The Buffalo Bills have set up camp in Rochester - football season’s almost here! So why leave the ranks of Ralph Wilson Stadium for ROC City? Kodak isn’t exactly paving a field of dreams these days. Then again, there is ostrich farm down the road from my parents house.
But it hit me. Actually it was sitting on my lap: the Garbage Plate. You know the Bills have THE best tailgating in the NFL. Says FoodNetwork and Guy Fieti. And says every freezing yet completely satisfied Bills fan at the start of every game. But they’ve been grilling all summer, let them have their plates without having to lift a spatula.
So of course the past decade of Bills camps have been dedicated to high pre-season hopes and high cholesterol. Just keeping our blood pressure where Coach Gailey is keeping his offense. The red-zone.
The Nick Tahoe’s Garbage Plate has been the crown jewel of ROC cuisine since 1918. Enough so as to spawn many other GP locales in the neighboring suburbs… aka the ONLY places to go after watching your high school team annihilate the cross town rivals.
A straight up mess-slash-food coma - every delicious morsel you’ve ever needed in one heaping pile. The ONLY way to go is mac salad, home fries, smothered by the burger and hot sauuuuzzzz. Anything else would ONLY be totally lame.

Who I met on the vineyard

So this Summer has been so very little about sports and so much about working on my tan and learning the print component of publishing. So when I went to check out the delivery of our 15,000 issues, imagine my surprise when I ran in to one of UConn’s recruits, Randall Jette. Now before I start getting shit: Yes I’m sporting no sleeves (sun’s out - guns out, kid!) and yes I have an awful farmer’s tan. I’d like to note my skin is permanently this color after 6 training camps, I can’t shake the tan line.
Anyway, I had on an old pair of athletic shorts and this incredibly well spoken young man comes up to me and asks if I played for UConn. I told him that indeed, I had played for the Huskies and I was a very proud alumnus. He introduced himself as Randall Jette, the QB for Martha’s Vineyard High School. Well, then it all clicked. Being on the Island this summer I’ve learned that everyone knows everyone…quite literally. I was eating lunch a few weeks prior and someone started talking football, the subject instantly turned to MVHS, and of course their best player, Mr. Jette. So when Randall introduced himself to me, I knew he was somewhat of a living legend. But he didn’t have the false bravado of high school stardom, he was polite (perhaps a bit shy) but definitely had the walk of a football player.
He told me he spent his Summer working Monday through Friday moving pallets, loading shipping containers, etc. We talked about recruiting, and camps, and of course that UConn was after him. Now like many former players, I am of course biased to my own school. But it is amazing how I can look this young man in the eye and tell him that I had the best years of my life at UConn, that Coach Edsall is the most honest and upstanding coach in college football, and that he’d be remiss not to go there. I can say all of these things and mean it because they are very true, it’s not some recruiting pitch, it’s a testimony to the hard work of coaches and support staff alike: they’ve made UConn an incredible place to be a student athlete.
Of course I had to throw in a few digs on Boston College, especially in the wake of one of their coaches trying to dirt bag a recruit. But the bottom line is that for football recruits in New England there is no better place than UConn, and should the Huskies land Jette (how great of a last name is that, btw) they’ll be getting a young man of high work ethic and morals.