Is this what sports has come down to?

SCOTT JACOBS

Hello Buffalo! We’re going to play a little game today. It’s called sell out your fan base for the greener grass on the other side (a $78 million deal for five years to play in Canada’s biggest city). It’s played in a tug of war style between one really big city (Toronto) and one very little city (Buffalo) hanging on for dear life of its beloved football team.

Here’s how it works. You take a struggling city, one proclaimed by Forbes as one of the 10 most dying cities in the U.S. and you take a few of that NFL city’s games and put them in Canada. Toronto, to be exact. You take out the wintery weather conditions that have made Buffalo synonymous for rough and tumble, hard nosed snow games, and you lock their team inside a pretty ole dome.

The final thing: you come up with a dainty little logo to celebrate the occasion of the beginning of potentially ripping the roots of a team that has been around since 1960 out of the ground by selling t-shirts and hats, and whatever else the devil people buy nowadays.

Ah sports. Once upon a time you could watch games for a buck fifty. Now thats the cost of cheese, if you want it on your burger.

Loyalty? That’s a pipe dream.

“Show me the money” teams are screaming. “Show me the money” or we’ll leave town.

There’s a great line on a Buffalo Bills message board:

“I would only share my wife if the other guy shared his wife and daughter. (Raptors, Blue Jays).”

But it doesn’t work like that. There is no give and take. There’s give, as in hand over the keys to the franchise and we’ll slowly break your fans hearts. There’s take, as in we’ll buy your team and leave over-night. But there’s no “and.”

In a what have you done for me now world, the Bills are frozen in a Buffalo landscape that just isn’t up to snuff. Their economy is in the crapper, their population is declining, and the depressing freezing cold winters aren’t going away any time soon. The city isn’t exactly a beacon of hope right now. But its not their fault. There are a lot of cities with issues. Even big ones like Cleveland, OH.

But this isn’t about Cleveland, it’s about Buffalo.

It’s about the only true NFL New York team. The only NFL team that actually plays in New York, but is widely disregarded by the national media because they’re in western New York.

They haven’t made the playoffs in seven years, and the team is more known for their heartbreak and heartache then anything. The Music City Miracle? That was against Buffalo. Scott Norwood wide right? That was the Bills. Four straight Super Bowl losses? Who else but the Bills, in one of the most unbelievable happenings in sports history.

But they sellout their games, and they have classic rivalries established with the Patriots, Jets, and Dolphins.

Who cares.

When Canada’s biggest city is just a little while from you, who needs loyalty, when you can play the Dolphins in Toronto.

The Bills are one of the great over-looked franchises in sports. Their fans are some of the most passionate in the game. They sit through blizzard conditions just so they can watch their beloved Bills crush Miami one more time.

But now it’s the Bills. Buffalo and Toronto’s team. Of course, Buffalo still gets seven home games a year under this new arrangement, but its got to feel a little gloomy for a city looking for some hope, not extra despair.

Ralph Wilson is 90. Once he goes the team could too.

It’s a shame. It really is.

And Buffalo wants to market that? On their home page nonetheless? It’s not right.

Not now. Not in this economic crisis.

If you want to give them a Toronto fan base, fine. Just don’t rub it in Buffalo’s face.

They’ve done too much to support that team.

Besides, die hard CFL fans don’t even want them there. Yeah I said it, there are actually die hard CFL fans.

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