Biggest city in america and we couldnt find a spot to play

Here are Peter King's bloviations on how and why the game was moved to Detroit. 

NFL game at Penn State? How Jets-Bills in Detroit came to be
Yankee Stadium wanted the Jets-Bills game. Penn State was interested if it made sense for the NFL, which would have made Nittany Lions-loving Bills owner Terry Pegula very pleased. Toronto? Well, that made sense, except that the Rogers Centre had another uniformed event scheduled this week: Bud Light Sensation, where you’d pay $112 and dress all in white (no one admitted without all-white attire) to dance to music played by famous DJs.
And we haven’t even gotten to the seven NFL venues considered during a 48-hour span before the NFL picked Detroit on Thursday night. That’s where the 5-5 Bills play an important “home” game, a division game they have to win to stay on the fringe of the AFC playoff chase. I don’t sense the Bills are that pleased to be playing in climate-controlled Ford Field; facing the Jets in some weather would have negated the Michael Vick/Percy Harvin speed game. But in the end this was a league call, and when all the options were presented to commissioner Roger Goodell on a conference call Thursday evening, and Detroit was being painted as the best option, Goodell said, “I agree.” And so it happened.
I spent some time Friday with the three NFL executives who spearheaded the nuts and bolts work of moving the game from snowbound Ralph Wilson Stadium in the south Buffalo snowbelt, where six feet of snow fell, to Detroit. And if you’re a logistics nerd, as I am, what league executive vice president Eric Grubman, director of football operations Blake Jones and senior vice president of football operations David Gardi laid out was pretty methodical—and you’ll understand exactly why the decision was made.
Let’s begin at the beginning, when Buffalo was ruled out. Grubman, just before a noon logistics meeting with the NFL staff on Thursday, got a text message from Erie County executive Mark Poloncarz, saying a snow-laden roof at a nursing home in Buffalo had just collapsed. Grubman said, “That’s it. We’re not playing in Buffalo.” The fact-finding with other stadia had already begun. Now they were in full game-transfer mode. By this time the league had already eliminated a few options, but let’s list every one and go through the process of elimination.
NFL stadiums the league considered: New England, New Jersey (MetLife Stadium), Pittsburgh, Washington, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Chicago, Detroit.
Non-NFL venues the league considered: Toronto, Syracuse (Carrier Dome), Penn State (Beaver Stadium), Yankee Stadium.
Twelve venues, whittled to one. Some were easy outs.
Planes, Bills & Snowmobiles


The epic snowstorm in Buffalo caused logistical issues for a team still in the playoff hunt but with more on its mind than football, Peter King writes.

FULL STORY
Toronto needed a week to outfit its stadium for the dance show. Syracuse had three hockey games in the Carrier Dome over the weekend, making it a bad fit even if the football game were played Monday night. Penn State and Yankee Stadium would have loved the game.
“When we consider non-traditional sites,” said Grubman, sitting with Gardi and Jones in an office inside the NFL headquarters Friday, “we spend at least a week building out infrastructure in the stadium to get it NFL-ready and turn it into an NFL facility. When we went to the University of Minnesota four years ago [for a Vikings game, after the Metrodome roof collapsed], that was a week build-out. It wasn’t just snow removal and field preparation, it was setting up NFL instant replay, coaches communication, coach-to-player—all that. Since then we’ve even expanded our technologies with a more in-depth coaches’ still photo system on the tablets that are Wi-Fi based. While some of those may be considered—Can we do without them?—it’s all part of that list of game-day technology that every NFL stadium is set for and ready to handle.”
Said Jones: “Just the frequencies for our stadiums, in order to operate all the systems that we have—coach-to-player in the helmet—that takes a lot of work to put those frequencies in place.”
“When you go into a stadium on short notice,” Grubman said, “you never know, but all of the sudden you lose coach-to-player because there’s something in the area that’s suddenly stepping on that frequency. You see what happens, potentially, is this cascade—it cannot be perfectly replicated as to NFL capability. We could still stage a game. It could still be a good NFL game, but you’d rather play under standard conditions if you can.”
So, barring seven bad NFL fits, the league was out of the non-NFL venues. The factors Grubman listed for the alternative NFL site: the weather, both leading up to the game and on day of game; size of stadium; a stadium’s familiarity with neutral-site NFL games; practice and treatment facilities for the Bills (the Jets would practice at home until flying to the city the day before the game); indoor practice facility availability; TV network preference (what, in this case, would broadcast partner CBS want?); and fan experience.
“In this case,” said Jones, “these guys hadn’t practiced, and they needed to have some time. And we have no idea when Buffalo was going to get restored, so the objective was—as soon as there’s a window to get them out, get them to a place where they can start working. And that’s what cascaded us from Sunday into Monday, to give Buffalo a chance to prepare, where they otherwise might not have had any chance to prepare.”
“Why not Tuesday?” I asked.
“The Tuesday thing we debated,” said Grubman. “We talked about it, and it was an option. If Buffalo had felt strongly about wanting to play on Tuesday, that would have ticked up. The Jets play Monday night the following week, so they have a full week. Buffalo plays Sunday, so they had a short week this week, and next week is Thanksgiving, so I think that their strong preference was to balance some preparation time. But Tuesday would have been an option, if they couldn’t have gotten out of Buffalo [on Friday].”

Weighing the options:
New England. Foxboro, with the Patriots home on Sunday, didn’t need the added congestion. And being in the same division, competitive reasons pushed Gillette Stadium and the Pats’ practice facility down the list.
New Jersey. The league didn’t want to take Jets at Bills and make it Bills at Jets. Too unfair. “Had they not already played the Jets,” said Grubman, “we would have looked at swapping. There was just no competitive disadvantage. But they played a few weeks ago, so that was off the board right away.’’
Pittsburgh. Impractical. Four high school games Friday, Syracuse at Pitt on Saturday afternoon, and a re-sodding of the field beginning Saturday at 8 p.m. “We were also worried,” said Grubman, “that if you look at the snow band and the state of emergency and the travel ban, it extended on 130 miles of the interstate east to west, and that could impact travel to Pittsburgh, obviously. So we started thinking about the movement of team personnel and equipment. Would there be kinks in that?”
Cleveland. Also in the midst of a re-sod, with the Browns scheduled for Week 12 and 13 road games. The league might have gotten the go-ahead from the Cleveland grounds crew, but the turf wouldn’t have had the time to settle before the next scheduled game, Dec. 7. And with Buffalo slated to play Cleveland next week, the league frowned on the Bills practicing at the Browns’ training complex.
Chicago. Also recently re-sodded, and if you know the history of the sod at Soldier Field combined with the late-fall Chicago weather, it’s a bad idea to add to the traffic there in November.
Cincinnati. No indoor facility, and some weekend/Monday rain in the forecast. Not a killer, but Cincinnati was not a good option. “And Cincinnati graded down slightly because they hadn’t done this before,” said Grubman.



Washington. Rain in the forecast for Sunday, and when the league looked on Thursday, there was a chance for rain Monday. The field at FedEx is problematic, but Grubman and crew said nothing about that.
Detroit. The Lions practice about six miles from Ford Field in Allen Park, in a spacious indoor facility with adjacent outdoor fields. The Lions would make the field available after 4 p.m. Friday and after noon on Saturday, and with the Lions flying to New England on Saturday, the facility would be available for the Bills’ normal day-before walk-through practice. Detroit had done this before—four years ago, hosting Giants-Vikings after the Metrodome roof collapsed—and the TV and staffing infrastructure was in place. “We had the confidence we could execute this game in Detroit on a quick turn,” said Grubman. “That just won the day. Roger made the decision on that basis.”
The tickets are free, and the league has actually given away every available seat. How many people show … who knows? A potential TV headache was avoided by putting the game, tonight at 7 Eastern Time, on NFL Sunday Ticket on DirecTV. If you’re a Bills fan in Willamette, Ore., and you count on seeing 16 Bills game on DirecTV, it’s not fair to say you can’t watch this one. The league will pay for the operation of the stadium, and the staffing, and, well, just exactly how much is this going to cost the NFL?
“A lot,” Grubman said, laughing. “We have an insurance policy with a very big deductible. It’s gonna cost us a lot of money.”
Then he turned serious. “Nobody’s going to feel good about this, not only after this game, but until Buffalo is back operating in the normal course for an NFL team, and even then there’s probably going to be players’ homes and family tolls and the city rebounding,” said Grubman. “This is not a victory lap. I don’t think that any of us are proud of anything right now other than that we’re proud of the potential to maybe get this game done in a way that makes everyone feel good.”