It’s too bad Bon Jovi never did a baseball song, because this would be an appropriate time to quote a lyric that mentions strike three.
The first two have come via a pair of efforts to submit non-binding bids deemed to be insufficient by the folks responsible for selling the Buffalo Bills. The initial attempt was rejected due to concerns regarding the amount of money offered and the lack of assurances the team wouldn’t move. According to John Kryk of the Toronto Sun, the second bid resulted in another request to clarify its supposed non-relocation intentions.
The news comes at a time when the Bills process has been muddied by a moving-target bid process that apparently yielded only three offers by the initial July 29 deadline.
""We’re in weirdo world at this point,” a source close to the process told Kryk.
It’s hard to disagree. The effort to concoct a convoluted dot-connecting process aimed at organically generating leverage hasn’t worked. The far better approach would be to park a For Sale sign in front of the team facility, and to identify an asking price and other preferred terms.
If, alternatively, the sale process is going to be an auction, then hold a true auction. A hybrid process aimed undoubtedly at creating an auction-style sense of urgency without honoring the usual “best offer wins” rule of the auction ritual is creating a sense of inconsistency and unfairness that ultimately may hurt, not help, the effort to secure top dollar for the team, along with a clear assurance that the Bills won’t move.
Maybe the message is that, at a time when the L.A. Clippers are somehow being sold for $2 billion, maybe the Bills franchise isn’t worth as much as the folks trying to sell the team think it is.