Buffalo Bills: How to Really Turn Them Around

Back in the spring of 2009, I was reading about the World Baseball Classic on another sports blog and was amazed at the number of comments spewing open hatred for Kevin Youkilis when he made an appeal to the American public to show more support.

Though sports blog participants are supposed to leave discreet comments, these contained enough four letter and hatred words to do organizations like the Ku Klux Klan proud.

After I read them, one pattern became apparent to me. The most bitter ones came from people who were unemployed and struggling to make ends meet.

All seemed to resent a rich sports star making an appeal for support while they, "the common people," were struggling just to survive. Youkilis' appeal seemed so remote from their lives that it provoked a bitter response.

Flash forward to today, when the NFL, the NHL, and other professional sports leagues are donating money for Haiti and appealing to the public for contributions.

What do these two incidents have to do with turning around the Buffalo Bills, a team whose very existence may be threatened after the Super Bowl when the Los Angeles stadium group starts to solicit an established NFL team, including Buffalo, with the uncertainty about what will happen when owner Ralph Wilson dies?

Because, behind the turmoil of the Bills is the harsh reality of the people who made the bitter comments against Youkilis.

Behind the threat to the Bills existence in Buffalo is the ugly statistic of nine percent unemployment in Buffalo.

Buffalo has never been a glamorous city, especially when compared to its cross-border neighbor, Toronto. Unemployment makes it even more unappealing and as far as the Bills are concerned, a threat to their very existence.

Unemployment means that fewer local people can afford Bills tickets or merchandise. 

Unemployment means that the Bills play one game a year in Toronto and appear on Los Angeles's hit list.

Also to be noted is the unrecorded statistic of underemployment. You can't buy much Bills stuff if you are working in places like a fast food restaurant at minimum wage.

Buffalo is not alone in its misery. The mighty Detroit Red Wings of the NHL don't sell out like they used to for the same reason.

I imagine if I investigated the cities of every professional sports team of every league in North America, I'd find a lot more.

One only has to watch Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 to see how Flint, Michigan has been gutted to get an idea of what it's like for the unemployed and underemployed of North America.

This process began with the recession of 1990, and the result has been a division of society in both Canada and the United States.

The middle class began to disappear; the fortunate few moved upward, while the rest began to sink toward poverty. The second recession beginning in 2008, caused mainly by the greedy financial maneuverings of the "privileged," has made things worse.

What does it mean to be unemployed or underemployed?

It means your dreams and hopes die while you begin to feel you are worthless.

It means watching your friends go to Bills games while you are left behind.

It means watching them buy all the things you want while you spend your money just trying to survive.

It means watching others start to look down on you and kick you while your down.

The situation in Buffalo is so grave that the market base of the Bills has weakened and the existence of the team is in doubt.

I have berated Ralph Wilson and the NFL in many articles about their exploitation of Toronto. While many Bleacher commentators have agreed with me, some Buffalo fans have expressed that it is OK for the Bills to plunder Toronto. They think Wilson is doing the right thing.

All I can say is: What is Wilson doing about the root cause of Buffalo's misery...unemployment?

The NFL and other sports leagues make a lot of what their players and charities do.

You see players going to schools to talk to kids about the evils of drugs and other problems. You see them and their wives distributing food at food banks.

You see them make appeals for disasters like the one in Haiti.

But in the end, these are all band-aids. The surest way to turn somebody's life around is to provide them with an adequate, steady income.

How many lives would the average yearly salary of just one professional player in any of the four major leagues improve?

Players are paid at salaries that are beyond the beyond, and the owners make even more.

So what is Wilson doing?

He's playing games in another city, leaving dry, parched Buffalo behind. Perhaps one day the Bills will move to Toronto.

He'll listen to whatever the L.A. group pitches and then make a decision instead of saying now that he is not interested.

He hasn't named a successor who will commit to keeping the Bills in Buffalo. Gary Bettman, where are you when we need you?

What is the NFL doing?

It is refusing to quash the interest of the L.A. group, which could be stopped by either announcing expansion or warning them against approaching its existing teams. The NFL has a long record of this in Oakland, St. Louis, Baltimore, Houston, and Cleveland.  So much for fan loyalty.

It enforced the blackout rule, which means that unemployed people who can no longer afford to buy tickets won't be able to see their team on local TV.

It encouraged the building of new luxury stadiums like the one in Dallas and the one to be built in Los Angeles. See how many unemployed people can afford to attend games in them.

It did not stop Wilson from playing games in Toronto at the kind of outrageous ticket prices that made even the most die-hard Toronto NFL fan who wants a team in the city think twice before spending his money on the Bills.

Also, the NFL and other professional sports leagues are shifting more of their games to cable/satellite TV, which unemployed people can't afford.

Why doesn't Wilson, the NFL, and other professional leagues sit down and fertilize their own fields, work with organizations to find ways to put money back in the hands of the unemployed, and make their voices heard again? That's what's needed in Buffalo and other cities.

They're the ones who will buy your tickets.

They're the ones who will buy your merchandise.

They're the ones who will subscribe to cable/satellite TV and boost your TV ratings.

Until something is done to put back what is taken, certainly in cities like Buffalo, the fan base will continue to erode and the team's existence threatened. More Buffaloes exist across North America.

Instead, we have the strange situation of sports leagues like the NFL making appeals to help a faraway island but doing nothing about relieving the misery of their own supporters right on their own doorstep.