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It's come to light that Toronto is eyeballing two NFL franchises for possible relocation. One of the teams it's eyeballing is the New Orleans Saints and of course... the Jacksonville Jaguars. Toronto has long been a potential city for an NFL franchise, especially with the NFL's want to expand internationally. Toronto seems like a logical fit, but they shouldn't really be "eyeballing" any teams just yet.
"They have to take care of the problem in Los Angeles first," Ford said. "Two teams are kind of in play here: Jacksonville's number one; New Orleans is the other. So there's two teams. Once they take care of Los Angeles, we're going to fly over to New York, set up a meeting with [NFL commissioner Roger] Goodell and give him our pitch."
First and foremost, Toronto needs an actual NFL venue. As it stands, the Rogers center only holds 54,000 people when fitted for an NFL game. Not only that, but the attendance and ticket demand for NFL games in Toronto has been lackluster.
The Rogers Center has hosted a total of 5 (2 pre-season, 3 regular season) NFL games since 2008. They've yet to fill it to it's 54,000 seat capacity.
Pre-Season:
- Buffalo Bills vs. Pittsburgh Steelers - 48,434
- Buffalo Bills vs. Indianapolis Colts - 39,583
Regular Season:
- Buffalo Bills vs. Miami Dolphins - 52,134
- Buffalo Bills vs. New York Jets - 51,567
- Buffalo Bills vs. Chicago Bears - 50,746
Those numbers are just the tickets sold count, as well.
Once again, the Jaguars are the "easy target" for relocation, but unless Wayne Weaver is bold faced lying and pulling the wool over everyone's eyes, I'll believe it when I see it. "If we had our own team," Doug Ford said, "we'd treat it like it's our own and build up a fan base."
Well, that's easy to say. However, if the people from Toronto aren't even filling up the small (NFL wise) Rogers Center for once a year one-off games, how do you know they'll fill it for 10 games on the season? You expect relocation to occur under the guise that if it was your own team, you'd fill it up?
I agree with Florio's take, however. This is more a politically correct method of saying they want to Bills full-time in Toronto, rather than a shared series with Buffalo.