Tag Archives: Buffalo Bills

local news, Sports news

Man … it’s still cold out there!

phillips-2-master675

I posted this blog item once — on Dec. 8, 2009 — but I feel compelled to share it again today.

It’s an anecdotal story about a legendary football coach and his experiences in the Texas Panhandle.

Here it is:

***

Today’s weather reminds me of a story I’ve been telling for years. It involves the legendary football coach O.A. “Bum” Phillips and it’s gotten great laughs from those who have heard it.

I have not verified its complete accuracy. But it sounds sufficiently true. Thus, I believe it to be so — and so do others who have heard it. The story goes like this:
Many years ago, when Bum was coaching the Houston Oilers, he took his team to Buffalo to play the Bills. It was late in the season. Winters in Buffalo can be, well, bracing. The Oilers and Bills played that day in one of those classic winter weather events on the shore of Lake Erie: heavy snow, wind, sleet, rain, temperature well below zero.
The Oilers won the nationally televised game. As the teams were leaving the field, a TV sideline reporter and cameraman approached Bum and asked him, “Well, Coach, how did you like coaching in this cold weather?”
Bum responded: “Cold? This ain’t cold! Why, shoot, I used to coach in Amarillo, Texas!”
environmental news, International news

Here come the 'snow trolls'

Yes, this story was inevitable, given the brutal cold snap that has smacked much of the country.

A leftish media watchdog group refers to them as “snow trolls,” the folks who think that since it’s cold outside that global warming/climate change is a liberal plot.

http://mediamatters.org/blog/2014/01/07/cold-winter-weather-bring-on-the-snow-trolls/197464

My answer always to those who think like that simply is this: Look at the big picture, the longer term.

Some noted publications have noted, for example, that the Texas Panhandle will be wetter and colder than normal this winter. I’ll cite the Farmer’s Almanac as one such source. Its accuracy is about as reliable as most weather forecasters, which likely isn’t very reliable.

But it got cold around here the past few days and in this part of the world, which is full of climate-change deniers, it provides plenty of grist for the so-called “snow trolls” to suggest the liberal plot conspiracy is at work regarding climate change.

Lake Erie is producing mountains of lake-effect snow in upstate New York. The Buffalo Bills are supposed to play host to a professional football game Sunday, but it looks dicey.

I know that the debate is ongoing. I also know that folks produce all kinds of scientific evidence that the planet is actually cooling off. There also is other evidence that suggests the opposite is happening. Year over year temperatures are increasing.

Those polar ice caps? They really are shrinking.

But as the comedian Stephen Colbert joked, the “snow trolls” sound like the guy who says “hunger is cured because I ate tonight.”