Bills Head To Toronto, Whether Toronto Likes It Or Not

I've been trying for three days to come up with an angle for a Bills-Rams recap that:

A) Hasn't already been done, either by highly paid professional writers this week or by myself and others a few dozen times before over the past 13 seasons; and

B) Doesn't cause acute pain at the base of my skull.

Having failed at this, We Want Marangi has decided to make like Chan Gailey and punt.

Instead of dissecting Gailey's play-calling, the lack of offensive cohesion or defensive dominance when it's needed most, or how any reasonable individual could find a way to keep the ball out of his most dangerous player's hands for almost an entire afternoon, we're looking forward to Sunday. Sort of.

The game itself could turn out to be rather gruesome. The Seahawks are making a playoff run in the NFC West -- a real one, not the sort of delusional scenario creation we've been engaging in around here.

Seattle is also amping up as December progresses, rather than disintegrating, like some football teams we could mention. On the same day the Bills were hesitating the game away against St. Louis, the Seahawks butchered Arizona 58-0.

But we're nothing if not optimistic around here, and have found something of a bright spot, or at least a flicker. While some Bills fans live in fear of their team being courted and whisked away by a larger, more prosperous metropolitan area, there is little reason to believe that the closest potential suitor is all that interested.

But organizers of the "Bills in Toronto" series are 0-4 in sellouts. The largest turnout was for the 2008 inaugural between the Bills and Dolphins, when a crowd of 52,134 was announced for a game in a stadium with a seating capacity of 54,000. Thousands of tickets went unused; those who did show up seemed to support the victorious Dolphins more than the "home" team, which drew only about 1,500 fans from western New York.

Since the Toronto series began, Buffalo has finished  7-9, 6-10, 4-12 and 6-10, coming into this year's Canadian date at 5-8. Even when the Bills started strong, in '08 and '11, they were in free-fall by the time they were scheduled to play their out-of-the-country "home" game.

"One of the problems with this Bills in Toronto series, aside from all the other obvious problems, is that it features the Bills," Toronto Sun columnist Steve Simmons once wrote. "The trouble is, we already have enough lousy teams in Toronto."

On Sunday, they'll have at least one more.

Read more here: http://www.thenewstribune.com/2012/12/12/2399591/fortunately-for-hawks-psys-crowd.html#storylink=cpy