Five years ago, when things were going well for the New York Jets, Rex Ryan was from Toronto.
He wasn't really. He was born in Oklahoma. His truly formative years were spent in Chicago. But he was here long enough to play road hockey and have a sporting epiphany at a Blue Jays game. That's good enough for us.
The city happily co-opted Ryan when he was a charismatic genius winning NFL games through force of will.
Then, as they tend to do, things went sideways. Ryan's Jets started losing – and miserably. Our other close connection to the NFL, the city of Buffalo, began to develop a serious hate for us.
For a while there, Toronto and the NFL were splitting up, but still living together. It was awkward, but familiar.
This is the Toronto way. You're from here as long as everyone loves you.
You screw up – hello, Ben Johnson – and you get home one night and Toronto's changed the locks.
Well, everyone, let's welcome Rex back. He's moving to Toronto's only affordable suburb: Buffalo.
According to multiple U.S. outlets, Ryan will shortly become the coach of the Bills on a five-year, $27.5-million (U.S.) deal. Only in sports management can you fail utterly and get a 40-per-cent raise.
The quick take boils down to "Why would anyone anywhere want to get involved in this mess?"
Ryan was fired from a decent defensive team with a bunch of offensive issues, key among them an overawed young quarterback, Geno Smith. The Bills are the same team, with E.J. Manuel in place of Smith.
Buffalo had a veteran pivot, Kyle Orton. He took a walk one day and never came back.
Buffalo's last coach, Doug Marrone, decided he'd rather be unemployed than run this team. Because some nitwit put a proviso in Marrone's contract that he would continue to be paid whether or not he chooses to work, Marrone fled the city.
This isn't just bad business. It puts the foundations of capitalism into doubt. Apparently, Marrone thought he was a lock for Ryan's old job in New York, which promptly went south. He's probably not going to find another head coaching job this year, and maybe ever.
After saving the team from the contagion of foreign money, it's also starting to look like local saviours Terry and Kim Pegula are capable of Al Davis-level kookery. They're not there yet, but the fact the couple felt the need to sit in on coaching interviews is worrisome. NFL ownership changes people, and not for the better.
Take a look at Jerry Jones before he bought the Cowboys. He's gone from Dudley Do-Right to Gollum.
It's been 15 years since the Bills made the playoffs. Western New York is football's Bermuda Triangle: No one gets out of there alive.
Ryan's arrival changes things. Maybe not in a football sense – that may never get any better. His track record isn't heartening.
What it changes is the conversation. For too long, Buffalo has been a pit of despair in sporting terms. In the off-season, they grease the walls.
Something about the parallel decline of a formidable industrial hub, the desolate downtown and the wretched teams combined to predetermine destiny.
Nothing was ever going to work out there, no matter what they tried.
In recent years, the city's been on a major upswing. You want a fun night out – try Buffalo on a Saturday.
The teams are still lagging behind. Whether or not he ends up there, Connor McDavid isn't going to change that calculus any time soon.
But Ryan – a man with outsized personality who had real options elsewhere – is capable of altering the mood around the city. He isn't some mope looking for a last chance or some sad holdover from the nineties glory days trying to make a buck. He chose them.
For the first time since Marv Levy was there, the Bills have a coach who's as big a deal as the team.
Ryan is more than that. He's fetishized for his cool-and-possibly-kinky dad persona, but it comes naturally. He looks like he's genuinely enjoying himself.
Increasingly, it's a league dominated by affectless human calculators – the Bill Belichicks and Chip Kellys of the world. Ryan is one of the last guys in the NFL who doesn't pretend he spends 25 hours a day thinking about football.
Buffalo's about two hours down the road, but from this vantage, it's never seemed further. Before the Bills in Toronto nonsense, it was easy to live on the other side of the border and be a Bills fan. Many still are. I try not to interact with these people, in case their cooties are contagious. They're the sort of people who'd bring a cat to a dogfight. But whenever I see them – slumped in doorways and begging for draft picks – I feel something like pity.
Those people are a lost sporting tribe right now, shunned by Buffalo as FOBJs (Friends of Bon Jovi).
Using his Canadian connection, Ryan can heal that cross-border wound in his first news conference.
He's probably never going to win anything in Buffalo. That organization is too deep in the mud for him to push them out alone. But he can make rooting for the Bills feel like fun again – and renew it as an international concern.
Cathal Kelly