Posted on 03/25/2014 12:22:01 PM PDT by massmike
The NFL announced Buffalo Bills owner Ralph Wilson died Tuesday. He was 95 years old.
Wilson was the last of the original AFL owners. He founded the Bills in 1959 for the start of the league.
The Bills moved to the NFL when the two leagues merged in 1970.
Wilson was named to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2009.
The Bills were AFL Champions in 1964 and 1965, and they won the AFC Championship four years straight from 1990 to 1993 under Wilson. He was the longest tenured NFL owner.
(Excerpt) Read more at nesn.com ...
Schumer and Cuomo do not want the Bills to leave on their watch. Not that they care about football, but they don't want the negative publicity. They will open the NY State checkbook if a savvy new owner who knows what he wants, knows how to deal with politicians, and squeezes them appropriately.
I hope Bill’s fans will help keep the team in Buffalo. I will know how they feel if it happens, because my favorite sport team was stolen from its fans. Of course, my favorite team still has an active fan club and we are hoping that the NHL will return our STOLEN Whalers.
They probably don’t have to do much, at least for the next several years. As part of the 2012 lease agreement with the state, the Bills’ new ownership would have to pay a $400 million penalty to move the team through 2020.
I was at the first Bills home game September 18, 1960 against the Denver Broncos.
Ah, Ron Francis, Kevin Dineen et al, had some great battles against my B's. I do miss it too.
IIRC, he bought the Bills for $25,000 in founding the AFL.
No team in the NFL will ever make it to 4 consecutive SuperBowls. That is a record that will never be tied or broken.
It would have been nice if we won at least one of them.
So what drugs are you doing today? He could have sold or moved the Bills for money but didn't. Idiot.
But Green Bay is?
Green Bay is the team for the entire state of Wisconsin and the team is owned by the people of Green Bay. The people of Green Bay will never move the Packers.
The Bills are privately owned and can be sold and moved at any time.
I think the Rams are returning to LA.
They may or Jacksonville may move to LA.
The problem for Buffalo is that it is a 19th century town in a 21st century world.
I've never understood that argument. On game day, everyone in Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, Albany, and Binghamton all watch the Bills and the 75,000 seat stadium is full.
If all of upstate is watching or attending, how can the market be said to be too small? I understand that's the conventional wisdom, but why is it considered wisdom?
The fact is that any team whose owner dies is liable to be bought by someone in another city if there are none in the hometown. You can't bequeath the team to family members; the inheritance taxes make it uneconomic.
Nonetheless, Erie County [Buffalo] and New York State will now spend great gobs of tax money to keep the team here. Circuses, you know.
The Jets and Giants might play in New Jersey but they are less than 10 miles from mid-town Manhattan. You can see the skyline from the stadium. So yes, they are New York teams as well despite being across the Hudson in New Jersey.
As for Buffalo, never understood how they could support an NFL team but like Green Bay, all the power to them if they can fill the stadium, even if it is rickety. I go there for business every once in a while and it's a pretty nondescript place. Drab run-down hotels, decaying brick buildings and mediocre restaurants. No, I don't like Buffalo Wild Wings that much. Wintertime there is a real drag.
If Houston and LA can lose NFL teams, Buffalo can.
The number of people in the seats does not matter to the NFL, but the number of TV sets does matter.
RIP.
I find the idea of a team in the UK to be idiotic. They don’t like the sport and the travel would be brutal.
Bump
I know that. It is quite a story. My point was that with revenue sharing and salary caps, market size really doesn't mattter.
Would more people watch the NFL in LA if LA had a team? I don't think it makes a difference. It makes a difference to the owners on profit from jersey sales and stadium profits. But TV revenue is a macro thing. The NFL is the top sport on TV. TV revenues drive the league. Owner egos drive things like the Dallas stadium.
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