Today's camps are a far cry from yesteryear
 This is the fourth in a series of postcards Sports Illustrated's Peter King will e-mail from his annual training-camp tour.
Posted: Sun July 26, 1998
July 25: Fredonia, N.Y.
TEAM: Buffalo Bills
SITE: Fredonia State College, in a sleepy Lake Erie college town of about 11,000, 45 miles
west of Buffalo. One of the highlights of anybody's training-camp itinerary,
with a small-town country inn (recommended by Duncan Hines, the sign says)
called the White Inn on aptly named Main Street, where Friday night found me
having a steak dinner with redskin potatoes and broccoli on the front porch.
FOOD: Classic camp fare, with some low-fat exceptions. Had the turkey burger
(three grams of fat, versus the 11 with the beef burger) on whole grain with
pickles and low-fat barbeque sauce ... tossed romaine-lettuce salad with low-fat ranch dressing
... low-fat redskin potato salad ... melon (canteloupe and honeydew) salad ...
and my personal favorite from this trip—the low-cholesterol Nabisco Nilla
Wafers. All washed down with Barq's root beer. What a meal.
(Vic Carucci of the Buffalo News, upon hearing this, said: "Good God, Peter.
Grantland Rice is somewhere turning over in his grave.'')
Dear NFL Junkie:
Beautiful morning, just beautiful. On the freshly mowed fields of Fredonia State
College, there was rich new quarterback Rob Johnson showing off his rifle arm in the
Bills' first post-Marv Levy practice to about 1,000 fans. Two video cameras on
mechanical scaffolds caught all of the action, and trainers and ballboys
scurried to make the practice as comfortable and water-soaked as possible.
A little bit different from the Bills' first camp, 38 years ago. That's what
Buffalo News veteran writer Larry Felser told me on the sidelines this morning:
"In 1960, they had training camp on a polo field at Northrup Knox's huge estate in
East Aurora. The players stayed in what was a dive hotel, the Roycroft. The
place hadn't been renovated since the Titanic went down, I think. But the Knoxes
were polo players and heirs to the Woolworth fortune, so they had a huge place.
Public roads ran through it. Northrup Knox actually would take a helicopter from
one side of the estate to the other to watch practice.''
"How was the team?'' I asked.
"The defense made 'em good,'' said Felser, now 65. "Their big signing that year
was the Penn State quarterback, Richie Lucas, who they outbid the Redskins for
in the AFL-NFL signing wars. And so he gets out to practice on this polo field
in East Aurora, and he throws the ball like a women's shot putter. They try to
make him a running back, then a defensive back. Never worked. He just didn't
make it. That was one of the great propaganda jobs of all time.''
Felser was composing his Sunday column on his Gateway Nomad in the breezy
press room an hour or so later. "Sure as hell ain't as much fun anymore,'' he
sighed. "Camp, I mean. The games are as fun, maybe more fun. The players are
better, the design of the game's better, and the approach is so professional.
It's a contest among smart men to see who's more revolutionary and who can be
more cutting-edge.'' —P.K.
| 
