“You always want to take care of everything at hand. Take it for the moment and take advantage of it.”
— Buffalo Bills linebacker Takeo Spikes

Though I’m wrapping up my third NFL season as a resident of the greater D.C. metro area, I can hear the anguished cries of Buffalo Bills fans from over 400 miles away. Remarkable thing, the Internet is.

Last Sunday’s 35-7 demolition in Orchard Park by New England is more galling than usual given the epic, maddening collapse into a 24-23 loss at Miami after building a 21-0 lead back on Dec. 4. It’d be a safe assumption the Bills would be so desperate to atone for the Miami abomination that they’d offer fans more than a porous, incompetent defense and borderline retarded offense.

If one thought that, one would be sadly mistaken. Is anyone really surprised the coach suspended the second best receiver in franchise history over seemingly nothing? If Willis McGahee crashes the team bus into City Hall on Saturday, would you be shocked?

All in all, these past two weeks have revealed the depths of the Bills creative talents: every week they find a new way to lose games and break hearts. These past few years of frustration and futility have returned the franchise to its historical roots: mediocrity.

I came of age during the Jim Kelly era. My first Bills memory is them winning the AFC East in 1988. But as those days recede into the dimmer, darker corners of memory, what we are left with isn’t pretty. But what we are left with is actually typical for the franchise.

With exception of the Kelly era and two AFL Championship teams of the mid-1960s, Buffalo has been a mediocre franchise. The late 60’s brought horrible records which brought us O.J. Simpson, who ended up butchering two people decades later. The 1970’s saw a single playoff appearance, a loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers. The 1970’s also brought twenty consecutive defeats to the Miami Dolphins. An AFC East title in 1980, then twin 2-14 campaigns before the arrival of Kelly, Bruce Smith, Thurman Thomas, et al.

Between Jan. 1, 1989 and Jan. 1, 1997, the Bills played 19 playoff games, 10 of those in Wilson Stadium. Since then, they’ve played in two, losing both on the road. The last home playoff game was a Dec. 1996 loss to Jacksonville. (Hat tip: Jerry Sullivan and Lexis-Nexis).

Ah, good times.

The new century has not been kind to the Buffalo Bills. Their record each year thus far this decade:

2000 — 8-8
2001 — 3-13
2002 — 8-8
2003 — 6-10
2004 — 9-7
2005 (so far) — 4-9

What makes this particular stretch of futility galling is that the league is so watered down, that parity is so rampant, a number of franchises have gone through multiple cycles of boom and bust. In 2001, the Chicago Bears were a surprising 13-3. In 2002, they plummeted to 4-12. This year, they own a 9-4 record. Boom, bust and back to boom again.

Meanwhile, the Bills bust, rise to flat, bust, rise to flat and bust again. A Dec. 5 Associated Press story highlighted the awful truth. Buffalo compiled an AFC-best 102-58 record in the 1990’s. Beginning with the 2001 season, the Bills are 30-47, fourth worst in the league.

And that doesn’t include the gut-wrenching awfulness of the Houston Texans.

The Bills will miss the playoffs for the sixth year in a row, the longest stretch of drought for the team since the AFL-NFL merger during the Nixon Administration. Since the 2002 realignment of four divisions in each conference, only nine teams have so failed to make the playoffs. Two of those teams — AFC North leading Cincinnati Bengals and the Jacksonville Jaguars — will likely do so this year.

The Bills will be in choice company along side such NFL dynamos as the New Orleans Saints, Detroit Lions and the Edsal of NFL franchises, the Arizona Cardinals.

Our team is as good as Joey’s team. Yay!

(Researching for this article, I visited espn.com. When I typed in “NFL playoff drought” into their search engine, the first two articles that appeared were about the Bills.)

It’s impossible not to feel a gloom permeating the fans in Western New York, a frustration of being a football have-not when even the previously pathetic Bengals are now a contender.

Sure, the second half of the 2004 season was a pleasant surprise — until the week 17 loss at home to Pittsburgh’s scrubs. Now, through the prism of this season, it’s clear the 2004 squad took advantage of a schedule that had them play the worst teams in the league (Arizona, San Francisco, Cleveland and Miami twice).

Whether the root of the problem is the defensive line, the offensive line, the coach or the general manager, I know not. Even though season ticket sales are the highest since 1993, I can easily imagine this gloom turning into contempt turning into apathy.

Tell me you didn’t feel genuine disgust after the end of the Miami game two weeks ago? Maybe even resentment or loathing? When Lee Evans failed to score on his long pass from J.P. Losman early in the New England game, the voice in my head said “Too bad they won’t score a touchdown on this drive.”

How many plays was it before Losman threw the interception in the end zone?

The Bills poor fortunes come at a less than opportune time. Now in his late 80’s, Ralph Wilson is the oldest owner in the league. Wilson Stadium (previously Rich Stadium) is one of the oldest facilities in the league, opening in the early 1970’s. Among NFL cities, only Green Bay and Jacksonville have smaller television markets than the city of Buffalo.

In Forbes magazine’s latest assessment of NFL franchise value, the Bills clocked in at only #25, a paltry $708 million — quite a return on Wilson’s original investment of $25,000 in 1959.

Wilson will not own the team forever. Whoever takes ownership after him will pay considerably more than $25,000. Rumors float from time to time that his daughters will take over ownership on the team. Given the enormous value of the franchise, if Wilson passed the Bills to his children, they would be forced to pay a very stiff estate tax, probably ranging in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

(This is the primary reason I support the GOP’s continued attempts to abolish the estate tax, “the death tax” as they call it. Vote Republican to save the Bills.)

In 1998, the Bills signed a 15 year lease with Erie County. The iron clad portion of that lease ended after the 2003 season. Should the Bills choose to leave Western New York they’d pay a penalty that started at $20 million last season and shrinks to $2 million in 2012.

“That fee, however, would be peanuts compared with any relocation deals for National Football League teams, which already are in the $300-$500 million range,” reported the Buffalo News in 1998.

The new owner — even Wilson’s daughters — would have an easy out of Western New York. Small market, old stadium, weak lease and untapped markets (Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Mexico) give ample incentive to move the franchise out in the middle of the night.

A logical question to ask is why? NFL small market teams are the most competitive of all small market teams in American sports. Green Bay has been to four Super Bowls. So has Buffalo. And who could sneeze at $700 million? Isn’t that enough?

The answer is Washington Redskins owner Dan Snyder. His franchise is worth over $1 billion, the most in the league. The D.C. metro area is one of the wealthiest areas in the country. Fairfax County, Va. has the highest median income of any area in the country.

Yet ask a group of Redskins fans about Snyder’s squeezing every penny from them and you’ll hear the Hogs’ fans squeal like pigs at a bacon factory.

NFL owners are businessmen. Businessmen always want the maximum return on their investment the market can bear. A stadium in Los Angeles can bear a lot more return than a stadium in Orchard Park.

Businesses and citizens of Western New York had to come up with $11 million to reserve seats and luxury boxes to active the lease that expires in 2012. They got the last penny in by noon on the day of the deadline in 1998.

That season the Bills started 0-3 before quarterback Doug Flutie (remember him?) took over for the injured Rob Johnson (remember him?) Even during their run of winning 10 of their last 13 games, the team struggled to sell out home games. Their struggles following Kelly’s retirement — combined with a poor marketing effort — depressed ticket sales.

If Flutie had not gone on his magical run, it’s likely that $11 million goal would not have been met. The Bills probably would have joined the Clippers in L.A. as a second transplant Buffalo sports franchise.

If we face another similar “fund raising” effort (extortion scheme) with the new owner in the next couple of years, the Bills better be a good team that fuels dreams of finally earning that Super Bowl trophy. Otherwise the current gloom that could become contempt that could become apathy could become the Bills’ ticket to the west coast and out of our lives.

Questions, comments, even more depressing statistics? E-mail mlucinski@yahoo.com

Michael Lucinski lives, loves and works in the Washington, D.C. area. He’s a graduate of the University at Buffalo and the George Washington University. Let’s go Buffalo, I guess.