Nick Mendola is covering Wednesday's Buffalo Bills press conference in Toronto. He can be reached at: nick@wgr550.com

The first time I set foot in Ralph Wilson Stadium — then Rich Stadium — it was 1988, and my dad's job was many things. He had to ease my concerns about being in the mammoth facility, shield my ears from the barrage of profanity, and make sure I could see the field. Twenty years later and on the verge of getting married, I was looking forward to the day that I bring my son to a game. Sure, he'll be 30, but it'll be fun.

The one thing my dad never had to explain to me in the late 1980s was why my football team was leaving Buffalo, and it turns out I'll never have to explain that to one of my children. That's not because the Bills aren't leaving, mind you, but because Wednesday's press conference at the Northern Lights Ballroom at the Renaissance Hotel in Toronto took my greatest Bills fears from the back burner, and thrust them onto the red-hot front of the stove.

The Bills aren't long for Buffalo.

Look, I hope I'm wrong in ways you cannot imagine, and hopefully your attacks on my email inbox will prove to be a more accurate indication of the team's future in Western New York. But what I know for sure is that the refusal of any of the day's speakers — Ralph Wilson, Jr. and Ted Rogers among them — to even talk about the Bills future in Buffalo beyond the five years and eight home games currently involved in the deal, does not bode well for our Sunday experience in Orchard Park.

Consider the quotes from Wilson:

— "To the fans of Buffalo: Hey, I can't speculate. Don't worry. Don't worry right now."

— "It's dwindling in population, in jobs. People move out of Western New York, so I would say to keep the team there, we had to regionalize. The team could not be maintained in Buffalo, and I did not want to have the team leave Buffalo because we still had hundreds of thousands of very passionate fans. I thought it would be a death knell for the city of Buffalo."

Death knell? Yeah, that sounds like a phrase an owner usually uses when he's not concerned. When I asked him how he feels this "regionalization" would affect his fan base in Western New York, he dodged the question completely, choosing rather to highlight the owners' approval of the agreement.

Businessmen before Bills fans, apparently.

And how about Rogers Communications' CEO Ted Rogers? Would the moneyman speak of devotion, or just dollars? Apparently, the latter.

"We're going to charge high rates and have all the seats sold, and standing room only all the way out to Queen Street."

Later, when Wilson brought up the New York Yankees' charging $2400-per-game for certain seats in their new stadium, Rogers quipped that, "I like it," to the laughter of many in the audience.

I wasn't smiling.

Look, I may not be telling you much that you haven't feared, but the atmosphere in the room today was one-part funeral and one-part baptism, to quote a fellow media member, as Toronto media carried mostly an aire of excitement, while the Buffalo media wondered which questions would be answered. To this writer, the music playing while several successful veteran businessmen ascended that platform sounded more like a dirge than a celebratory hymn.

Today's Ash Wednesday, and I gave up eating between meals for the next 40 days. It feels a little like I gave up a football team as well, and for a lot longer period of time.

The real problem is that Wilson's correct, for the most part, in his assessment of our region. As a business, there are incredible amounts of money to be made elsewhere. Just like so many free agents leaving town for more money, we're left hoping Wilson continues to see the merit in what we can give, instead of what he can get. It's maddening. It's mind-bending. And it's naive.

It just doesn't seems like he's going to wait any longer.

E-mails: nick@wgr550.com