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Donald Trump reiterates: He's serious about buying Bills, keeping them in Buffalo

Eric Edholm
Donald Trump reiterates: He's serious about buying Bills, keeping them in Buffalo

The Donald is not going away.

The billionaire celebrity Donald Trump, who is now famous for being famous, is hoping to add another feather to his peacock-like cap. He has stated his interest in buying the Buffalo Bills, and now he is reiterating his said interest in buying the team.

More interestingly, per the Buffalo News, Trump says he wants to keep the team in Buffalo. Or so he says.

“I’m going to give it a heavy shot,” Trump told The News on Monday from his office in Manhattan. “I would love to do it, and if I can do it, I’m keeping it in Buffalo.”

Most people believe that Trump would buy the team so as to move it to Los Angeles, or perhaps sister Bills city Toronto. But he's trying to quash that notion for now with the idea that it could hurt his chances to purchase the team if public sentiment as any seat at this table.

Trump uses sound logic: He curries favor with the locals by explaining the team's rich tradition and the local ties to the team. But then he can't help but return to personal interest on the matter.

“I live in New York, and it’s easier for me to go to Buffalo than any other place,” Trump said. “Where am I going to move it, some place on the other side of the country, where I have to travel for five hours?”

(Never mind that Trump has hotels in Chicago, Las Vegas, Toronto, Washington D.C., Miami, Vancouver, Rio Di Janiero, Ireland and Panama, not to mention several golf courses in various other locations. He doesn't seem to have troubles getting to those places.)

This is where the movie "Wall Street" comes in handy in explaining life. Gordon Gekko, the brilliant Michael Douglas character whom Trump has become, delivers a role-defining line to young protegé Bud Fox (Charlie Sheen) when explaining why the magnate must take a fledgling airline and break it up into pieces, after initially saying he would not.

Fox: Why do you need to wreck this company?
Gekko: Because it's wreckable, all right? I took another look at it and I changed my mind!

Trump is going to do what he wants, when he wants, and if the NFL owners approved him — remember, the membership must first give him a key to the executive swimming pool; 24 of the 32 teams must vote yes to any prospective ownership group — he'd try to move the team to Doha, Qatar if he thought it was best for The Donald.

But that's the key: Would the owners approve Trump over the suspected major competition, Jon Bon Jovi's potential involvement with the Toronto company Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment group? After all, Bon Jovi is buddies with the New England Patriots' owner, Robert Kraft, who quietly is one of the two or three most influential owners in the NFL, which could tilt the scales away from Trump.

The NFL ownership has something of an image problem these days, and Slate's Jack Hamilton brilliantly summed up this idea in his review of "Draft Day.

"The NFL is in an awkward place right now, the most popular kid in school whom everyone’s starting to hate, and the kid knows it."

That's why Trump getting his chance to own an NFL team, after driving a stake through the USFL 30-plus years ago and threatening to attack the NFL with a series of lawsuits aimed at breaking it up being absorbed by it, just seems a bit unlikely.

Besides, the NFL has enough unfiltered loudmouths.

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Eric Edholm

is a writer for Shutdown Corner on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at edholm@yahoo-inc.com or follow him on Twitter!