Dear Bills fans,
Our future lies in hope, the hope that a 91-year-old man has our best interests at heart.
In less than seven days, we”ll be overrun by the familiar sentiment that is an approaching Buffalo Bills season. We’ll bask in the Rochester sun for parts of a month while enduring painful preseason conversations about whether Levi Brown can be risked to the practice squad. We’ll talk about the how the winnable and losable games are lumped together, and how maybe, a wild maybe, the Buffalo Bills can be a shocking 5-4 heading into Cincinnati on Nov. 21.
Meanwhile the talk in the city is Canalside and what to do with the waterfront. There’s a new police chief straight out of “The Wire” and there’s a new deadline for Bass Pro. Restaurants are opening and closing, bubbles continue to float onto Allen Street and Eric Starchild wants to show you some jewelry he made.
Oh, and we’re now three years away from having nothing contractual connecting the Bills to Western New York.
Yes, the stadium lease expires on July 30, 2013. In other words, barring the playoffs or some remarkable hidden plans, we’ve got 21 meaningful dates left with our longtime lover in Orchard Park.
I just liked this picture for some strangely magnetizing reason.
The stadium, by the way, is a beautiful trainwreck. The beauty lies in the passion that lives there a handful of weekend days every year. The wreckage is in the painful truth that it’s badly behind 95 percent of its peers. Many in the know will tell you that its infrastructure needs thousands upon thousands of dollars of work just to keep it up to code. Even worse than that, if Bills owner Ralph Wilson were to ink a lease extension to stay in our celebrated dump, it’d be worse than simple folly, it’d be bad business.
In America’s 24-hour news cycle, the media can be quite negligent of issues until procrastination pushes them to the forefront. If the Bills were a major player like LeBron James, the stadium lease would be at least a weekly mention on ESPN, who would send David Amber to live in the city a la Ed Werder in Dallas until a resolution is met.
Speaking of James, the faux king’s punch to the throat of Cleveland propelled them past any debate and into the throne of Sports-heartbreakdom. After a decade without the playoffs and with a new on-field boss in charge, Cleveland’s reign could be less than three years long. Can you picture it? After 5-11, 8-8 and 10-6 seasons, the Buffalo Bills are ready to contend after 13 long, unlucky years when some blustery politician calls a one-hour press conference in primetime on Channel 2 to announce “The Decision”: your Bills are becoming the Portland Drexlers.
They’ll live on in your memories and the record books. Well, most of them. Just look at ESPN.com’s attendance records for the NBA. Want to know how many Sonics fans hung out during Seattle’s final seasons? Better look under Thunder, the nickname the club took after leaving their more-than-decent fanbase for Oklahoma City.
Don’t like it? Short of camping out in Ralph’s Detroit driveway, there isn’t much you can do besides hope, the great Buffalo common denominator. This is big business and it’s kind of like wishing you could go plug the oil leak with your finger. Fact of the matter is the outrage gives way to acceptance. You’re not hearing as much about the spill now that it’s plugged, and neither the conservatives or the liberals were mentioning the 11 people who disappeared in the oil rig explosion, anyway (That would get in the way of the money). Instead, it’s about oil storms and the jailing of some waste of life, washed-up actress who ran out of sexual preference changes to keep her in the spotlight.
Enjoy what you have while it’s here, boys and girls, because the NFL is not going to let anyone on the broadcast of that first non-Bills franchise game mention you. It’s going to be about the long-suffering fans of San Antonio, PDX or San Jose finally getting an NFL team.
So, back to that hope. Hopefully this ends up being all-for-nought, and Wilson has a back-up plan about which he’s told very few people. Hopefully, this is the spot where it would’ve paid off for me to be naive, or optimistic. The pessimist in us points out that our owner is actually older than fascism, as we pointed out on Wednesday’s “The Late Nick Mendola” program on WECK, but as Bills fans we’ve decided to eschew this fact fairly often with the excuse that it’s impolite to talk about a person’s demise, even a person we indirectly call “our owner.”
How about you? Three years, friendos. God, how I hope I’m wrong. I know that as a radio talk show host, the Bills leaving is a topic you ignore because you don’t want to be another bitter-voiced downer. Plus, you want people to listen. But ignoring the precious few dates we have left in order to focus on simple hope in a nonagenarian who’s looked out for us in the past seems precarious at best.
Instead, I’m going to talk about this topic here without fear, and take care of our city at every other turn. I’m going to go to locally-owner restaurants instead of national chains. I’m going to snag by tee shirts from local printers instead of the mall. I’m going to drink local beer, buy local plants and run my small business for continued success at home. I’m going to aim to “Buy Buffalo” in the hopes that others do the same. That’s hope I can handle.
When and if the Bills leave, I’ll be upset, but I won’t be caught miserably offguard. Our region has given far more to that team they’ve given us, and that isn’t an insult to the Bills. The fact that the team is still here is a high-five to Ralph Wilson, but it’s way more of a high-five to us. For goodness sake, other cities have similar city populations to Buffalo, and they don’t have football teams. The best way to keep it that way is to take as much pride in our businesses as our NFL team, and to get informed in local voting to get the best folks running this joint in the quickest fashion possible.
Go Bills,
Nick
Email: nickonweck@gmail.com
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The Bills leaving would be the final psychological blow to the idea of what we “want” Buffalo to be. We all had/have visions of that one sports championship putting Buffalo on the national map for something other than decline and weather. The Sabres and Bills allow us to rub elbows with the likes of New York, Boston, LA, Chicago, Philadelphia, etc., and this very exposure has led us to aspire to be something we are not, and something we will never be…and, something we don’t even like.
We will never “hang” with the New Yorkers, Los Angeleans, Bostonians, etc. We reject the fast pace, the materialistic focus, and the fend-for-yourself lifestyle. We value community too much, and value the journey towards Progress too highly to allow such things to consume us. We are taught, in culture though, that those “it” places have all the things we need. Well, I believe we must let that notion die, right now.
What is much more attainable, and much more practical, and much more honest, is to strive to be the next Raleigh, NC: a place known for its community, its education, and its ease of living. Or the next Portland, OR. Both are cities doing what they do well, with a bit of sports sprinkled into the mix. Too many great community leaders, self-starting businessmen and women, and positive infrastructure are here around us for us to latch onto a greedy team jumping ship. We don’t believe in greed in Buffalo; we were all raised humbly to reject it.
So, if the Bills leave, I agree Nick, I will be sad. But this city has done just about everything it could to keep Mr. Wilson a millionaire, to get Jim Kelly and Thurman Thomas in the Pro Football HOF, and they have also reciprocated. But we are more than chicken wings, jokes about snow, and most importantly, a football team. A rather putrid football team at that. We are a place I am proud to raise my family in, a place I am proud to invest in, and a place that I know is destined for greatness, in its own special way.
Our greatness will not be reached when an athlete wearing our colors hoists a metal trophy. It will be in the way we stick together, and keep working to turn around this city.
As a life-time Bills fan I have never been to Buffalo. I would be devastated if the team left Buffalo. Times are tough now, but good times are coming. I hope to get there soon to see my first game. When the team wins more people come and visit, which is good for any cities economy. If Nix and Chan win the Bills could back and bigger than ever. You guys have a decent national following. I love that my team is from a solid city!
The Bills sit in the 50th media market and within an hour of the 51st media market in the US and within a bridge crossing from the the top population and media market in Canada, making it the #6 population region in North America behind Northern California. What the team does not have is corporations to buy the expensive seats. The Canadian Corporations barely support the Raptors and the Jays (yet they want a second hockey team.) The Bills have done a terrific job regionalizing the team, but a poor job at winning the hearts and minds of a young generation that has jumped on the Sabres fan-wagon. If you look at the new Forbes list and study the situations in San Diego and Jacksonville the Bills are not going anywhere. The state of NY is a mess and Buffalo is pretty messy too. The NFL needs the Bills to be a better football team. They also need the Browns and the Texans to be better football teams. If this team wins; everything will fall into place. If not, apathy will be what sends this team elsewhere. Nobody will spend a decade throwing money at team that loses. When the Bills are winning the sense of community and pride is unrivaled. What is the difference between Toledo and Buffalo, it is easy, the Bills.
Nick,
Great article. I don’t live in Buffalo anymore, but I do live and die Bills/Sabres. You hit it right on the head. We’ve been lucky to have this team as long as we have. I hope I’m wrong, but I think there’s no way the Bills stay in Buffalo post-Ralph Wilson.
I need to add your site to my favorites. I’ve missed your writings over at WGR550.com.
Your old Coast Guard friend, Jeff
I don’t live in WNY anymore but still watch the Bills every weekend I can.
I fear to that the Bills time in WNY is coming to an end. Ralph is getting closer and closer to the “Endzone in the clouds” and nobody seems to be able to step up and rescue the Bills.
I know Jim Kelly has passion for the Bills but not sure he can line up the funding to purchase the team.
I figure Chan Gailey has those 3 years to build a winner, if he doesn’t, I expect somebody to buy the Bills on the cheap and move them to LA who has no team, or a place like San Antonio. If that happens, whatever will the Bills faithful do on Sundays.
They will be called ” LA BILLS” Sounds hispanic huh ?
There is no way I am going to become a Browns, Giants, or Jets fan.
I guess all good things come to an end maybe its time for the Bills to get off the stage.
Maybe there will be a “Miracle on Lake Erie”
Signed
Forever a Bills Fan
Camping out in Ralph’s driveway? You may have something there…
we’ve got 21 meaningful dates left with our longtime lover in Orchard Park
2011 will lost to a lockout so that number shrinks to 14.
:(
[...] Mendola crafted a foreboding piece last year about the expiration date of the lease the Bills hold with Ralph Wilson Stadium, and the [...]