This isn’t the first time the Buffalo Bills have done the speculative relocation dance.
Ralph Wilson once threatened to move the team in the early 70s until he got a suitable replacement for War Memorial Stadium, and in response the venue which today bears his name was built. Relocation was more subtly hinted at, in much the same sense that a mob goon subtly hints at impending violence by cracking his knuckles and glaring at you, in 1998 when the Bills’ stadium lease was set to expire. Thankfully, Flutiemania happened and the luxury boxes and club seats necessary to secure a lease extension were sold.
So Bills fans ought to be used to the ugly specter of relocation by now. But this particular round of Buffalo Bills Relocation Panic, which began in November 2007 when Wilson asked the NFL to allow the Bills to play eight “home” games over the next five seasons in Toronto, feels quite different.
It’s different mostly in the sense that the Buffalo Bills now have a partnership with a specific target city – one that has made no secret of its full-time NFL aspirations, from Toronto Series organizers Larry Tanenbaum and Ted Rogers to current Toronto mayor Rob Ford. And of course, the expiration date of said partnership just happens to coincide with the expiration of the Bills’ current lease with Ralph Wilson Stadium. It doesn’t take a rocket surgeon to realize that, should the Toronto experiment ultimately prove to be a success, it’s a perfect situation for the Bills to be neatly wrapped up with a big red bow and a tag that says “To: Toronto, With Love, From: Buffalo”.
The team has claimed all along that the initiative was about generating additional revenue and expanding a fanbase, and that relocation isn’t on the table. Honestly, what’s a 92-year-old owner of a football team in an economically flailing market to do? Revenue-sharing agreements be damned, Ralph Wilson keeps crying about money, or his lack thereof. Small-market team and all that, you know. He had no choice but to sell games to the highest bidder, right?
It didn’t help that instead of throwing water on the fire of relocation rumors, Ralph added a couple more logs and doused them with lighter fluid. “Hey, I can’t speculate what’s going to happen in the future. But don’t worry. Don’t worry right now. Does that answer your questions?”
Actually, Ralph, it didn’t. We’re sort of panicking now. But hey, thanks for trying. In the meantime, allow me to attempt some damage control on your behalf four years after the fact.
Why You Can’t Blame Ralph Wilson for Playing Games in Toronto
1) Rogers paid $78 million over five years, working out to $9.75 million for eight games. Considering that the $78 million figure represents more than double the Bills’ calculated operating income for the year 2006, it’s clearly not a number for a small-market NFL team to sneeze at. (The extra income hasn’t prevented the Bills from being near the bottom in player payroll, but that’s a discussion for another time.) Although the team likes to boast that its average ticket prices are amongst the lowest in the league, there’s a downside to that in the form of lower revenues. The $9.75 million that the Toronto series in bringing in per game certainly is a shot in the arm.
2) Wilson and Russ Brandon were serious about regionalization. Take it away, Russ Brandon (via Mark Gaughan’s March 2011 Buffalo News story)!
“After three years of that experience, we’ve had a 44 percent increase in season-ticket holders from Southern Ontario to One Bills Drive.”
…
“At Ralph Wilson Stadium on any given Sunday, close to 15 percent of your fan base is from Rochester, and 15 percent of your fan base is from Southern Ontario,” Brandon said. “That’s how we make it work.”
In a crowd of 70,000, that equals about 10,000 fans from Rochester and about 10,000 from Southern Ontario.
….
“When we stood up there [in Toronto] in the press conference on the opening day of the agreement, obviously it was met with a lot of skepticism, and I understand why,” Brandon said. “I think we all understand why. But as we mentioned, it’s about extending the brand. We’ve got a population base of 5 million people above the border that’s in our demographic area that’s defined by the National Football League. And I think we’d be remiss if we did not work to bring that base and extend our brand to our friends up north. As we mentioned that day, one of the keys was to build this franchise regionally, and to have those results in three years, we’ve been very, very pleased with it.”
I think it’s also worth pointing out here that the Green Bay Packers played at least one game per year in Milwaukee every season until 1995. Today the Packers are insanely popular throughout the entire state of Wisconsin, and they remain the Green Bay Packers, not the Milwaukee Packers. To hear the Bills tell the tale, that’s exactly what they’re trying to do. (I concede that Toronto may have slightly more economic power and ability than Milwaukee to commandeer a sports team. Slightly.)
3) Maybe it’s the thing that prevents the team from moving to Los Angeles. After 16 years, the NFL remains desperate to put a franchise in the #2 TV market in the United States, and there are folks who continue to insist on including the Bills in that conversation. (Remember that the Houston Texans were supposed to be that team, but LA’s complete failure to be competent in terms of putting together a cohesive ownership group and a stadium plan – not that the NFL should still be worrying about that, right? – forced the NFL to award the expansion franchise to Houston instead.) If Wilson and Brandon’s grand regionalization plan is in fact working, and Toronto doesn’t have designs on swallowing up the Bills, they have a vested interest in making sure the Bills stay put. I’m no fan of the city of Toronto, but if we can collectively use their powers for good, so be it. Besides, wouldn’t a Toronto-LA catfight over the Bills of all things just be hysterical? (Perhaps it would also get them to stop arguing about the Wayne Gretzky high-stick and subsequent non-call by Kerry Fraser in the ’93 Campbell Conference finals that Leafs fans are still crying about. Nah, probably not. Sorry, Leaf fans, I tried.)
4) Larry Tanenbaum and Ted Rogers were hell-bent on making the NFL work in Toronto. Unlike the previous three reasons, this one isn’t a justification for Ralph’s decision; rather, it’s an understanding of the powerful desire of other entities that impacted the decision. As early as the fall of 2006 Rogers and Tanenbaum have publicly expressed their desire to land an NFL team in Toronto, and so far they’ve been willing to spend $78 million for the chance to show the world that they’re worthy. As I alluded to previously, that’s a lot of money to say no to. Ted Rogers has since passed away, but Tanenbaum’s new ally, Toronto mayor Rob Ford, has also expressed that same desire to bring an NFL franchise to Toronto. In other words: very powerful and affluent Toronto-based interests are likely to be as interested in continuing the Toronto Series arrangement as the Bills are, in a continued effort to prove their viability. Ralph Wilson is surely seeing dollar signs right about now.
You don’t need me to tell you that the Bills haven’t had much success lately. They haven’t made the playoffs since the Music City Screwjob Miracle of the 1999 season, or to put it in another perspective, two presidential administrations ago. The 2000s have been a steady stream of draft misses (Erik Flowers, Mike Williams, JP Losman, John McCargo, Aaron Maybin). Free agent signings (Takeo Spikes, Kawika Mitchell) typically haven’t worked out in the long-term, either. In some ways, the Shawne Merriman signing serves as a microcosm of the last ten years: they convince a former Pro Bowler to join the team, then he gets hurt about five nanoseconds into his first practice. In other words, not much has worked out well.
But despite the last ten years of failure (and the umpty-nine years of failure that preceded the Super Bowl teams of the 90s), at least we’ve always been able to count on having a team. Maybe that’s why we feel so threatened about the Toronto situation. They’re our team of losers, and we’ll be damned if we’re going to let Toronto just steal them away. That’s the exact feeling I had one day before a Sabres game just after the Toronto Series was announced, when I saw a Leafs fan waiting by a subway stop holding a sign that mentioned something about Drury being stolen by the Rangers, Briere being stolen by the Flyers, and the Bills being stolen by Toronto. He was obviously begging for a curb-stomping, and it took every ounce of willpower I had to not cross Main Street and kick him in the sack.
It’s easy to be uneasy in light of this potential threat – the Bills are a team with a 92-year-old owner without an apparent succession plan for when he dies. Which is something that could happen at any moment, because he’s, you know, 92. The prevailing thought is that Ralph’s estate will sell to the highest bidder upon his death, but in the end, there’s a whole lot we don’t know. Maybe there’s a succession plan after all. Perhaps Ralph has a buyer lined up – be it Jeffrey Gundlach, a Jim Kelly-led group, or some unknown knight in shining armor – but won’t sell (and won’t talk about it) while he’s alive for tax reasons. Maybe the Toronto initiative really is just an attempt to keep the team economically viable until that happens. Is that any more far-fetched than some secret backroom deal to hand the team to Toronto after a five-year dress rehearsal?
Part of the attraction to writing a series like this is that, in addition to challenging the thinking of the community as a whole, I get to challenge my own thinking as well. For four years I’ve been wearing the tinfoil hat of inevitable relocation. That the Toronto series and the stadium lease expire in the same year is just too much of a coincidence, you see. As Dana Carvey’s Church Lady character on Saturday Night Live used to say: how conveeeeeeeenient. But writing this article has reminded me that Ralph Wilson certainly had some valid reasons for what he did, and we shouldn’t lose sight of that. Right now, what we know is that the Toronto initiative is bringing more revenue to the team, and it just may be drawing in more fans as well. And if that is the case, then maybe we can’t blame Ralph Wilson for selling games to Toronto after all.
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You can read more of Mike’s articles at Roll the Highlight Film, or follow him on Twitter at @mtracz.
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