“Closer than ever — ever being since they left, which has been a long time much to my surprise and anticipation,” said Jones on Saturday, when asked if the NFL was close to returning to Los Angeles. “There are some viable ways for a team or teams to be in Los Angeles. We’ve got some very talented and very qualified people that want to be a part of it that are not a part of the league right now. We, obviously, have people within the league that want this very much.”

Jones spoke before his Cowboys opened up training camp in Oxnard, Calif., a coastal city 60 miles northwest of downtown Los Angeles. Since 2001, the Cowboys have held at least a portion of their training camp in Oxnard eight times. From 1963-1989, they held their training camp in Thousand Oaks, Calif., which is 45 miles northwest of downtown Los Angeles.

Last year, Jones’ son, Stephen, who sits on the NFL’s stadium committee, said getting a team in Los Angeles was a top priority for the NFL and Jones said that has not changed.

“I think we’re closer,” Jones said. “I say that not just wishing. I say that, technically, because I’m aware of some things that make sense.”

Jones was hesitant to put a timeframe on the NFL’s return to Los Angeles but did think progress was being made for it to happen in the near future.

“How long does it take to build a stadium?” Jones said. “I know how long it took to build one. The other thing is that there’s certainly ways to do it without having a stadium ready. Those are some moving parts but you have to have the commitment [from the team], which for the people that make those kinds of commitments it starts that day for them in a serious way. I wouldn’t want to give you a timeframe on it but I do think that the commitment and the substance with that commitment is right around the corner.”

The Los Angeles Raiders and Los Angeles Rams played their last games in Southern California on Christmas Eve 1994 before moving to Oakland and St. Louis, respectively. Almost 20 years later, the Raiders and Rams, along with the San Diego Chargers, are the most viable teams to move to Los Angeles if they can’t get their current stadium issues resolved. The Raiders and Chargers can get out of their current leases after the 2013 season while the Rams can get out of their lease after the 2014 season.

NFL commissioner Roger Goodell has said the NFL is not considering expanding from 32 teams and if Los Angeles were to get a team, it would come via relocation.

Last year Goodell sent a memo to all 32 organizations that said no single team has any “presumptive right” to play in Los Angeles and that only the league can make a decision on relocation. Any franchise interested in relocating to Los Angeles must apply between Jan. 1 and Feb. 15 of that year, and prove it has exhausted all attempts to remain in its current location.

There are currently two proposed stadium sites for a future NFL team in Los Angeles.

Farmers Field, a proposed stadium in downtown Los Angeles by Anschutz Entertainment Group, and a competing stadium proposed by real estate magnate Ed Roski in the City of Industry. Both are “shovel ready” but need a long-term commitment from a team before construction can begin. If construction does begin, it could take up to four years to complete.

In the meantime, the NFL team that relocates to Los Angeles would play in either the L.A. Coliseum or the Rose Bowl.

There had been some speculation that AEG’s Farmers Field was doomed after the company was taken off the sales block earlier this year and former president and CEO Tim Leiweke, who was the driving force behind the project, left the company. AEG owner Philip Anschutz, however, said he is still committed to the project and returning the NFL to L.A. and Jones said he likes the project and Anschutz.

“There are no misgivings at all about it,” Jones said of Farmers Field. “It has outstanding people involved. Phil Anschutz is an outstanding individual and would be an asset in any way for any group to be involved with and he has quite a sports background and quite a background in venues so that project. I’m actually involved in a company that just hired the lead guy that was involved in putting that Farmers Field project together so all those people have a lot of talent. It’s not a negative. It’s a plus.”

Jones, born in El Segundo, Calif., a city in Los Angeles County located on the Santa Monica Bay, spoke about his affinity for Southern California after opening his first training camp in nearby Thousand Oaks nearly 25 years ago and winning his first Super Bowl in Pasadena. He understands many in Los Angeles may be skeptical of the NFL returning to Los Angeles after being away for so long. There is a constant feeling that Los Angeles is simply being used as a threat for current teams to get new stadiums. In fact, since the Raiders and Rams left Los Angeles in 1994, 24 new stadiums have been built for 25 teams. Jones, however, reiterated the league’s commitment to making it happen soon.

“I’ve never, ever been a part of any meeting or committee ever that didn’t want, as quickly as we could, to get a team in L.A.,” Jones said. “I’ve heard that that could be a threat to people moving their teams out but that’s not right. We’ve always preferred to get a team here.”

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The announcement was made on the team’s Twitter account and confirmed by Sabres spokesman Michael Gilbert on Wednesday. Ruff was relieved of his duties shortly after the team held a 90-minute practice, and a day after the Sabres were booed several times by their home fans during a 2-1 loss to the Winnipeg Jets.

The Sabres (6-10-1) have gone 4-10-1 since opening the season with two wins.

With a 571-432-162 record, Ruff was the team’s winningest coach. In his 16th season, he was also the active leader among NHL coaches with the same team.

The Sabres, who play at Toronto on Thursday, have not yet named a replacement. General manager Darcy Regier was scheduled to address reporters later Wednesday.

The news came as a surprise only because Sabres management, including team president Ted Black, had spent much of the past week voicing its support of Ruff. Team owner Terry Pegula was also regarded as a big fan of Ruff.

Pegula, however, was running out of options in his bid to turn the Sabres into a Stanley Cup contender, an objective he made clear upon purchasing the team two years ago. Ruff’s firing comes nearly two years to the day Pegula formally took over as the Sabres owner on Feb. 22, 2011.

Ruff was becoming increasingly aware that his job was on the line. Last week, he described the Sabres’ struggles as being “his mess,” while adding he wasn’t done trying to clean them up.

On Wednesday, he abruptly cut short his availability with reporters by hinting that changes were coming because “it isn’t working the way we’re going.” He didn’t specify what those changes might be.

Under Ruff, the Sabres made the playoffs in each of his first four seasons and eight times overall. That included a surprising run to the Stanley Cup finals in 1999, when Buffalo was eliminated by Dallas in six games.

The Sabres, however, haven’t been the same since they reached the Eastern Conference finals — losing both times — in both 2006 and ’07. Buffalo has missed the playoffs in three of the past five seasons.

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“Without a doubt, we have utmost confidence in Mike (D’Antoni) as a coach,” Kupchak told ESPNLosAngeles.com in a phone interview Tuesday from Memphis. “I think if you spoke to him, his vision on Day 1 was dramatically different than it is today. It’s the coach’s job to adjust and to make changes. Sometimes a player is just not going to fit. Sometimes a coach has to make changes and compromise in the way he’s done things and I think that’s what Mike is going through right now is just the process.”

The Lakers have hit the midway point of the season riding a three-game losing skid as some of the promises made in D’Antoni’s introductory news conference in November are starting to ring hollow.

D’Antoni claimed the team should “easily” average 110-115 points per game under his guidance. They’ve crossed the 110-point threshold just eight times in the 31 games since he took over, going 5-3.

At the time of D’Antoni’s hiring, Kupchak said the new coach’s system was “more suited to the talent” on the Lakers than Phil Jackson’s Triangle offense, and yet several players have had a difficult time fitting in — Dwight Howard has sniped publicly about his lack of post-up and shot attempts, Pau Gasol has balked at accepting his role off the bench and free agent acquisitions Antawn Jamison and Jodie Meeks have both had to endure strings of DNP-CDs (Did Not Play — Coaching Decision) under D’Antoni.

Yet, Kupchak said D’Antoni’s shuffling of the roster is evidence that the coach is willing to change and try new things in order to try to start winning.

“It’s not like he started a week or two ago trying to figure this thing out,” Kupchak said. “He’s been searching for combinations now for probably six-to-eight weeks. Understandably, I think the longer the season goes the more is at stake and the bigger hole you dig, the more dramatic your adjustments or your take on coaching has to become. I think that’s what he’s doing. He’s grabbing every rabbit out of the hat trying to look for something that works.”

While Kupchak is continuing to support the coach, the disappointment of the Lakers being out of the playoff picture with 41 games left to play is wearing on the Lakers’ GM.

“You don’t want to get too emotional one way or the other, but, we’re halfway through now,” Kupchak said. “Quite frankly, we’ve dug a hole and I think it’s frustrating for everybody. It’s certainly not what anybody or everybody expected halfway through the season.”

Kupchak singled out the Lakers’ effort, or lack thereof, as the most frustrating part to see.

“I’m a little bit concerned about our effort,” Kupchak said. “I’d like to see better effort on the court. When the ball is not bouncing your way, when shots aren’t going in, you just can’t seem to get a break, the one thing you can control on the court is your effort and loose balls and running the floor, defending, offensive rebounding. I think back to the Miami game and I have that vision of LeBron (James) diving on that ball at midcourt. That’s effort. It’s natural when things get tough to hesitate and be unsure, lose confidence. That’s one thing that we can’t let happen. We have to maintain our confidence and our effort more than anything has to be at an all-time to get through this period.”

Kupchak is well aware of the Feb. 21 trade deadline looming if the team decides it needs to pursue a move if that confidence wanes and that effort fails to improve.

“We’ve got a little bit (less) than a month,” Kupchak said. “Typically, it’s unusual, although there was a trade today (between Memphis and Cleveland), it’s unusual if things heat up five or four weeks out. Typically, as you approach the trade deadline, people get serious and they really begin to understand and know their team and they have a pretty good feel of what’s out there.

“So, I don’t think we’re at the point where you say, ‘It’s time for a trade,’ and a trade happens in 3-4 days. That’s just not how this league works. I read somebody somewhere a week or so ago said, ‘This is a deadline-oriented league,’ and I think that’s true even though there are exceptions. That’s certainly one way to address the problem, to look into changing players.”

What’s tricky for Kupchak is that he’s not convinced making a trade or signing a free agent would act as a cure-all for the Lakers’ funk.

“Part of the frustrating thing about this season to date is that I just can’t, or we just can’t, put our finger on the problem,” Kupchak said. “We mentioned a bunch of them and even getting through the injuries and the (roster) changes and the coaching changes and you just try look at the players and how they fit together, is there something that’s missing? I could look at our group and nitpick and say that we could use something here or a better shooter there, but the bottom line is that the group as whole, we have not performed to the level of our ability.

“It’s not like we don’t have a player at a certain position and if we added a player — an eighth guy or a ninth guy — all of the sudden our record is going to go from 17 and whatever it is to 30-11. That’s not going to happen by adding a bench shooter or a defensive player. You know what I mean? That’s not going to happen. We’re underachieving for other reasons, not because we’re missing a bench player. Certainly you can add a bench player and become a better team, or hopefully a better team, but that’s not the reason why our record is what it is. We should be better than our record says we are. But there’s a saying in this league, and I’m sure you’ve heard this saying, ‘You are what your record says you are.’ ”

The Lakers’ record of just 2-7 over their past nine games says that the team is getting worse, but Kupchak believes it’s just been more of the same.

“I’m not sure there have been recent struggles,” Kupchak said. “We’ve struggled from Day 1. It’s not like we played good ball and then all of the sudden the last three to four weeks, we’re starting to struggle. We have struggled from Day 1 and it’s frustrating for everybody.”

That frustration will linger until the Lakers start to play up to their capabilities.

“We’ll just have to figure it out,” Kupchak said. “There’s no end to this. It’s not like if it’s not figured out in a week it comes to a conclusion. It’s just a process. We just got to keep on working at it and figure it out. It’s basketball.”

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