2755...Bills In Toronto

Absolute shambles it has been.

The Buffalo Bills are playing the Indianapolis Colts tonight at Rogers Centre, the erstwile Skydome, in the Big Smoke.

There is a saying on Wall Street, that saying being "Bulls make money, Bears make money and Pigs get slaughtered". This series is an example thereof.

When the series was designed a few years ago Ted Rogers and the owner of the Bills, Ralph Wilson, had dollar signs in their eyes. They totally misread the market. These exibition games were supposed to open the door to Toronto getting an NFL franchise. Instead they may have slammed it shut.

First off, the stadium sucks. The NFL demands a stadium that is exclusive to the NFL team these days. The Rogers Centre is exclusive to no one. Also it is too small, way too small, too dark, too dingy and, even though it is younger than my last girlfriend, too old.

Secondly the marketing sucks. One of the travel companies that is running trips from Ottawa to Toronto is announcing in its radio ads that it is "...your chance to see Terrell Owens and the Buffalo Bills take on Peyton Manning and the Indianapolis Colts..." Newsflash guys, TO ain't coming to TO coz he ain't a Bill no more; he is playing with the Cincy Bengals. The devil is in the details.

Thirdly they, Rogers and the Bills, misread the town. As Steve Simmons wrote in today's Toronto Sun "In order to fill the Rogers Centre for the first Buffalo game, the house had to papered." I was in town for that game and for the game the next day between the Argos and the Als and the street scalpers told me that the demand for the tickets to the Argos game was stronger. Toronto goes on and on and on about how multicultural it is and how half the people there were born outside Canada and so forth. Well, doh, if you are from Somalia or China or Venus it is not a stretch for you to embrace FC Toronto or the Raptors coz you are grounded in hoop and footie. The NFL, not so much.

Greed was not the only factor that brought the Bills to Toronto. When Ralph Wilson originated the team for the innaugaral American Football League season in 1960 the car based Buffalo and the Niagara Frontier and the Niagara Penninsula markets were booming. Buffalo was a top 25 market; now they are not in the top 50. The Bills inhabit the second smallest market in the league, next to Green Bay, which is an anamoly. They only sell 90 per cent of their seats, which puts them near the bottom of the league in attendance. They are also the market with the second lowest per capita income in the league, New Orleans being last. The writing is on the wall, they need to grow.

Buffalo is close to two thriving markets, Rochester, which has no stadium, and Toronto, which sort of does.

Why is this important politically? Bread and circuses. These things, exhibition games at Rogers Centre, are wont to be paid for by the taxpayers of Ontario one way or the other. Extra cops, extra busses, extra this, extra that equals you know what and you are paying for you know what.

How to fix it: In my view this is a fixable problem. Ferget about the Bills moving to Tronna or the Big Smoke getting an NFL team in the next quarter century. Toronto is not going to spend a billion dollars on a stadium on spec for an NFL team that may or may not come. But they can help each other. In my view it would be great, a no brainer, if the Bills played one pre season game a year in Toronto and played one regular season game there also. I would suggest that they play on Canadian Thanksgiving, the actual day, Monday Night Football. Start a tradition. And if they make the playoffs, play the second home playoff game in Toronto [if there is one].

One more thing: don't get greedy. That is killing it. The face value of the tix is a gazillion dollars. The Stub Hub price is 69. I betcha if you hook up with a scalp you will be able to get in the house tonite for 20.

WFDS