A Fan's Perspective

By Peter

The problems with your football team in Buffalo are sadly similar to the
hockey problems we have experienced for over 4 decades in Toronto. When you
have a lack of leadership and vision at the top of an organization it
permeates throughout.

In Toronto when Harold Ballard owned the hockey team no competent general
manager wanted to work under him and the Leafs front office was always in
shambles. As Ballard got older and realized even he wasn't immortal, he
brought back an aging and out of date Punch Imlach to be the Leafs GM. As
you know, Imlach had led the Leafs to 4 cups between 1962 and 1967. Things
went from bad to worse and eventually all of the Leafs top players were
dealt away.

Since Ballard's death, while there was an ongoing dispute over his estate in
the 90's, the Leafs were actually run by a competent GM Cliff Fletcher and
were the most competitive that they have been in the last 40 years. Once
the dust settled, and the Teacher's Pension fund emerged as the majority
shareholder, corporate/non-hockey people were placed at the top of the
company. To evaluate their success (other than the financial bottom line)
just look at the Leafs record over the past 7 seasons.

Sadly Ralph Wilson is approaching the end of the road. A few years ago,
much like Ballard, he tried to turn back the clock to the man who had last
brought him winning football Marv Levy who had led the Bills to 4 Super
Bowls in the previous decade (much like Imlach).

Over time, I think it is clear that the best organizations are those that
are strongest at the top. Obviously, you can find exceptions such as the
Yankees who through sheer bankroll can buy their way out of mistakes, but
those are the exceptions. Look what new competent ownership did for the Red
Sox and the Patriots in this decade. The owners brought in competent people
to run, manage and coach their teams and for the most part you only see the
owners sipping champagne in the locker room and riding at victory parades.
You sure as hell don't see them firing coaches.

The situation in Buffalo has an added wrinkle as no one knows what the
future of the team will be after the owner joins the big league in the sky.
Ralph Wilson has done a lot for Buffalo and certainly for football in
Buffalo. In my view his biggest and most long lasting contribution could be
if he were to find a way to transfer the Bills to new ownership himself
rather than having the process carried out by executors and the Probate
Courts. I think it would be better for everyone, and especially the
football fans in Buffalo, if this was done through the business and
football people now rather than through the lawyers and accountants later.

As far as winning goes, that will come with leadership from the top. New
ownership would mean a chance to hire new competent people to manage the
organization and coach the team.
Not that many years ago, it was announced that the Patriots would be
leaving Foxboro and moving away. Rather than suffering that fate, with
stability at the top of the organization, their fans have been treated to a
decade that they could not have previously imagined.

Can the Bills fans too avoid the fear of losing their team, and instead
through stability and leadership at the top of the organization, achieve
new success their fans can only dream of?

For the sake of the 70,000 people we spend every other
Sunday with in the fall, I hope they can.