...is the sound of the Buffalo Bills reaching into the wallets of Toronto football fans. Some of us were looking forward to welcoming the Buffalo Bills to Toronto. The eight games they'll play here over the next five years could've been the perfect complement to our existing football diet of live Argonauts games and televised NFL matches. Now that the details have been announced, more than a few of us have been priced out of attending. The majority of tickets average into the $350 per game range, and are only available if you ante up for all eight games at once.
Clearly this is a move by Ted Rogers and Larry Tennenbaum to bring NFL football to Toronto on a permanent basis. It's nice to optimistically imagine that there's 30,000 die-hards who'll continue to cheer on every Argos home game, and that the league can remain a viable. But just look at all the empty seats at a Marlie games and you realized Torontonians do not support any team that isn't perceived as big-league.
In the absence of some sort of CFL-NFL agreement being worked out, there's the real possibility that the Argos and the Hamilton Tiger-Cats will eventually disappear. The loss of the teams could void the CFL's existing television contract, and the Canadian league itself would be starved out of national advertising and sponsorship revenue by the NFL franchise. It would be crushing to watch the CFL slowly drained of life.
