getting used to having fans in the stands. 😂😂😂

[craig crowley @cnjcrowley]

@Whiteboardpoets Sinestro looks awesome

[craig crowley @cnjcrowley]

@DianeFranklin80 Strange things afoot

[Cinema Tweets @CinemaTweets1]

This scene with Anthony Hopkins as Odin in Thor might be the best 2-3 minutes of acting in the entire MCU. Hopkins was so over-qualified for this role - a man who started his care standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Peter O’Toole & Katharine Hepburn in The Lion in Winter. But in his limited time as Odin, Hopkins made an impression on me.

[Jordan Jones @jordnjnes]

#Lanterns

[SPOILERS]

John discovering Hal intervened in his mission by will and inadvertently caused his dysfunctional family dynamic, to now having to compete for the ring, is GOOD ASS DRAMA.

[For Your Consideration @FYC_Oscar]

Tengo la sensación de que la faceta como actriz de Dolly Parton nunca fue reconocida. Bien porque no tuvo los mejores roles bien porque su imagen y leyenda estuvo por encima. Pero en cualquier caso era una actriz formidable y para muestra #SteelMagnolias

[craig crowley @cnjcrowley]

@prmade313raised Everyone in that league does it. It’s infuriating.

[craig crowley @cnjcrowley]

@NateGearySports Garlic parm at porters is incredible

[George Jarjour @GeorgeOnTap]

The Buffalo Bills built a $2.2 billion stadium, promised fans that every seat would be a great seat, and just opened it with a glass railing that obstructs the field from the first 5 to 10 rows of the entire upper deck. That's thousands of seats. And here's the part that turns this from a design flaw into a real story: fans helped pay for it.

The numbers first. New Highmark cost about $2.2 billion, making it one of the five most expensive stadiums ever built. Of that, roughly $850 million came from public money, New York State and Erie County, the largest taxpayer contribution to an NFL stadium in league history. The state actually owns the building. Fans then paid again on the way in: 54,000 personal seat licenses, from $1,000 up to $50,000 apiece, just for the right to then buy season tickets. A 300-level season ticket runs around $5,500.

So a fan in the upper deck potentially paid a five-figure PSL, plus thousands in tickets, on top of the tax dollars already spent, and walks up to a glass safety railing cutting straight across the field.

Now the promise. Ownership sold this building on one line: every seat is a good seat. That was the pitch to fans and the justification to taxpayers for the largest public subsidy in NFL history. The stacked, steep seating bowl was supposed to be the whole point, sightlines from everywhere. Opening weekend, fans found obstructed views, a "worst seat in the house" so blocked that a reporter noted it may never go on sale for actual games, jumbotrons smaller than a high school's, no bathrooms at the top of a brutal climb, and a railing that clips the field from every section of the upper deck.

Here's the mechanism worth understanding, because it's the actual story under every new stadium. The public gets sold a stadium on emotional terms: civic pride, keeping the team, every seat a great seat. The team captures the upside: PSLs, premium suites, sponsorships, and a state-owned building it doesn't have to maintain the way an owner normally would. And the fan absorbs the gap between the promise and the product, because by the time you're standing at that railing, you've already paid the PSL, the tickets, and the taxes. The transaction is complete. The leverage is gone.

That's why these details "slip through." A glass railing across the upper deck is not a subtle mistake. Populous designs the best stadiums in the world; they know exactly where a safety rail lands in a sightline. It shipped anyway, because the incentive to get it perfect evaporated the moment the PSLs sold out, which they did, in full, before a single fan sat down. The building was paid for before it was proven.

The lesson is the one every stadium deal teaches and every city forgets. When someone collects the money up front and delivers the product later, the product is only ever as good as it had to be to collect. The Bills got $850 million in public money and 54,000 sold PSLs on the promise of a perfect seat. They delivered a railing across the upper deck. Not because they couldn't do better. Because they'd already been paid to.

Every seat is a great seat, until you're in row 6 looking through a fence you helped fund twice.

[craig crowley @cnjcrowley]

@HawkEmDownChris Benoit hogue

[craig crowley @cnjcrowley]

@danfetes @BuffaloPlus And …. We are back

[craig crowley @cnjcrowley]

@Sabremetrix I gotta go with porters

[Ben Dover 🫂 @PoesLip]

@11NON6

[craig crowley @cnjcrowley]

@TheeBrotherBill I can’t wait to see what happens to these seats in four years

[craig crowley @cnjcrowley]

@HawkEmDownChris Joe Ferguson