Tuesday was the day that bidders interested in buying the Buffalo Bills filed their official bids. Donald Trump sounds like he is already backing out by announcing that the price for sports franchises has become so stupidly high that it isn’t worth placing a real bid. A rare moment of clear thinking from the Donald.

Let’s set something straight here; Jon Bon Jovi is not looking to buy the Buffalo Bills on his own. Jon Bon Jovi is the face of a group that is actually funded, almost completely, by Rogers Communication in Toronto. Jon Bon Jovi is being the “face” of this group and he is making only a token contribution to the nearly $1 billion the Bills will certainly sell for. But from the beginning, the “Bon Jovi group” has made nothing but mistakes.

Somehow along the way, a long time ago, it was revealed that Bon Jovi and the Rogers people want to buy the Bills and move the team to Toronto. At first, Bon Jovi said nothing. Now it has all but been confirmed that if Jon Bon Jovi’s group buys the Bills, then the team will move to Toronto by 2020.

The big question is – why?

The Bills have played several preseason and regular season games in the relatively small Rogers Centre in Toronto (it only holds 54,000 for an NFL game) and none of those games sold out. The ones that were on television started the first quarter with the stadium nearly empty. By the time the Bills fans from Buffalo were done tailgating and started to filter into the stadium along with the thousands of people who were given free tickets to make the stadium look full, the game was half over.

The only people in Toronto who want the Bills to move there is the Rogers family. Every single other Canadian that has commented on the subject either does not want the Bills or wants the Bills to stay in Buffalo. To move the Bills to Toronto, the city would need to build a new stadium. That is actually convenient because the CFL team, the Toronto Argonauts, is going to need a new stadium in a couple of years as well because the Blue Jays are going to be throwing the Argos out of Rogers Centre.

So to help smooth over this whole transition with us fans, the Rogers family hooked up with famous rock star Jon Bon Jovi…and now Bon Jovi is the most hated man in Western New York. That is some good business planning, right there. If Bon Jovi and the Rogers family win the bid, the fans know that the team is moving. That means that ticket sales will slowly dwindle down to nothing and the last two or three seasons could be played in front of an almost empty house.

The Rogers family, for some inexplicable reason, thinks that Buffalo football fans will follow the Bills to Toronto. It is a well-known fact among sports fans in WNY and Southern Ontario that Buffalo sports fans do not travel to Toronto to see any games. We don’t go to see the Leafs play the Sabres in the Air Canada Centre, and the legions of Yankees fans in Buffalo would rather drive to the Bronx to see the Yankees play than go to Toronto.

Toronto sports fans, however, seem to love coming to Buffalo for sporting events. By picking up the Bills and moving them to Toronto, Rogers will have created a situation that will cause complete financial collapse in less than five years. In Buffalo, the Bills sell out the stadium and remain financially viable. In Toronto, the franchise withers and dies. It does not take a genius to figure that out, but apparently, it has eluded Bon Jovi and the Rogers family.

So with the Donald out, that means that Rogers wins and the worst business decision in sports gets put into action, right? Not so fast. Everyone seems to be forgetting one very important and stupidly wealthy person – T-Pegs, also known as Buffalo Sabres owner Terry Pegula.

Two months before all of this hubbub started, T-Pegs sold exactly $1.7 billion worth of property that he owned for cash. Then, he announced that he is bidding on the Buffalo Bills. The Rogers family has a lot of money, but it is doubtful that they have $1.7 billion extra. It is money that is literally burning a hole in T-Pegs’ pocket and he could, conceivably, throw the whole thing at the Bills.

What would T-Pegs do with the Bills? He would finance his own downtown stadium and then, just as he has done with the Sabres, he will also finance a series of attached businesses that will significantly aid in revitalizing downtown Buffalo. He will do all of this without asking for a single dime from the taxpayers. How do I know that? Because he has already personally funded millions of dollars worth of construction projects in his own little slice of downtown and he has billions more to go around.

If the Bon Jovi group wins the bid, then the NFL will be facing a problem it cannot solve. Someone suggested that, since Toronto is only 90 minutes away, having the Bills play in Toronto would not be considered relocation. The league can play all the games with the wording that it wants, we would know the truth.

These will be anxious times in Western New York for the next few days. The Bills do not have nearly the economic impact on Buffalo that the Sabres do, but losing the Bills would be a kick in the gut that this area would take years to recover from.

Can T-Pegs save Buffalo again? Sure he can. Will he? Until we hear the final bid results, we are all just living on a prayer.

Nick Oliver is a resident of Niagara County and die-hard Buffalo sports fan. His column can appears every Wednesday and it gives sensible commentary a bad name.

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