Buffalo Bills 'Threaten' To Move To Cowboys Country - Austin, Texas?
Maybe the NFL’s Buffalo Bills are serious about a move to Texas.
Maybe it's just a leverage play, a "threat,'' to help get public funding in upstate New York for a new $1.5 billion stadium.
Or maybe it's just another way to "Keep Austin Weird''?
“An ownership source tells me that Austin is a possible destination – or threat – as one of the ‘other cities elsewhere that desire an NFL franchise and would pay handsomely for it,'” ESPN's Seth Wickersham’s reports.
How legitimate is that Buffalo Bills possibility? Dubious, for a number of reasons - one of which includes Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones.
NFL owners are "territorial.'' Austin is part of "Cowboys Country,'' and the power of the Jones family and the Cowboys - power both in the NFL and in the political world - would likely be used to prevent such an intrusion.
Oh, and the McNair family, owners of the Houston Texans, surely takes the same position.
Meanwhile, the political power in New York plans on the Bills staying put.
"Governor (Andrew) Cuomo is committed to the Bills staying in Buffalo, as demonstrated by the state's contribution to the recent $130 million investment in the current stadium. The administration is fully engaged with the Bills and other stakeholders as we conduct due diligence to understand the economics around the team's proposal ahead of the current leasing expiring in 2023," a spokesman for Cuomo told to The Buffalo News.
Bills ownership' initial $1.5 billion proposal for a new stadium in Orchard Park asks that it be entirely taxpayer-funded. While it is commonly assumed that other cities would line up to go into business with an NFL team, there is no indication that Austin would do so.
More likely: Jones will pitch in, as he has elsewhere as the NFL's most muscular owner, to help the Bills get what they want in Buffalo, thus preventing an NFL team from becoming the "Austin Bills.''
Though that would be "weird.''
