Football In Canada

If you thought having an NFL game in London was a peculiar idea, you should have seen last night's game between the Bills and Jets from Toronto. Buffalo has been struggling the last couple of years because they are just not that big a market. The NFL can try to level the playing field with all the salary capping and revenue sharing their little collective heart desires, but that doesn't make it easier to attract free agents to Buffalo if the money is close and that player's other option is Miami. The Bills managed to sign an over-the-hill diva wide reciever who no one else wanted last offseason and you would have thought they won the lottery. So, the Bills thought they could try and tap into the Canadian market for a little more money and exposure and have signed an agreement to play eight games in Toronto over the next few years. Last year's game was pretty bad and this year's was not much better.

The problem starts with the fact that it's not an event, it's simply an AFC matchup between two eh-level teams. People in Toronto have no reason to root for the Bills and why should they? Being 80 miles from a place is not enough of a reason to care. Why do you think the baseball loyalty in Connecticut is split between Red Sox and Yankees? It's because they aren't very close to either city, so people pick and choose alliances. If you want to do my distance, the football fans that do live in Toronto could just as easily be Browns or Lions fans, though I don't know why anyone would choose to be either. It's much more likely they're Steelers fans, cause at least those guys win.

The other issue is that Canada has their own football, thank you very much. The CFL season just ended last weekend, and it ended with a thrilling match-up featuring a controversial ending. This isn't like trying to bring football to those who don't have it, it's more like the NFL trying to force people to convert to their way of thinking. That can't be a great plan, can it? The worse part is the NFL should know better, because the roles have been reversed. Every couple of years a spring league appears (USFL, XFL) and they always want to start right when the NFL season ends to try and capture the momentum created by the Super Bowl. The day after the Super Bowl is when every guy says, "Football is over? What am I supposed to do with my weekends now?" Those leagues want to fill that void and they're not above adding some wacky elements to their leagues to get there. In theory it should work... the reality is something quite different. So what makes the NFL think that trying to shoehorn the their brand of football into the void left by the CFL season ending would be any more successful?

The other factor is how this is playing in Buffalo. Those are some are the heartiest and loyalist fans in the entire league. And how does the NFL thank them? By taking one home game a year away from them and putting that game into the city that is the most likely to be their new home should the Bills ever have to move. It's the equivalent of forcing a guy to meet his wife's new boyfriend. That's not cool. Also, because the crowd doesn't really care and they are playing in a stadium meant for baseball, they aren't very loud. There went any home-field advantage the Bills could have had in what was a crucial game for their fading playoff hopes. So, let's review: piss off the fans you do have, alienate the city that has supported you for decades and kill your team's on-field performance, which is the one thing that would actually bring in the most new fans. No, this sounds like a great plan all the way around.