Last week, Bucky Gleason of the Buffalo News took a fresh stab at it. Unrelated to the Bills/Sabres cultural supremacy debate, there’s something about Gleason’s piece that I find a little alarming. Actually, there are a several troubling beats to Gleason’s argument.

The first is the degree to which people seem to have embraced, and accepted as standard procedure, this modus of a super wealthy guy bleeding his bankroll to give something to the community; as if this is how sports franchises should always function; as if an owner who operates a professional sports franchise in any other way is a bad owner.

The universal standard for a good sports ownership group is that there be some discernible commitment to winning. By every measure, Pegula is committed to winning to the fullest extent that the system allows. His commitment is particularly great, in comparison to his counterparts, because it comes with a tremendous financial loss. In 2010, Forbes estimates the Sabres operated at a 7.9 million dollar loss. This season, the Sabres will spend about 76mil on their players, not including bonuses for those still on their entry level contracts. Last year, player expenses totaled about 55mil. Need a calculator?

I think it’s far too cavalier of Gleason to write, “Pegula will likely lose a bundle this season…” Yes, that is very likely. In other colossal understatements: Michele Bachmann is likely to receive a fair amount of criticism in this upcoming election season and college sports are likely in need of both an economic and a legislative reconstruction of sorts. The salary the Sabres have committed to their players in the 2011-2012 season ensures beyond any doubt that they will operate at a major, major financial loss. This should not be overlooked or minimized.

No one should assume Buffalo has become a big market because the Sabres now function as if they are in one. The big markets enable their benefactors to get some kind of financial reciprocity. I suppose Pegula’s expanded payroll can be categorized as investing in the value of the franchise but, let’s be real, it’s a very poor investment. Pegula will never see returns that justify the money he’s spending now.

Pegula does not have any obligation to maintain this type of payroll other than the simple fact that he said he would. Buffalo is not entitled to a professional sports owner who spends far beyond what is reasonably consider a wise investment nor is any other demographically similar region. The key word there is entitled.

I’m not really responding to anything in particular so much as I’m trying to make sure our heads are on straight. Pegula has obviously created a lot of buzz with his words and his actions since taking over the team in February. Speaking of, does anyone else feel as though the buzz is close to reaching critical mass?

When one of the sports columnists for the Buffalo News writes something like — “In the past seven months, Buffalo transformed into a hockey town with a football team…” — I consider that to be a pretty big deal. That, to me, says Gleason is flat-out guzzling the Kool-Aid. This is the NFL after all.

Yes, the buzz surrounding the Sabres right now is incredible in its intensity. But what is the root cause of all the hype? I think most of the excitement has developed from an eagerness to see what a guy like Ehrhoff looks like in a Sabres uniform and what kind of impact Leino, for example, will have on the forwards. The conversation has not been built around the idea of the Sabres being Stanley Cup contenders.

Ask a casual fan what’s exciting about the Sabres. What’s a likely answer? They’re really going for it now; not, they’ve got a great chance of winning it all this year.

Ultimately, as always, fan response to the team will be based on the number of wins and losses; the present buzz doesn’t seem to be about that at all. The buzz is about the team adopting the managerial methodology of the big market clubs. This wouldn’t matter if it weren’t for someone trying to use the buzz as a platform on which to build a big-picture type of argument.

Gleason’s claim that hockey has replaced football as the favored professional sport in Buffalo is not contingent upon something stable like an intense expectation that the team will make progress or contend for a championship in the short term. It is, instead, based on the buzz that Pegula has created; which is to say it’s based on something that can fade in very little time; which is to say it’s not based on anything particularly substantial.

But of course what Pegula has done to create the buzz is not a short term phenomenon, right? Pegula will own the team forever and every summer he will pour millions into the pockets of players just like the Flyers and Rangers do. We expect these things now because Pegula and Black have each told us, time and time again, this is how the club will operate.

This is why, when I read Gleason’s column, it made me wonder if there’s a growing feeling of entitlement amongst the fans towards Pegula’s level of commitment.

Pegula has shown us what he’s capable of but if the Sabres truly are or will become more important to the region than the Bills, I think it is or will be because of the wins and losses. There’s a major correlation between commitment from ownership and wins/losses but they’re not interchangeable in their appreciable value. Good ownership is not a replacement for wins and titles.

If the argument is, the Bills are have-nots and appear to be making very little effort to become haves, and by virtue of this the Sabres are favored in this region, then fine; but I think that is a weak argument. The Sabres recently have been something and this is probably worth pointing out as it has certainly contributed to their current status within the community. What they are now, under Pegula, is to-be-determined. They’re unproven. They still have not returned to contender status. They still have not won a championship.

Underneath everything — the financial commitment from ownership, the buzz, the uncertainty — is this inescapable truth: the Sabres still have not won a championship. In this way, the Sabres are the same as the Bills. It is perhaps the only real remaining commonality between the two sports franchises at this point, besides their locality of course. And it is perhaps the only measurable comparable that matters.

Bucky Gleason is the one with name recognition though. He’s the feature hockey writer for that newspaper. When there’s a big story, it’s Gleason’s show. The potential change in ownership obviously qualifies as such. I want information so I chose to read Gleason’s most recent work knowing the potential was there for him to say something absurd. Fortunately, he’s been writing as a news sports reporter and not as a columnist. Now is when I say, he’s done a great job, right? I have no problem at all admitting that Gleason has done a fine job locating sources and extracting relevant information to the story as any good reporter would do. I want to make it clear though, that I’m not complimenting him based on the facts, which for me were well received. I have never been upset with a Gleason piece over negative facts. It was always the tone, topic, and poorly executed criticism Gleason seemed to spill onto the page regularly. This is just good, solid reporting. So is this.

Then last Thursday, this story came out. I was busy pontificating on Pegula to address it at the time. I kept my eye on Twitter because surely someone over on the World of Feces would be having an aneurysm. Nope, not a word. I was shocked. Now remember, this is like my third Gleason article I’ve read in a really long time. It was on the top of the front page of The News I’m told. About halfway through, Gleason says the following:

“Forbes on Wednesday valued the Sabres at $169 million, which places them 21st in the 30-team league.”

Good so far.

“However, it reported that the team’s 2009-10 operating income fell by $7.9 million from the year before.”

Wrong! That is just flat-out wrong. If you picked up a print copy of The Buffalo News on Thursday and looked on the front page you would have seen the words the team’s 2009-10 operating income fell by $7.9 million from the year before. I seriously can’t even believe it. Is this real life? Is someone playing a joke on me?

I’ll clarify.

The figure that Forbes reported and that the Buffalo News incorrectly transcribed is the Sabres having lost $7.9 million dollars in operating income. As in, the operating income is negative $7.9 million. It did not fall by $7.9 million from the year before.

In terms of operating income, the Sabres have lost money every year post-lockout except for 2006. This has a lot to do with the cost of tickets. Forbes reports the average ticket price for a home Sabres game is thirty-six dollars, tied for the lowest in the league. Ticket sales in hockey make up a bigger piece of the revenue pie than in any other major sport. Teams in other leagues benefit from the cushion of having a major league-wide television contract. The National Hockey League doesn’t have that so if teams don’t sell tickets, they get crushed.

I don’t want to get into a discussion of hockey economics and revenue sharing though because honestly I have no idea how revenue is distributed amongst the teams that qualify. The National Hockey League is very tight lipped about all these figures. I can say with certainty however that the revenue sharing data is not reflected in the Forbes rankings.

If I’m looking at the profile correctly, and I like to think I am because I have two working eyeballs, the Sabres operating income fell by 2.7 million from the year prior (last year’s Forbes profile). That drop has nothing to do with gate receipts which were nearly identical from the previous year and everything to do with the additional 3 million the franchise committed to its players.

Golisano insists on preventing income loss. Based on the fact that the Sabres shaved 500K off their player expenses budget by buying-out Tim Kennedy, the franchise must be at the threshold between profit and loss — at least the limit within the current ticket prices/structure in which the average ticket costs thirty-six dollars. They allocated 54 million of their budget to players this year. The salary cap is at 59 million. This is the reality. If ownership wants to avoid loss they can either raise ticket prices or drop player expenses.

Of course the conversation may soon change. In the meantime I can’t stand for people misinterpreting the situation the Sabres are in financially. A 7.9 million dollar drop in income! That didn’t seem fishy to anyone involved with the report? The Sabres are doing fine. Golisano isn’t trying to get out because the Sabres are on the verge of some tougher financial times. He’s getting out because a multi-billionaire is offering to give him three dump trucks worth of money for a venture that seven years prior cost him only one. It’s pretty simple.

Gleason’s mistake wasn’t purposeful but obviously it was a major oversight. I think it requires clarification and I think, unfortunately, it fits in with the reputation I’ve formed of Gleason these last couple of years.

Some actually commentary on the men who push rubber with sticks on frozen water coming up next.

The thing is, I’m a nobody. Occasionally I get an email from someone that disagrees strongly with what I’m saying or vice versa but for the most part, no one really cares. There’s no reaction on Twitter to the things I write on this space. But for people writing in the mainstream there definitely is. I imagine those journalists are pretty frightened at first with how their words are received on Twitter and assume that having a profile will only give the hecklers an outlet. On Twitter though everyone in the audience has profiles and actual content they stand for and by. Tweets are not just anonymous comments. There’s nowhere for people to hide and there’s more accountability that you’d think. The people that use Twitter enjoy connecting with others and they wouldn’t risk losing the respect of their followers just to let off steam on a boneheaded journalist. The haters are sporadic at best and those that exist have no audience. So there’s no reason to fear their presence plus there’s a simple way to cut them out of your life on Twitter: block those mother f’ers. Block them all to hell.

I bring all this up because the infamous Bucky Gleason, sports columnist for The Buffalo News, just registered an account on Twitter. I’ve had my opinionated differences with Gleason in the past mostly because he’s become totally ignorant to the fan’s relationship with the teams they support. He antagonizes his audience and that seriously damaged my professional opinion of him. Every now and then I check the replay of Bucky’s live-chats and I’m shocked at how badly he gets beat up in that place. People are rude and offensive and those are just the comments Gleason chooses publish. I can’t imagine how brutal the comments he ignores must be. I bet the News’ sports department has been flooded with mail the last couple years pleading for less Gleason. And honestly, that’s how it has been this season. Gleason barely writes about the Sabres anymore. He publishes his weekly current events column of the National Hockey League and then the occasional interview-based story. It’s too bad he doesn’t get to talk about the Sabres as much as he once could because he usually has a strong, sensible take on where the Sabres stand. He’s just burned his readership so many times no one wants to hear it anymore. So how does he fix that?

Well, building a strong Twitter audience might be a nice start. Part of the reason people like Mike Harrington, another sports writer for the News, so much is that he offers honest, off-the-cuff reactions to the sports teams he covers on his Twitter account. He responds to his reader’s questions. I guarantee he spends less than fifteen minutes a day on Twitter too. All Bucky has to do is say some interesting things on topics people care about and then respond to the polite, reasonable people that listen. It doesn’t take much. Show that you can have a sense of humor and that you’re capable to loosening the tie a bit.

Gleason has an important position in this town. He’s the lead hockey columnist for the only mainstream newspaper that covers the Buffalo Sabres. He has a larger forum to reach Sabres fans than perhaps anyone else in the media. We want to be able to like him but he’s got to meet us half way. It’s nice to see him embrace something new to bridge the gap. We’ll see how it goes.

The thing is, no one has a bigger audience as a hockey commentator – print, radio, television, or otherwise – in Western New York than Bucky Gleason. I feel ridiculous asking this, but has he forgotten who his readership consists of? Why, as a columnist for the Buffalo News, would you want to provoke Buffalo sports fans? I don’t understand. I’m sure he’s working through the mountains of hate mail he’s surely accumulated over the past couple days. If you haven’t read this article yet, don’t.

Here’s the problem: He doesn’t seem to have a good perspective on the thoughts of Buffalo sports fans. He’s a columnist and obviously is paid to share his opinions. That’s fine; I’m a reader of the Buffalo News and a Sabres fan and I share my opinions in this space. Right now my opinion is that lately he’s not been very good at his job.

I don’t really want to get into the Buffalo Bills and the relationship they have with their fans, but the idea that someone in my hometown paper calling the fans of my beloved hockey team soft is both insulting and just plain ignorant.

I’m not quite sure how Bucky Gleason can say something like, “Buffalo fans have lowered their standards and settled for mediocrity,” based on season ticket renewal rate (80 percent). Every Sabres fan I’ve spoken with is upset over the current standing of the team. People want change. No one wants to go into next year’s season with the same group of people. Season ticket renewal rate has more to do with Sabres fan’s dedication to their team than their willingness to accept status quo.

I’ve used this comparison before, but hockey to Buffalo is like what basketball is to New York. It’s essential. The passion people in Buffalo have for hockey and the Sabres has always been strong (and could be growing but the truth is I’m not old enough to be able to suggest that). If you want to get technical though, comparing the fan attendance before and after the Arena was opened is, in my opinion, like comparing apples and oranges. The Aud was a dump and the Arena is a state of the art facility. Let’s face it, hockey games at the Arena have to be considered some of the best nighttime entertainment the area has to offer and that makes a difference. The Sabres have and always will sell out the Arena so long as management produces a decent team with marketable stars.

The exception was during the 2001-2004 stretch after Hasek was traded and the owner ran into legal troubles. The Sabres were financially handcuffed and as a result could no longer fully commit to winning. That period in the Sabres history can’t really be compared to any other era. That’s why I just laugh when people try and use the stat of Ruff and Regier missing the playoffs five of the last seven years to justify their firing. In my opinion, you can’t include those years on either Ruff or Regier’s resume when ownership (or in that case lack-there-of) was failing to give them the resources to succeed. Fans recognized that and although attendance suffered badly, we remained faithful to both Ruff and Regier because they already proved to be great at their jobs.

As for the fan attendance prior to the Ruff/Regier era, consider that the Sabres hadn’t reached the conference finals since 1979-1980 and finished better than 3^rd in the division only five times during that same span (an 18 year period) before those two took over. That’s pathetic. It’s no wonder that attendence was sporadic. Those teams in the ‘80s and early ‘90s collectively stunk. Why would people want to pay to sit in a crummy building and watch a bad team with management that had proven to be inept at producing a winner?

But it is true that in this era, Sabres fans have more faith in their team than ever before. Fans have faith in Lindy Ruff’s ability to motivate and teach. Fans have faith in Darcy Regier’s ability to evaluate talent. Fans have faith in Ryan Miller and the honest players on this team.

The people of Buffalo seem to recognize that they have a better shot than ever before to be witness to a Stanley Cup winner. This is a new age and the Sabres have proven to consistently be a organization where talent emerges and success can be had. The Sabres have a couple things going for them aside from Ruff and Regier: The current Arena providing a terrific fan experience, the influx of youth leagues within the area raising the importance of the Sabres within the community, and the progress of the technology and the Internet helping to build a stronger more stable fan base.

Above it all is the fact that the people of Buffalo love hockey. Just wait until the television ratings for the playoffs become public. Buffalo is always one of the strongest markets in the country despite its smaller size. Is it that hard to see how the Sabres managed to get an 80 percent season ticket renewal rate? From my vantage point, it’s not that hard to understand. This management team hasn’t yet proved to be incompetent at building a winner. As it stands right now they’re only two seasons removed from the President Trophy and a trip to the Eastern Conference finals. Maybe if this were a town like Tampa Bay or Raleigh, the Arena would be empty. But this is Buffalo and I’m proud of the fact that this isn’t a community of bandwagon hockey fans. Things don’t always work out as managers and owners expect them to work out in sports. Mistakes have been made, fans know it and we’re upset about it, but there’s still plenty of reason to hope. And when it comes to season ticket renewal time in Buffalo, that’s all we need.