NFL Blackout Leaves Buffalo Bills In Cold

BUFFALO (MainStreet) -- Hey, Buffalo Bills fans, want to pay $100 million to improve a stadium you probably won't see on television for the rest of the year?

That's the offer on the table at Ralph Wilson Stadium, where the Bills failed to sell out Sunday's game against the Tennessee Titans 72 hours before kickoff, forcing the game to be blacked out on the local CBS(CBS) affiliate. It's the first local TV blackout since a matchup with the Cleveland Browns on Dec. 12 of last year, but is a bit more awkwardly timed for the organization after The Buffalo News reported that the stadium upgrades necessary to extend the Bills' lease will require more than $100 million in public funding.

Let's ignore the NFL's other blackout this weekend -- the Tampa Bay Buccaneers' fifth local-market blackout of the year for its Sunday game against the Carolina Panthers -- and once again address just why the Bills and their fans are in this predicament. Bills owner Ralph Wilson, 92, has said he cannot assure the Bills' future in Buffalo should he pass away. The front office, meanwhile, has sacrificed one "home" game each year since 2008 by lending the Bills to Toronto in an attempt to grow the team's Canadian fan base.

Fans already worried that Wilson's health and the Toronto series may result a permanent cross-border move for the Bills also have to deal with a team that hasn't posted a winning record since 1999. The window for improvement started closing when this year's team went on a 2-6 skid after starting the year 3-0. When heaped atop an average of 36 degrees and more than two feet of snow each December, that burden becomes a bit much for fans to bear as winter begins.

Buffalo fans will argue that December blackouts were common even in the Jim Kelly/Bruce Smith/Marv Levy playoff years of the early 1990s. During a 1992 season that ended in a Bills Super Bowl appearance, the team failed to sell out its two December home games at what was then an 80,000-seat Rich Stadium. A Dec. 12 game against John Elway and the Denver Broncos missed the mark by more than 8,000 fans.

Even though seating has been reduced to little more than 73,000 since then, the Bills still have problems reaching that number in the cold. Last year's blacked-out Dec. 12 game against the Browns drew fewer than 51,000 as 36-degree temperatures and cold rain tested fans' patience with at 2-10 team. The Bills' only other December home game last year, on Dec. 26 against the New England Patriots, was televised only after a local steakhouse owner bought the remaining 7,000 tickets.

Part of the Bills' problem around this time of year is the open-air stadium in Lake Erie's lake-effect path. Though drawing little more than 50,000 fans would get an NFL team blacked out in any market in the league, the more than 61,000 fans who have bought tickets to Sunday's blacked-out game would constitute a sellout in Chicago's Soldier Field. The Bills could come up 7,500 tickets shy each week and still sell out Tampa's Raymond James Stadium and the Cincinnati Bengals' Paul Brown Stadium -- both of which failed to sell out at various points this season.

Green Bay Packers fans who regularly sell out 73,100-capacity Lambeau Field in December amid average 13-degree temperatures may scoff at Buffalo fans who allow a little bad weather to keep them at home. But Green Bay fans can always rest comfortably each winter knowing their publicly owned team isn't going anywhere and can just sell more shares when it needs stadium improvements.

In Buffalo, the cold brings blackouts and long winters of worry.

-- Written by Jason Notte in Boston.

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