By Budd Bailey, Buffalo Sports Page Columnist

Tim Vogler – Signed by the Bills in 1979

It just didn’t seem fair. Just as Tim Vogler was getting the hang of the football business, he had to leave it.

Vogler came out of Ohio State in 1979 and signed with the Bills as an undrafted free agent. The offensive lineman did most of his work on special teams as Buffalo reached the playoffs in 1980 and 1981. For the first five seasons of his career, Vogler didn’t start a game. That’s a long time to wait.

Finally in 1985, Vogler did start two games. Then in 1986, he started 14 games, and could call himself a regular in the NFL. Vogler mostly stayed in that role through 1988, when he hurt his knee on Opening Day. The lineman went to injured reserve for a while and played through the injury, but eventually the pain was too much. Vogler was done for the season in early December, and had a complicated procedure on his knee to try to fix it. He never played a game. Even so, a 10-year career for an undrafted player is worth remembering.

(Follow Budd on Twitter @WDX2BB)

Budd Bailey

Budd Bailey has been involved in almost every aspect of the local sports scene for the last 40 years. He worked for WEBR Radio, the Buffalo Sabres' public relations department and The Buffalo News during that time. In that time he covered virtually every aspect of the area's sports world, from high schools to the Bills and Sabres and everything in between. Along the way, Budd served as a play-by-play announcer for the Bisons, an analyst for the Stallions, and a talk-show host. He won the National Lacrosse League's Tom Borrelli Award as the media personality of the year in 2011, and was a finalist for that same award in 2017. Budd's seventh and eighth books, one on the Transcontinental Railroad and the other about Ichiro Suzuki, are scheduled to be released in the fall.

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