Bills Owner Ralph Wilson passes away, Jim Kelly's cancer returns...

[Draco]

Ralph Wilson lived to to be 95, and did a lot of great things, but hearing news of his death still bums me out.

 

On top of that, Jim Kelly isn't doing well. His cancer returned, and his wife Jill said today that it has become more aggressive, and is spreading. He is scheduled to have another surgery on Thursday.

 

The Bills Mafia sure would like your positive thoughts and prayers (if you're so inclined).

[treeduck]

Not a good day for the Bills.

 

RIP

[laughedatbytime]

Thoughts and prayers with the families of Wilson and Kelly. Ralph lived a good, full, fulfilling life and was a wonderful pioneer in the game we love. The fear I have is that he's who kept the team in Buffalo, where it belongs. I hope they never move.

 

 

The news on Kelly is heartbreaking. I hated the team during the 90s but this transcends that. He has suffered much, with his 8 year old son taken far too soon. I still cry when I think about his HOF speech.

 

F*** cancer.

[PhilCastro]

Awful news for us Bills fans. What a difficult series of events..

[laughedatbytime]

http://www.sportingnews.com/nfl/story/2014-03-24/jim-kelly-cancer-returns-spreading-surgery-oral-cancer-jaw-removed-teeth-buffalo-bills?eadid=SOC/Twi/SNMain

 

Damn...

[laughedatbytime]

Here's an update...

 

Former Buffalo Bills quarterback Jim Kelly, who left the hospital Friday for the weekend, said he and his family are "praying for a miracle" as he prepares to undergo chemotherapy and radiation treatments for oral cancer.

 

Kelly, who had been at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City since last month, attended Friday night's New York Knicks game at Madison Square Garden and told the MSG Network that "I probably shouldn't even be here" but wanted to surprise his daughter, Erin, for making the dean's list.

 

When asked how he was feeling, Kelly told MSG "sometimes good; sometimes bad" and later told ESPNNewYork.com's Ohm Youngmisuk that "I am getting better."

 

The Hall of Fame quarterback will begin chemotherapy next week at Lenox Hill, and will have daily radiation treatments at North Shore-LIJ Cancer Institute on Long Island. The chemotherapy will be repeated as an outpatient in three weeks and six weeks.

 

"My big battle is Monday when I go in to start my radiation and chemo," Kelly told MSG. "I hope when it's all over they get everything, but right now we're praying for a miracle."

 

Doctors will wait two to three months following Kelly's chemotherapy and radiation treatments to determine if he needs surgery.

 

"Kelly's condition remains very treatable and potentially curable," Dr. Peter Costantino, executive director of Lenox Hill's New York Head & Neck Institute, said in a statement Tuesday. "Even if chemotherapy and radiation are not successful in eradicating the cancer, his skull-base tumor remains operable."

 

Kelly, who was diagnosed with a recurrence of cancer in his maxillary sinus and adjacent tissues last month, was appreciative of the support he has received.

 

"It's a humbling experience and it makes you feel good when so many people are out there praying for you," Kelly told ESPNNewYork.com. "... Even people that were my enemies before from other teams have rallied to my support. It just makes you feel good deep down in your heart.

 

"Just keep praying for me. I am going to need them."

 

http://espn.go.com/nfl/story/_/id/10730053/former-buffalo-bills-quarterback-jim-kelly-of-hospital-prior-chemotherapy-treatments-oral-cancer

[laughedatbytime]

Tough but touching read. Not really a Peter King fan but this is well done

 

NEW YORK — On a high floor of Lenox Hill Hospital Saturday afternoon, Jim Kelly, 54, lay propped up in a hospital bed, his head back, hair matted and tousled, a round of pain meds and antibiotics coursing through his veins. He looked tired. His daughter Erin, a freshman at Liberty University, held his hand as he ticked off what life has been like for him lately. Four Kelly brothers and father Joe ringed the room, along with younger daughter Camryn (pictured atop this story), and his wife, Jill, followed his every word from the foot of the bed.

 

“There is no way I’d be here without my faith,” Jim Kelly said. “It’s been such a roller coaster. So many things. The Super Bowl losses, the fabulous career, my son born sick, making the Hall of Fame, my son dying, two plates and 10 screws in my back after major surgery, one plate and six screws in my neck after another surgery, a double hernia, the cancer, surgery on my jaw, the cancer coming back, now what I’m facing. But …”

 

He looked at Erin.

 

“When you’re going through pain, you’re what?” he said.

 

Not even a millisecond elapsed.

 

“Kelly tough,” said the eldest daughter of Jim Kelly.

 

* * *

 

The story of Jim Kelly’s second, and more serious, fight against cancer is a complicated one. But toughness is a part of it, for better and worse. As is humor. Last June, doctors removed part of his cancerous upper jaw, made a prosthesis of six fake teeth and bone, and fastened it into the hole left by the surgery. They grafted a rectangle of skin from his upper left leg to replace the skin that was lost on the roof of his mouth. The prosthesis works like a giant retainer; Kelly can remove it, and he looks like an old man without his front teeth when it’s out.

 

“Have you met JK Swag?” Jill said Saturday afternoon. “After surgery, Jim said, ‘I will never pull this out.’ He didn’t want us to see him like that. Jim, introduce JK Swag.”

 

With that, Jim took the device out of his mouth and began talking like an unintelligible old geezer and scowling, and the room roared. Then he put his teeth back in.

 

“Sometimes,” Erin said, “we understand JK Swag better than JK.”

 

“The normal person wouldn’t have been able to take it,” Jim Kelly says. “Some days, I don’t know how I did. I’d look up to the Lord and say, ‘I give. Uncle. You got me.’ ”

The family will need those moments in the coming weeks. Today, provided a slight fever is under control by this morning, Kelly begins a regimen of treatment—chemotherapy Monday and Tuesday, radiation Wednesday, Thursday and Friday—designed to stop the cancer that is dangerously close to the carotid artery in his head. It’s too perilous to operate now, even if the cancer that has spread up his infraorbital nerve can be neutralized, because there’s no guarantee all of it can be found and removed. If doctors operated and all the cancer wasn’t eradicated, weeks could go by before chemo or radiation could begin while he recovers from surgery, and that crucial time could allow the cancer to spread into his brain unabated. So for now, it’s several weeks of aggressive chemo and radiation. Kelly’s New York oncologist, Dr. Peter Costantino, called Kelly’s condition “very treatable and potentially curable” last week.

 

“If he’s saying it,” Kelly said, “I hope so. I just know there’s a lot of work to do, to shrink the cancer. I just pray it works. If you hear I’m about to have surgery, then you know it’s working. That’s the goal. But it won’t be an easy operation.”

 

It’s a complex cancer. There’s not a big tumor in his head, but rather countless microscopic ones. That’s probably a major reason why the cancer was tough to diagnose when it returned. Kelly was having headaches—“massive headaches and migraines”—and doctors thought it might stem from problems with the teeth that remained after the jaw surgery last June. He had six root canals on the left side of his mouth in the months after the surgery. But still the pain, the headaches, remained. “The pain became a blessing,” said Jill Kelly. Without the pain, doctors might not have been as aggressive in searching for the pain’s root cause. And because Kelly has a long history of clamming up about his pain, doctors took notice when he said his head was really hurting him.

 

After a while this winter, Jim Kelly knew there was something amiss. And further scans this month showed the little spots of cancer, many of them riding up the nerve leading to his brain.

 

“I guarantee the normal person wouldn’t have been able to take it,” he said. “Some days, I don’t know how I did. I complained about my headaches for months, and for a while I thought it was just part of the healing process from such a serious surgery. But obviously it was more than that. I’d look up to the Lord and say, ‘I give. Uncle. You got me.

 

“But now, this is just another river to cross. Now we know what it is, and we’ll keep fighting. Whatever I did in life”—now he motioned to the crowded room of family—“I never did alone. So we’ll fight. It’s in the Lord’s hands now.”

 

At times, the support system has him feeling a little guilty. He walks the halls here and sees patients, some very seriously ill, alone. “There’s a lady down the hall,” he said to his brothers the other day. “Anybody visit her? I never see anyone. We should bring her some of my flowers.”

 

“Part of that,” piped up Dan Kelly, “is the influence my mom had on us all. Mom would give away our winter coats. She’d say, ‘That kid needed it more. You boys will be fine.’”

 

The Kelly family follows that Christian message now. Sometimes, their message and belief is so strong it sounds like a gospel tent in the room.

 

“All the fame Jim had in football,” said Dan. “I honestly believe that is just an instrument for God to use his notoriety for a greater purpose. What was his plan? Not many people can endure the kind of pain Jim is enduring, and the pain—we despise it. But we know the purpose.”

 

“He can be a messenger of hope,” Jill said.

 

“You know it,” said Jim.

 

“It’s such a great opportunity for Jim to be on the same level as everyone else, for people to see him struggle and to identify with him. It gives everyone strength,’’ said Jill.

 

“You got that right,” said Jim.

 

* * *

 

On Friday night, I put out a message on Twitter to my followers. I asked if any of them had a message to send to Kelly, whose illness has been reported far and wide. I wanted to see what the level of compassion and concern was.

 

Here how the response started, from Samuel Nielsen of Wisconsin: “1,573 people live in North Prairie, WI and every one of them is praying for you, Jim.”

 

Then words came from Rochester, N.Y., Dallas; Princeton, N.J.; Peru, Ill.; the nation of Peru; Bullhead City, Ariz.; Boston; Windsor, Ontario; Lexington; Huntsville, Ala.; Bolivia; Edmonton; Delta Junction, Alaska; Brazil; Perth, Australia; Sweden; Red Deer, Alberta; Put-in-Bay, Ohio; Dublin, Ireland; Cork, Ireland; Sioux Falls, S.D. (“No one circles the wagons like Jim Kelly,” wrote Clay Beeker); Kuwait, the Philippines and Hyderabad, India. “Met him once at a Bills tailgate. Made me feel like I’ve known him for 15 years,” wrote Adam from Toronto. And: Qatar; Altoona, Pa.; The Woodlands, Texas; Newcastle, Wash.; Iceland; Zephyr, Ontario; Mumbai, India; Lone Tree, Colo.; Panama City, Fla.; the nation of Panama; Guadalajara, Mexico; Onaka, S.D.; American Samoa; Sydney, Australia; Tacoma; Hong Kong; Pakistan (Pakistan!); Donnybrook, Western Australia; and scores from Buffalo and Hamburg and the environs in western New York. Scores.

 

Why? Why the overwhelming love for Kelly? My theory: People love the fighter he was as a player. People loved much else about him as a player (called his own plays, never whined about losing the Super Bowl four straight years). People felt for him after his son died. People in Buffalo never had a bad thing to say about him. He never left Buffalo after his career for greener—or warmer—pastures. Blue-collar guy in an increasingly white-collar game.

 

And the overwhelming sadness of a good man’s life being threatened too soon.

 

Wrote Rich Gannon (yes, that Rich Gannon): “Please know brother that you remain in our thoughts and prayers. No hill is too tough for a climber like you.”

 

Wrote Allan Ruigu of Nairobi, Kenya: “Saw Kelly’s daughter’s pic with him in a hospital bed, heart wrenching. Get well soon & be strong.”

 

Wrote Julien Urgenti: “I started watching football in the early 90s in Lyon, France. My love with football began with Kelly’s Bills. Go Jim!”

 

Wrote Asif Malik: “Get well soon, Jim Kelly. A great player on the field and I’ve heard, an even better person off it. (from Istanbul) #beatcancer”

 

I read 15 or 20 of them to Kelly and to the room of Kellys. He took a moment to compose himself.

 

“Humbling,” he said. “Humbling. I had no idea. I mean, I don’t do Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, whatever. But they tell me about it. There’s a lot of ‘Get well, Jim Kelly,’ out there, and I am so appreciative of that. I really don’t know what to say.”

 

After a while, a doctor came in and said she had to clear the room to examine Jim. Camryn and Jill’s mom went to get a bite to eat. The brothers went to relax downstairs in a waiting room. Jill and Erin adjourned to a waiting room down the hall that they’ve filled with inspirational Bible verses (“The Lord is my helper … I will not be afraid”). It’s the Kelly women who have raised awareness of his disease and made it an international thing.

 

They’ve done it through social media. Particularly noticeable was an Instagram photo Erin posted last week of her and her father laying in his hospital bed watch the Syracuse NCAA game on TV. Jim looked as weak as a pup. Erin looked devoted, hanging onto his arm. It went viral, quickly. Erin was stunned at the reaction, but it’s a social-media world, and emotional pictures of struggling heroes and their clinging daughters … well, that’s going to be a home run. And it was.

 

“We’re a sports family,” Erin said. “I just wanted to hang out with him. I never thought it would [go global] the way it did, but I like it because it shows the realness of our family. And that’s the raw truth of what he’s going through.”

 

She puts out pictures for the world to see, she said, “so people will pray. We believe in the power of prayer.”

 

The college freshman is a mature kid. She is not a hunter, but her father is, and so, for a Christmas present, she told her dad she was getting her hunting license, and the two of them would go on a hunting trip. “He’s my buddy,” she said. “I want to.”

 

Earlier this month, when Jim and Jill Kelly had a moment alone, and they were digesting the news that the insidious cancer inside Jim’s face and head had returned with a vengeance, they began reflecting. When they reflect, the subject is often their late son Hunter, who died at 8 of a rare nervous system disease in 2005.

 

“Well,” Jim said, “I know where my son is, in heaven. And I’ll probably see him before you.”

 

“No!’’ Jill said. “NO! Do NOT say that again!”

 

Jill Kelly recalled the story down the hall from her husband on this rainy Manhattan afternoon. “That,” she said, “cut to my heart. I lost it.”

 

But the thought is unavoidable. The reality of their lives, all of their lives, is that Jim Kelly is fighting for his. He’s in the best hands he can be, and all they all can do is hope, and pray, that modern science works, and these microscopic cancer cells don’t continue the march to Jim Kelly’s brain.

 

“He’s never been through anything like this, obviously,” Erin Kelly said. “But I know the way he raised us. And I know who he is. He will fight this till his last breath. He’s a Kelly.”

 

http://mmqb.si.com/2014/03/31/jim-kelly-cancer-monday-morning-quarterback/

[laughedatbytime]

Tough but touching read. Not really a Peter King fan but this is well done

 

NEW YORK — On a high floor of Lenox Hill Hospital Saturday afternoon, Jim Kelly, 54, lay propped up in a hospital bed, his head back, hair matted and tousled, a round of pain meds and antibiotics coursing through his veins. He looked tired. His daughter Erin, a freshman at Liberty University, held his hand as he ticked off what life has been like for him lately. Four Kelly brothers and father Joe ringed the room, along with younger daughter Camryn (pictured atop this story), and his wife, Jill, followed his every word from the foot of the bed.

 

“There is no way I’d be here without my faith,” Jim Kelly said. “It’s been such a roller coaster. So many things. The Super Bowl losses, the fabulous career, my son born sick, making the Hall of Fame, my son dying, two plates and 10 screws in my back after major surgery, one plate and six screws in my neck after another surgery, a double hernia, the cancer, surgery on my jaw, the cancer coming back, now what I’m facing. But …”

 

He looked at Erin.

 

“When you’re going through pain, you’re what?” he said.

 

Not even a millisecond elapsed.

 

“Kelly tough,” said the eldest daughter of Jim Kelly.

 

* * *

 

The story of Jim Kelly’s second, and more serious, fight against cancer is a complicated one. But toughness is a part of it, for better and worse. As is humor. Last June, doctors removed part of his cancerous upper jaw, made a prosthesis of six fake teeth and bone, and fastened it into the hole left by the surgery. They grafted a rectangle of skin from his upper left leg to replace the skin that was lost on the roof of his mouth. The prosthesis works like a giant retainer; Kelly can remove it, and he looks like an old man without his front teeth when it’s out.

 

“Have you met JK Swag?” Jill said Saturday afternoon. “After surgery, Jim said, ‘I will never pull this out.’ He didn’t want us to see him like that. Jim, introduce JK Swag.”

 

With that, Jim took the device out of his mouth and began talking like an unintelligible old geezer and scowling, and the room roared. Then he put his teeth back in.

 

“Sometimes,” Erin said, “we understand JK Swag better than JK.”

 

“The normal person wouldn’t have been able to take it,” Jim Kelly says. “Some days, I don’t know how I did. I’d look up to the Lord and say, ‘I give. Uncle. You got me.’ ”

The family will need those moments in the coming weeks. Today, provided a slight fever is under control by this morning, Kelly begins a regimen of treatment—chemotherapy Monday and Tuesday, radiation Wednesday, Thursday and Friday—designed to stop the cancer that is dangerously close to the carotid artery in his head. It’s too perilous to operate now, even if the cancer that has spread up his infraorbital nerve can be neutralized, because there’s no guarantee all of it can be found and removed. If doctors operated and all the cancer wasn’t eradicated, weeks could go by before chemo or radiation could begin while he recovers from surgery, and that crucial time could allow the cancer to spread into his brain unabated. So for now, it’s several weeks of aggressive chemo and radiation. Kelly’s New York oncologist, Dr. Peter Costantino, called Kelly’s condition “very treatable and potentially curable” last week.

 

“If he’s saying it,” Kelly said, “I hope so. I just know there’s a lot of work to do, to shrink the cancer. I just pray it works. If you hear I’m about to have surgery, then you know it’s working. That’s the goal. But it won’t be an easy operation.”

 

It’s a complex cancer. There’s not a big tumor in his head, but rather countless microscopic ones. That’s probably a major reason why the cancer was tough to diagnose when it returned. Kelly was having headaches—“massive headaches and migraines”—and doctors thought it might stem from problems with the teeth that remained after the jaw surgery last June. He had six root canals on the left side of his mouth in the months after the surgery. But still the pain, the headaches, remained. “The pain became a blessing,” said Jill Kelly. Without the pain, doctors might not have been as aggressive in searching for the pain’s root cause. And because Kelly has a long history of clamming up about his pain, doctors took notice when he said his head was really hurting him.

 

After a while this winter, Jim Kelly knew there was something amiss. And further scans this month showed the little spots of cancer, many of them riding up the nerve leading to his brain.

 

“I guarantee the normal person wouldn’t have been able to take it,” he said. “Some days, I don’t know how I did. I complained about my headaches for months, and for a while I thought it was just part of the healing process from such a serious surgery. But obviously it was more than that. I’d look up to the Lord and say, ‘I give. Uncle. You got me.

 

“But now, this is just another river to cross. Now we know what it is, and we’ll keep fighting. Whatever I did in life”—now he motioned to the crowded room of family—“I never did alone. So we’ll fight. It’s in the Lord’s hands now.”

 

At times, the support system has him feeling a little guilty. He walks the halls here and sees patients, some very seriously ill, alone. “There’s a lady down the hall,” he said to his brothers the other day. “Anybody visit her? I never see anyone. We should bring her some of my flowers.”

 

“Part of that,” piped up Dan Kelly, “is the influence my mom had on us all. Mom would give away our winter coats. She’d say, ‘That kid needed it more. You boys will be fine.’”

 

The Kelly family follows that Christian message now. Sometimes, their message and belief is so strong it sounds like a gospel tent in the room.

 

“All the fame Jim had in football,” said Dan. “I honestly believe that is just an instrument for God to use his notoriety for a greater purpose. What was his plan? Not many people can endure the kind of pain Jim is enduring, and the pain—we despise it. But we know the purpose.”

 

“He can be a messenger of hope,” Jill said.

 

“You know it,” said Jim.

 

“It’s such a great opportunity for Jim to be on the same level as everyone else, for people to see him struggle and to identify with him. It gives everyone strength,’’ said Jill.

 

“You got that right,” said Jim.

 

* * *

 

On Friday night, I put out a message on Twitter to my followers. I asked if any of them had a message to send to Kelly, whose illness has been reported far and wide. I wanted to see what the level of compassion and concern was.

 

Here how the response started, from Samuel Nielsen of Wisconsin: “1,573 people live in North Prairie, WI and every one of them is praying for you, Jim.”

 

Then words came from Rochester, N.Y., Dallas; Princeton, N.J.; Peru, Ill.; the nation of Peru; Bullhead City, Ariz.; Boston; Windsor, Ontario; Lexington; Huntsville, Ala.; Bolivia; Edmonton; Delta Junction, Alaska; Brazil; Perth, Australia; Sweden; Red Deer, Alberta; Put-in-Bay, Ohio; Dublin, Ireland; Cork, Ireland; Sioux Falls, S.D. (“No one circles the wagons like Jim Kelly,” wrote Clay Beeker); Kuwait, the Philippines and Hyderabad, India. “Met him once at a Bills tailgate. Made me feel like I’ve known him for 15 years,” wrote Adam from Toronto. And: Qatar; Altoona, Pa.; The Woodlands, Texas; Newcastle, Wash.; Iceland; Zephyr, Ontario; Mumbai, India; Lone Tree, Colo.; Panama City, Fla.; the nation of Panama; Guadalajara, Mexico; Onaka, S.D.; American Samoa; Sydney, Australia; Tacoma; Hong Kong; Pakistan (Pakistan!); Donnybrook, Western Australia; and scores from Buffalo and Hamburg and the environs in western New York. Scores.

 

Why? Why the overwhelming love for Kelly? My theory: People love the fighter he was as a player. People loved much else about him as a player (called his own plays, never whined about losing the Super Bowl four straight years). People felt for him after his son died. People in Buffalo never had a bad thing to say about him. He never left Buffalo after his career for greener—or warmer—pastures. Blue-collar guy in an increasingly white-collar game.

 

And the overwhelming sadness of a good man’s life being threatened too soon.

 

Wrote Rich Gannon (yes, that Rich Gannon): “Please know brother that you remain in our thoughts and prayers. No hill is too tough for a climber like you.”

 

Wrote Allan Ruigu of Nairobi, Kenya: “Saw Kelly’s daughter’s pic with him in a hospital bed, heart wrenching. Get well soon & be strong.”

 

Wrote Julien Urgenti: “I started watching football in the early 90s in Lyon, France. My love with football began with Kelly’s Bills. Go Jim!”

 

Wrote Asif Malik: “Get well soon, Jim Kelly. A great player on the field and I’ve heard, an even better person off it. (from Istanbul) #beatcancer”

 

I read 15 or 20 of them to Kelly and to the room of Kellys. He took a moment to compose himself.

 

“Humbling,” he said. “Humbling. I had no idea. I mean, I don’t do Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, whatever. But they tell me about it. There’s a lot of ‘Get well, Jim Kelly,’ out there, and I am so appreciative of that. I really don’t know what to say.”

 

After a while, a doctor came in and said she had to clear the room to examine Jim. Camryn and Jill’s mom went to get a bite to eat. The brothers went to relax downstairs in a waiting room. Jill and Erin adjourned to a waiting room down the hall that they’ve filled with inspirational Bible verses (“The Lord is my helper … I will not be afraid”). It’s the Kelly women who have raised awareness of his disease and made it an international thing.

 

They’ve done it through social media. Particularly noticeable was an Instagram photo Erin posted last week of her and her father laying in his hospital bed watch the Syracuse NCAA game on TV. Jim looked as weak as a pup. Erin looked devoted, hanging onto his arm. It went viral, quickly. Erin was stunned at the reaction, but it’s a social-media world, and emotional pictures of struggling heroes and their clinging daughters … well, that’s going to be a home run. And it was.

 

“We’re a sports family,” Erin said. “I just wanted to hang out with him. I never thought it would [go global] the way it did, but I like it because it shows the realness of our family. And that’s the raw truth of what he’s going through.”

 

She puts out pictures for the world to see, she said, “so people will pray. We believe in the power of prayer.”

 

The college freshman is a mature kid. She is not a hunter, but her father is, and so, for a Christmas present, she told her dad she was getting her hunting license, and the two of them would go on a hunting trip. “He’s my buddy,” she said. “I want to.”

 

Earlier this month, when Jim and Jill Kelly had a moment alone, and they were digesting the news that the insidious cancer inside Jim’s face and head had returned with a vengeance, they began reflecting. When they reflect, the subject is often their late son Hunter, who died at 8 of a rare nervous system disease in 2005.

 

“Well,” Jim said, “I know where my son is, in heaven. And I’ll probably see him before you.”

 

“No!’’ Jill said. “NO! Do NOT say that again!”

 

Jill Kelly recalled the story down the hall from her husband on this rainy Manhattan afternoon. “That,” she said, “cut to my heart. I lost it.”

 

But the thought is unavoidable. The reality of their lives, all of their lives, is that Jim Kelly is fighting for his. He’s in the best hands he can be, and all they all can do is hope, and pray, that modern science works, and these microscopic cancer cells don’t continue the march to Jim Kelly’s brain.

 

“He’s never been through anything like this, obviously,” Erin Kelly said. “But I know the way he raised us. And I know who he is. He will fight this till his last breath. He’s a Kelly.”

 

http://mmqb.si.com/2014/03/31/jim-kelly-cancer-monday-morning-quarterback/

[laughedatbytime]

Bills fans, if you've ever wondered what it would be like if Jerry Jones owned your team, here's the next closest thing.

 

New York City businessman and billionaire Donald Trump says he is committed to buying the Bills and keeping them in western New York, according to The Buffalo News.

 

"I'm going to give it a heavy shot," Trump told the News on Monday from his office in Manhattan. "I would love to do it, and if I can do it, I'm keeping it in Buffalo."

 

Multiple sources confirmed to the News that Trump has had two conversations with Bills president and CEO Russ Brandon.

 

Trump, who earlier this month confirmed that he was contacted by a group looking to purchase the Bills following the death of longtime owner Ralph Wilson, also wanted to ease concerns that he would move the team to Los Angeles or Toronto.

 

He has previously said it would be "catastrophic" if Buffalo lost the Bills.

"I live in New York, and it's easier for me to go to Buffalo than any other place," Trump said. "Where am I going to move it, some place on the other side of the country where I have to travel for five hours?"

 

Trump believes his history with the NFL would play no role in a potential purchase of the Bills.

 

In 1983, Trump bought the New Jersey Generals and was largely responsible for the USFL switching from a spring schedule into direct competition with the NFL in the fall.

 

"I think the NFL owners respected me for it because I took a dead league and made it hot," Trump said. "But my thing when I bought the team was, 'I will not play football in the spring.' Even if they would have teetered along for another couple years, it wouldn't have survived in the spring. And if I hadn't gotten involved, they wouldn't have lasted another season.

 

"The NFL owners that I know and are very honest about it, they'll tell you I did a good job and they have respect for me. And I have respect for them."

 

Since the death of Wilson in late March, speculation around the Bills' future in Buffalo has increased.

 

The team has confirmed that the franchise will eventually be sold, saying "a process will be established at an appropriate time" for the sale.

 

http://espn.go.com/nfl/story/_/id/10785589/donald-trump-interested-buying-buffalo-bills

[laughedatbytime]

Good news?

 

[Draco]

Good news?

 

 

Yes. His remaining treatments will be in Buffalo.

 

Plus, his brother Dan said that he will pursue his interests in leading a group in buying the Bills despite his cancer treatments. :)

[laughedatbytime]

Good news?

 

 

Yes. His remaining treatments will be in Buffalo.

 

Plus, his brother Dan said that he will pursue his interests in leading a group in buying the Bills despite his cancer treatments. :)

Wow...cool!:clap:

[Draco]

Here's a link to a story, that has an Instagram video made by Jim.

 

http://www.wgrz.com/story/sports/nfl/bills/2014/04/19/jim-kelly-buffalo-cancer-treatments/7916985/

[Draco]

Latest rumors are that Jim Kelly and Donald Trump might team up to be part of an ownership group. Former Sabres owner Tom Golisano is also "monitoring the situation". Senator Chuck Schumer is saying that it could be a matter of months, not years or year, for the team to be sold.

 

http://www.wgr550.com/Schumer-feels-a-Bills-sale-could-happen-in-a-matte/18947338

[laughedatbytime]

Latest rumors are that Jim Kelly and Donald Trump might team up to be part of an ownership group. Former Sabres owner Tom Golisano is also "monitoring the situation". Senator Chuck Schumer is saying that it could be a matter of months, not years or year, for the team to be sold.

 

http://www.wgr550.co...-matte/18947338

Seems like they'd definitely keep the team in Buffalo, so that's a good sign.

[Draco]

Jim recently had a feeding tube inserted. His treatments are near an end, and there's still a long road ahead, but he is a strong individual who is just amazing.

 

http://www.buffalonews.com/sports/bills-nfl/despite-feeding-tube-and-constant-pain-kelly-toughs-it-out-20140515

[laughedatbytime]

Pretty cool story.

 

Jim Kelly walked out the double doors and was immediately showered with cheers.

 

Fans flanked him on both sides while wearing blue shirts with a slogan that read "Kelly Tough."

 

He offered them high fives and a bright smile.

 

But Kelly wasn't on the football field, and those weren't just any fans cheering him after making a play; instead, they were his family and close friends celebrating him leaving the hospital after completing his final round of radiation treatments.

 

When he got to the end of the line of his supporters, Kelly wiped a tear from his eye.

 

He was overcome with emotion but offered a thank you to everyone in attendance.

 

"I know I couldn't have done this without family and friends. You guys have been there from day one," he began. "Thank you."

 

"I know I still have a long way to go but with you people on my team I know I'll be here for many, many more years and many, many more parties."

 

http://www.sportingnews.com/nfl/story/2014-05-30/jim-kelly-cancer-treatment-surgery-radiation-chemotherapy-buffalo-bills

[Babycat]

For Ralph Wilson -

 

For Jim Kelly -

[laughedatbytime]

Hey Bon Jovi, don't look up....

 

 

As if Bills fans didn’t already have enough reasons to believe Jon Bon Jovi has become a Trojan Horse for an effort by Toronto money men to move the franchise out of Buffalo, documents that provide the closest thing yet to a smoking gun have been found.

 

Via the Associated Press, the Buffalo Fan Alliance has found several press releases referring to Rogers communications consultant Roger Rai as part of an ownership group “attempting to acquire and move the Buffalo Bills to Toronto.”

 

Newly-minted Hall of Famer Andre Reed serves on the Buffalo Fan Alliance’s Advisory Board. Last month, Reed expressed significant disdain for the Bon Jovi effort to buy the team, complete with the direction of a four-letter word to the seven-letter singer.

 

While Rai attributes the references to a “mistake” and tells the AP he’s not involved in the ownership group, the disclosure will do nothing to persuade leery fans to believe that the recent proclamations by Bon Jovi of an intention to keep the team in Buffalo lack credibility — especially since Bon Jovi’s letter carefully avoids making an unconditional commitment to keeping the team in Western New York.

 

It once seemed that Bon Jovi had an inside track to securing the Bills, even if he wouldn’t have been the controlling owner of the team. It now seems that Bon Jovi will need to try to find another group to supply the bulk of the cash for the acquisition of another team, whenever another team becomes available to purchase.

 

http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2014/08/14/report-documents-hint-at-plan-to-move-bills-to-toronto/?utm_source=FB%20-%20NBC%20Sports%20-%20SNF%20-%20Sunday%20Night%20Football%20on%20NBC&utm_network=facebook&utm_post=2929303&utm_tags=

[Principled Man]

At the moment, Jim Kelly is reported to be cancer-free. No signs of it..... :ebert:

 

 

http://www.si.com/nfl/2014/08/20/jim-kelly-cancer-exam-chemo-radiation

[laughedatbytime]

I saw that. That's completely, totally, awesome, and I must say unexpected.

 

:clap: :clap: :clap: :clap: :clap: :clap:

[laughedatbytime]

Kelly's remission has been verified via biopsy today.

 

:clap: :clap: :clap:

[Draco]

Terry and Kim Pegula buy the Bills. With Jim Kelly's cancer seeming to be gone, it's been a very good week in Buffalo.