Buffalo Rising Online

Mar 29th 2007, 1:50pm By Dave Staba

This was a great week if you like arbitrary rankings of things that are in actuality impossible to compare, based on made-up mathematical formulas -- particularly if you enjoy it when those arbitrary rankings place Buffalo at the top of the list.

As noted on the front page of Tuesday’s Buffalo News, a scoring system devised by ESPN The Magazine ranked the Buffalo Sabres as the No. 1 franchise in major league sports in terms of value provided to their fans.

It's all good in the Land of Wings: Season ticket sales have rocketed from 5,800 to 14,815 since the 2002-03 season, while local TV ratings have tripled. In February the seven best-selling jerseys at NHL.com belonged to Sidney Crosby and six Sabres, part of a jump of more than 1,000 percent in sales of Sabres swag over the past year. The team is now worth $149 million, and after losing $46 million over the first half of the decade, it turned close to almost a $4.6 million profit in 2005-06, according to Forbes.

The news-as-created-by-ESPN wasn’t as good for the Bills, though, who came in 56th of the 122 professional football, baseball, basketball and hockey franchises involved. On the plus side, that placed Buffalo well ahead of the Miami Dolphins (73rd), New York Jets (79th) and Dallas Cowboys (82nd)

And a separate, though equally arbitrary, formula contrived by someone else at ESPN proclaimed the Bills as ESPN.com Page 2’s “Official Team of Pain and Suffering.”

David Schoenfield, who wrote the piece, certainly knows his dark moments in Buffalo’s sports history. In addition to the obligatory references to Scott Norwood and a certain quartet of unfortunate National Football League championship games, he also invokes Harvey Johnson (who compiled a 2-23-1 record in two separate stints as coach) and Vince Ferragamo (who narrowly edges Gary Marangi as the worst quarterback in franchise history, if only because the Bills decided to make him their quarterback on purpose, rather than due to an injury).

When it came to the Sabres, though, who ranked No. 34 on the heartbreak scale, the author couldn’t resist plunging a dagger:

If you're ever in Buffalo, say at a Sabres game, we advise you not to wear a Brett Hull jersey.

At least the Sabres fared well in another largely importance-free set of pecking orders – the weekly international power rankings, which at least compare hockey teams to hockey teams.

Scott Wraight of Sports Illustrated put Buffalo at the top of his final list of the regular season, citing consistency through the long season:

What has amazed me about this team from Day 1 is its ability to stay on track despite injuries. Coach Lindy Ruff has pushed the right buttons this season more times than not.

Robert Picarello of FOXSports.com also kept Buffalo at No. 1, citing a trend that’s especially promising as the playoffs loom:

Specialty teams played a huge roll in Buffalo's wins last week, as the club went 4-for-9 on the power play and only allowed the opposition to score one power play goal in seven chances.

The same goes for Sportsline’s Wes Goldstein, who notes the contribution of one of the many reinforcements to arrive from Rochester for the season’s final weeks:

Coach Lindy Ruff says Buffalo has gotten too fancy with the puck lately and wants more shots, but he has no complaints about rookie Drew Stafford, who has 10 goals and six assists in 17 games since his February recall from the minors.

Goldstein also teams up with Erin Brown to guess at who will end up with the final Eastern Conference playoff spots.

As Buffalo was all but ending New Jersey’s hopes of stealing the No. 1 seed in the Eastern Conference on Wednesday, former Sabres goalie Martin Biron did his part to prevent a rematch of last year’s Conference Finals, making 23 saves as his new team, Philadelphia, stomped Carolina, 5-1.

Buffalo remained in third place in the weirdest of the weekly rankings, trailing Ottawa and Anaheim. You can certainly make a case for the Senators as No. 1, especially if you live in Canada, but New Jersey at No. 17? Really?

(Drew Stafford photo by Mark Dellas of Traffic East.)