Pffft newspapers. Fewer people read them than ever. It's way better to follow your teams online, and you can tailor the coverage to your own tastes.
I'm a die-hard Raider fan. Hopefully they'll give me something more than three wins to cheer about this year.
Sorry about that D_G!
I used to think that the Bills would probably end up being moved to Toronto, with the name being changed to the Argonauts and the Argo franchise moving away, perhaps to Moncton or Quebec City, to somewhere else in Canada anyway. I still do believe that the NFL would love to make a beach-head somewhere in Canada but the thing I think will probably prevent it from ever happening is the lack of will to ever spend the hundreds of millions of dollars a stadium the NFL deems to be State-Of-The-Art.
With all the struggles to build or modify stadia of approximately 40,000 that have been or are going on in Winnipeg, Regina, Hamilton, & Ottawa, with Moncton building only 10,000 permanent seats in their new stadium, with Halifax having NEVER been able to build a stadium, despite being granted a 1984 conditional CFL franchise, I just dont see where an 80,000 seat or more, luxury suite laden, gigantic video scoreboard, miles of parking, NFL style behemoth is going to come from even in the largest of Canadian cities. The only way an NFL team would ever play permanently in Vancouver, Toronto or Montreal would be to use the existing stadia on a temporary basis, and have a new stadium to be built.
I actually think this a good thing, please don't construe this as a shot against Canadians. It shows your values are much more in the right place, while our cities in the US often assume ridiculous debt to build palaces for the benefit of billionaires that only corporate ticket holders and millionaires can afford to visit. When I was a kid football was a blue collar worker/fans game and was priced accordingly.
I think you guys could strike a little bit of a happy medium as regards stadium construction, I think Moncton and Hamilton should have built, and be building, respectively 30,000 seat CFL caliber stadiums from the get go (since thats what they both seem to want in the end,anyway). But thats just an opinion. Given the typical American position or the Canadian position on stadia construction, and having to choose one or the other, I'm with you guys.
I've been an NFL fan/follower my whole life, and will always watch on TV. But I feel the NFL has largely forsaken its working class fans and fanbase of the post war day through the 70's. I think Canadians should appreciate the CFL and its ways of doing business a lot more than they seem to. I plan to watch a lot of UFL ball this fall because I can get it, and wish I could readily get the CFL as well.
My favourite NFL team? Whoever is playing the 49ers.
Other than that, I just want to see entertaining games (don't laugh, it does happen)
As to Argos coverage...man, that's good to hear. If the people of TO can come out and support their team, then the rest of the league won't have to do it for them.
Having a good team helps, but without good PR and press, you can't take advantage of the winning ways.
That's been a real difference. The Argos are fun to watch this year, they're in almost every game and you see a team that believes it can win. You didn't see that the past couple seasons.
With the NFL failing in Toronto, people were bound to notice an improved product.
If there ever were an example of the opposite of enlightenment or a shining moment in one's life, this was it for you Backer. :lol:
Fantastic and accurate commentary ...via http://www.fieldofschemes.com many of you can educate yourselves some more about the many awful deals on the backs of the public that have gone down for sake of NFL owners in the US, with the deal done by Jim Irsay as owner of the Colts and the City of Indianapolis a truly royal screwing as one example.
I would say as re-assurance Eagle that the pendulum towards making the NFL game more accessible to more fans indeed for regular season action is swinging back the other way in favour of the fans given the labour issues. The current pace of increasing salaries and gold-plating by the owners cannot be sustained, and the rookie salary cap likely will be the first of many financially prudent or necessary reforms in the rest of this decade.
Also more of the American public, even with too many still with the intelligence of an average Wal-Mart shopper, is not going to support more of these deals that go beyond sweetheart for serious public screwing for the NFL owners in more places either.
At least now in more markets than before, usually small cities that are not considered in an NFL market, one can view five games on broadcast TV on any given Sunday for free instead of like in many NFL cities even with games sold out, as I experienced in Philadelphia and in Washington in the worst cases only three sometimes! Back in the 1980s it was only two games a day sometimes if your local team (in my case here in Indianapolis where I am for a bit longer) did not sell out.
Btw I don't count ESPN Monday Night Football in that stat.
And at least now of course one only need go pirate to watch the games online. :thup:
I'm even doing the "unthinkable" and not subscribing to cable TV when I move to my new place in Florida in two weeks. 
Almost from the beginning, before the announcement was made, before the late Ted Rogers and Ralph Wilson made asses of themselves with their greed, there were problems with the concept of the Buffalo Bills playing games in Toronto.
There was a problem with the name of the series.
The Bills wanted to call the series of National Football League games: Bills In Toronto, thus emphasizing the Buffalo team engaging in a new market.
The Rogers people wanted the name NFL in Toronto, thus emphasizing the league — not the team.
And as with just about every negotiation on this disaster of a deal, the Bills won, Rogers lost, and football fans in Southern Ontario were left to wonder what relevance any of this has.
First mistake: Ted Rogers didn’t invest in the Bills In Toronto series to lose money, and were the great man alive today, he would probably be astonished by how much this has ended up costing his company.
Rogers was convinced by the people selling this to him — primarily his right-hand man Phil Lind — that Toronto would pay ANYTHING for NFL football and when Rogers heard this, he believed a money-making venture was on the way.
But the games have been anything but.
The Rogers people, experienced in business but not in sport, arrogant to the point of not listening to those who suggested otherswise, instead relied on opinions that told them what they wanted to hear — there was no breaking point price on tickets and that significant in-game sponsorship money would help make their $87-million US investment a winner.
But what they were quickly alarmed to learn was, they had badly overpriced original tickets, had misread the market, angered those who might otherwise have been ticket buyers, lost all momentum in a city where momentum for sporting events is everything, and after an initial buzz of about 15,000 seats were sold — were stunned when ticket sales all but halted.
And panic instead set in.
The Rogers people were right about one thing: Toronto has proven to far more interested in NFL than it is in the Bills.
This is Year 3 for the Bills in Toronto series, beginning with Thursday night’s game between the Indianapolis Colts and the Bills.
It is a pre-season and thus should be treated as nothing more than that.
If pre-season football is hardly watched in the cities where they have teams, how would one expect to sell pre-season football somewhere else.
For at least a half Thursday night, players who will be cut later this month will play against players who will be cut.
Most of these players couldn’t make Canadian Football League rosters, so Rogers is asking you to pay Broadway money to watch community theatre.
It’s a holdup of sorts, and has been right from the beginning.
Another mistake: This series began with a pre-season game.
It was one thing to accept pre-season games as part of the deal, another to lead off with them.
The Bills in Toronto thing, if it had a chance to succeed, never really got out the gate.
In order to fill the Rogers Centre for the first Buffalo game, the house had to papered.
When word got out, that became an embarrassment to the Rogers people and it further angered those who had actually purchased tickets.
Why, they wondered had they paid so much when others were getting in for free?
The Rogers people believed they would do more than $11 million for every Toronto date — but the truth is they have been closer to $5 million.
They believed, as many of us have, that the NFL was impossible to screw up in this city, that there is so much interest that selling out would be child’s play, but they managed the impossible.
They took a slam-dunk product like the NFL and screwed it up.
Ralph Wilson’s Bills, at least, have made their money, which has helped the franchise remain viable.
But what has Toronto gained?
Absolutely nothing.
If the NFL once believed this was a slam-dunk franchise of the future, it can’t believe that anymore.
If anything over three years, Rogers has sullied Toronto’s name as a possible future place for NFL football.
They did what they never believed possible.
They thought they had a layup but ended up tossing up a very expensive airball.
Yes I read this article this morning.
Boy you know it must be really bad when one of the NFL chreerleaders like Simmons is now turning.
Now all we need is for the head cheerleader like Stephen Brunt to write something negative.
Ain't going to happen.
when the NFL has a lot of their teams actually losing money (before the TV Contract covers their asses)..
there is no way the Owners of the NFL teams are going to ever allow Toronto to have one when they can't even have all 32 of their teams making money.
This whole thing has been a disaster, It's funny when you think 2 years ago the amount of hype surrounding this stupid pre-season game. For today's game, there's no mention of it pretty much anywhere.
I hope Rogers goes bankrupt for their stupidity and arrogance. Looks good on that joke of a company.
Yep.
The Tor Star, like many other progressive media outlets, has shifted a great deal of content out of the physical paper and into their online offering. I get the Tor Star Football RSS feed and there are always more articles than what runs in the paper.
(Now with that said I'll add that I don't necessarily disagree with the last comment of yours Cool. 
)
Tonight's game was good for a pre-season match. You could argue that it was a success.
Nothing devalues a ticket, and eventually, a sports property like mass ticket give-aways!
Attendance was announced as 39,583. I'd say that's a pretty good argument for failure.
The real disaster if for people all over Roger's core businesses losing their jobs to make up for this arrogant management mistake. I feel bad for the people losing their jobs but as far as Management I'm glad those weak traitors are looking like turds.
Decided to see how easy it'd be to snatch up comped tickets outside the dome... I got in for $10. A far cry from the lottery that Rogers thought they'd have to have for people clamouring over all 8 games for thousands of dollars a seat.
Papered audience was most excited for beer snakes and the wave...
I will be at the Cats-Argos game tomorrow too... Oskee Wee Wee...
when was the last time the argso filled 40,000 seats?? if only, sigh
Where are all the big shot media big mouths clamoring that TO deserves an NFL team ? Some quiet I'll tell ya.
Not happening now... For one Rogers can't afford the 2.5 billion it would take and I don't think anyone will be interested in taking the gamble.