The experience this weekend will be vastly different from what people adore about games in Orchard Park.
Bills can’t bring Buffalo’s passion to Toronto
Let it be known that Toronto deserves an NFL team. It really does. Toronto has the corporate money and fans to compete with monster U. S. markets that have turned the league into an irrepressible beast. An NFL team would give Toronto three major sports franchises, plus the Maple Leafs.
Give me two minutes for instigating, but let’s not drop the gloves over whether Toronto is worthy of watching over the Bills for a weekend. It is. If anything, Toronto should be thanked for putting up with them. It’s like dropping off your bratty kids and having the baby sitter pay you.
Hey, if the Bills’ recent play continues, can Toronto be tricked into picking up the New England game, too?
Thing is, I adore Toronto, a true North American jewel. Nearly 5 million people live in the city and surrounding areas. It has a usable downtown subway system, a downtown stadium, two downtown arenas, numerous downtown hotels and a downtown shopping center. What I’m saying is that it has a downtown, period.
The amenities aren’t missing so much as the passion.
Torontonians would pay $400 to watch the Leafs sharpen their skates, but they never were obsessed with other sports the way Buffalo is with the Bills. Attend a Blue Jays game and see how many people are oblivious to bases loaded and two out. Tell them Sam Mitchell got canned by the Raptors this week and wait for blank stares.
Just so you know, the experience this weekend will be vastly different from what people adore about games in Orchard Park. Their idea of tailgating is corporate tents and phony enthusiasm. Ours is firing up the grill, firing up the crowd, firing the coaching staff and firing footballs off the Winnebago. Toronto closes the roof, Buffalo raises the roof.
The fine people there should know that they’re being taken to the cleaners. Ted Rogers passed away earlier this week, and may he rest in peace. But it doesn’t change the fact that he and Ralph Wilson were partners in an attempted heist designed to line their pockets with everybody else’s money.
Rogers Communications executive Phil Lind told people after the company agreed to pay $78 million to the Bills for the eight-pack that the games would easily sell out, but seats were available all over the place last week. Seriously, was he kidding? It wasn’t Leafs-Sabres in Game Seven of the conference finals.
Truth is, it would have been embraced if the Rogers people were reasonable at the start rather than alienating potential customers with prices that were higher than Cheech and Chong. Plus, fans had to buy tickets for all eight games. What to do? Feed the family or watch two rivals decide which is worse?
Anyway, Toronto likes the Bills the way Utica likes the Bills. It’s not overflowing with die-hards.
If the geniuses running the show really want to satisfy their customers today, they should play the Bills-Dolphins game on the field and the Cowboys-Steelers on the video scoreboard.
Dallas is the top team in town, making TO a favorite in TO. Pittsburgh and Green Bay have their supporters. Buffalo is right up there with, well, Miami. Estimates last week had as many as 10,000 Dolphins fans going to the game, which could very well outnumber fans from Western New York.
Heck, why not stage that game at another neutral site, such as the Orange Bowl?
Of course, at the time the agreement was reached, the spin suggested the Bills’ game in Toronto was about good intentions and better relations.
For Toronto, they said, it was a chance to hold an NFL game during the regular season with more entertainment to follow. It was a precursor to the Center of the Hockey Universe someday getting its own NFL team, if not this NFL team, a communal showcase by a major market designed to impress the masses.
For the Bills, they said, it was an opportunity to keep the franchise viable so poor, small-market Buffalo could remain competitive. Or it was a means of celebrating the NFL in Canada after its people supported the Bills. There were suggestions it would give Bills fans financial relief for a week, as if they cared about holes in your shoes.
Meanwhile, they were trying to cut a hole in your pocket.
The sorry souls in Toronto were foolish enough to get caught up in the swindle. Once again, Bills fans were held hostage with not-so-subtle hints about relocation. There’s a perception out there that if the Bills split town there would be nobody left to clean up the tumbleweed. We’re not that shallow.
Are we? Luckily, only a few thousand people from Buffalo were duped into overpaying for tickets. Heck, a few thousand Western New York natives attended the Buffalo game Saturday night — against the Tampa Bay Lightning.
Rogers and his Toronto investors didn’t know, but have since discovered, that they overplayed their cards. They turned off the average fan, the very people who helped build the NFL, not to mention those who filled Ralph Wilson Stadium every week while cheering for lousy teams for nearly a decade.
The Bills are gaining about $10 million for Sunday’s game, some $78 million in all, or some $93.6 million Canadian. We’ll see where the money goes. Good for them, so long as they know that selling out often comes at a hefty price.
Sadly, they don’t care.
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