Byzantium's Shores: chronicling the misadventures of an overalls-clad hippie

Buffalo's NHL team, the Sabres, fell into serious trouble when their previous owner, John Rigas, fell into serious legal trouble of his own when his company, Adelphia, went bankrupt after one of those accounting-scandals of a year ago. Adelphia was once to be Buffalo's corporate savior, not just of the Sabres but of the city as a whole: there was going to be a big office tower built in downtown Buffalo to house the Adelphia corporate HQ, a construction project that was shrunk from forty stories to twelve and then canceled altogether. (The most recent developments have Adelphia jilting Buffalo altogether, in favor of moving to Denver.)

The Sabres were taken over by the NHL itself as a new buyer was sought; a guy named Mark Hamister was the front-runner but he wanted the city and state to pony up money for improvements to HSBC Arena, where the Sabres play. (This would have been mostly for parking, since the Arena is less than ten years old itself.) The city and state balked, and it looked as if potential owners from outside the Buffalo area -- who would likely have moved the team -- were going to be allowed to make offers.

However, in the last couple of days a deal for the Sabres' ownership was finally put together with B. Thomas Golisano, a billionaire from Rochester, NY whose main claim to fame is his quadrennial independent run for Governor of New York State. He has pledged to keep the Sabres in Buffalo, and he provides the franchise with financial footing that it hasn't enjoyed in a long time. I haven't followed the whole thing much, so I'm not sure why Golisano wasn't the front-runner in the first place. I'm also annoyed that Buffalo, through mismanagement, put itself in a position of having to keep the Sabres there -- because Buffalo owns and runs HSBC Arena, an expensive facility that would almost certainly have failed without the NHL team's presence on its calendar. For some reason, the Arena doesn't host nearly enough events. I find myself wondering why Buffalo, with this beautiful arena (and it is a fine facility), can't put together a bid to host, say, the NCAA Final Four, or perhaps the Figure Skating National Championships (or maybe even the World's). Part of Buffalo's problem is that they just seem too ready to settle for small, as opposed to thinking BIG once in a while.