Once again, this town is in a funk about its football team. Four games into the season, and already the Bills are diving headfirst into the dumpster.

It matters. In a small city with few connections to the big time, the Bills are more than a football team. Their success or failure colors the communal mood. There was a sense of gloom in the air Monday morning, as many folks returned to work with sagging shoulders after Sundays 38-10 rout at Miami.

I hated to see it. We have enough to get depressed about around here without having a lousy football team.

Buffalo has had just one winning season since 1999, prompting fans invariable complaints about various coaches and players. It is like saying the problem with General Motors was bad cars. No. Bad cars were simply the byproduct of bad ownership and poor management ("Ladies and gentlemen, the Chevy Vega!").

So, too, with the Bills. The faces change, the results stay the same. The chronic mediocrity is compelling evidence that the Buffalo teams core problem is its ownership and management. The management structure, put in place by 91-year-old owner Ralph Wilson, consistently misjudges talent, fails to spend wisely on personnel and does not hire capable coaches to direct players and create innovative strategies.

In Corporate America or in the NFL, management counts.

"Management is the elixir that produces consistent results over time," said Tony Ogorek. "[Successful] corporations tend to be managed by deep teams of people who . . . understand what is happening in the marketplace and constantly innovate."

Ogorek is an Amherst-based financial adviser. He evaluates corporations for their investment-worthiness. A prime consideration is quality of management. That is why I called him. The Bills lengthy mediocrity is ultimately not a failure of individual players and coaches, but a consequence of flawed management.

Despite a salary cap and shared revenue that largely level the playing field among 32 NFL teams, Buffalo has not made the playoffs in nine seasons. It has not won a playoff game since Bill Clintons first term. It has, in corporate terminology, consistently underperformed.

"Other teams obviously are doing a better job of allocating capital to the right people and in replenishing the talent pool," Ogorek said.

It is no coincidence that the Bills last stretch of success, from the late 1980s through the late 1990s, coincided largely with the tenure of talented CEO—er, general manager—Bill Polian and his people. It is no accident that Polian has since built successful teams –and management structures—in Carolina and, currently, Indianapolis.

Ogorek cited the corporate analogy of the Big Three automakers. Bill Ford saw the tsunami coming, brought in innovative managers and survived.

"Ford . . . redid its entire car line. GM and Chrysler didnt," Ogorek said. "Rick Wagoner [at GM] oversaw perhaps the greatest destruction of capital in American history. The difference? Ownership and management."

The Bills consistently bring in big-bucks free agents who disappoint and high draft picks who do not produce. They fail to pay premium value for exceptional players, who then leave the company—er, team. They habitually acquire marquee names who are on the downside of their careers.

Master investor Warren Buffett "calls it buying a company with only a couple of puffs left on the cigar, " Ogorek said. "It is not a good long-term investment."

The faces change; the story stays the same.

Welcome to the Bills, the General Motors of the NFL. With no government bailout in sight.