Bills Bills Bills

The bids to buy the Buffalo Bills are in, and one of them intends to bring the team to Toronto. Another comes from Donald Trump, and the third presumably comes from sane people.

I'm still on record as saying that the move to Toronto won't happen. But with so few people who think that the Bills are worth half as much as the Clippers, who knows?

Today on TSN, two of their designated experts discussed the question of just how big a team in Toronto would be. I'm sure I wasn't the only one surprised when Dave Naylor jumped right in with a claim that they would be as big as the Leafs (albeit with the "if they're competitive" caveat.)

That's not as crazy as it sounds. Toronto sports media occasionally reminisce with amazement about how in 1985, the Leafs had trouble getting any media to come to the press conference where they introduced first-overall draft pick Wendel Clark.

• Today, a Leafs first-overall pick would have to go into housing to avoid the media glare. But remember:
• This was in the darkest days of the Harold Ballard era, when finishing fourth-of-five in the league's worst division was the most they ever achieved.
• It was only 18 years since the last time the Leafs win the cup. Most of the fan base could remember the last win, and it all seemed less desperate.
• In the years before sports networks, blogs, and dedicated sports radio stations, there was less obsession with the Leafs
• This was during The Drive Of '85, the Jays' first playoff run, and that was by far the biggest sports sorry at the time.

The point is that Toronto can really throw itself behind a winning team, and that it's obsession with the Leafs in large part a product of the modern media environment. So, he does have a point.

Having said that, we've seen how a mediocre Jays team can fade into the background. And the usually-bad Raptors can fill seats, but not really enter the public consciousness. If a Toronto Bills were as successful as, well, the Buffalo Bills, they wouldn't put a dent in the Leafs' support.

The really shocking part of the debate was when they addressed the question of locals' dedication to other teams. There's plenty of NFL fandom in Toronto, but that didn't translate into success of the Bills in Toronto games. And that's largely because most of that fandom is spread among the league's 32 teams, rather than behind the Bills. Would that still be a problem if the team were permanently in Toronto? I doubt it, and Naylor did too. But the bizarre part was that he made the point by drawing on the experience of newer NFL teams, like Carolina and Jacksonville. That's strange, because Jacksonville has been the league's least financially successful team for years. They have famously had to tarp-over thousands of seats in their stadium so as to reduce the seating capacity, so the team will sell out and avoid blacking out their games locally. Indeed, I thought Toronto's best chance at getting a team would be if the Jaguars were also available. So the Jags were a terrible example to bring up, since they are the counterexample to the assumption that NFL teams will be successful everywhere.  If a team deep in the heart of football country is having so much trouble drawing fans, it has to challenge the assumption that a team will be successful in Toronto.