It’s time for the Buffalo Bills and Rogers to pull the plug on the Bills-in-Toronto series, dammit.

They gave it a good try, but it’s just not working.

Hey, I’m an NFL columnist based in Toronto and it brings me no joy to write this, but the series has been a failure for every party involved. Some would say an embarrassing failure.

It’s getting worse, too, and no one’s to blame. Certainly not Bills-in-Toronto executive director Greg Albrecht. Same goes for Bills president and CEO Russ Brandon and Albrecht’s counterpart on the Bills, vice-president for strategic planning Mary Owen.

Short of the Bills turning into a powerhouse next season, the series is simply not fixable in the short-term.

I thought the series would finally turn a corner this year. I thought wrong.

Perhaps Brandon has come to the same conclusion. On his weekly radio spot Wednesday morning on Buffalo’s WGR 550-AM, he surprisingly said the following when asked about the series:

“One of the things I said to you and the fans on Jan. 1 of this year was I was going to review every phase of this operation, and this series comes within that framework. There is a full evaluation that will take place on all of our business (including) what this series means, and I’m going to look at it very closely.

“It has been a challenged market there and certainly has not translated into enough wins for us there.”

It was the first time anyone from the Bills -- outside of players, of course -- has publicly questioned the relevance of the Toronto series. If Brandon had no thought of perhaps pulling the plug, he didn’t have to say all that.

Can the Bills pull out of the agreement? I’m told both sides would have to agree to do so, otherwise it’s ironclad.

Who can blame the Bills if they choose to get out of it?

The 2013 edition of Bills-in-Toronto was worse than last year’s, when hundreds of Seattle Seahawks fans roared with delight as their team thumped Buffalo 50-17.

On Sunday, hundreds if not thousands of Atlanta Falcons fans -- many adorned in red or black team jerseys -- cheered as loudly as Bills supporters at times.

If faraway Seattle and Atlanta can muster nearly as many fans as the Bills, who can’t?

Just as disappointing, Sunday’s crowd was slightly smaller than last year’s -- 38,969 compared to 40,770 a year ago -- and last year the weather was horrible (sheets of cold afternoon rain discouraged walk-up sales) and this year the Bills still had a playoff pulse.

And, as the Western New York press has reported to death since Sunday, if the Bills-Falcons game instead had been played outdoors at Ralph Wilson Stadium in Orchard Park, odds are an actual home field advantage would have resulted in a Bills win.

Buffalo lost to Atlanta in overtime, 34-31, to all but seal the Bills’ 14th consecutive season without a playoff berth.

It’s difficult after six years of Bills-in-Toronto to view the series as anything but a lose-lose-lose-lose-lose-lose scenario for the six parties involved: the Bills, Rogers, the Rogers Centre, Toronto, Western New York and the NFL.

Here’s why:

1. FOR THE BILLS

For public consumption, the reason the franchise opted late last decade to relocate one of its eight annual regular-season home games to Toronto is for “regionalization.”

That is, to allow the club to tap into the “Golden Horseshoe” -- the 9 million Ontarians jammed around the west end of Lake Ontario from the Greater Toronto Area to the Niagara Region.

Brandon has claimed the number of season tickets bought by Ontarians at Ralph Wilson Stadium shot up 44% after three years of the Bills-in-Toronto series. Maybe so.

But anecdotally, I don’t know of anyone who has begun going to Bills games in the past six years, let alone as a result of the Bills-in-Toronto series. Central Ontarians I know who attend games at Ralph Wilson Stadium -- annual one-timers and season-ticket holders alike -- have been going since the Super Bowl years or earlier, and have never stopped going.

The biggest reason the Bills are contracting out one home game a year to Toronto is not so much to troll for new fans as it is for cold, hard cash.

Rogers paid the club $78 million over the first five-year deal for five regular-season games and two pre-season games. That equated to $11.14 million, clear, per game for the Bills -- more than double what they net from each home game in Orchard Park.

I’m told the new five-year deal, signed earlier this year, sees Rogers paying the Bills “significantly” less than $78 million -- probably in the ballpark of $50 million -- for five regular-season games and one yet-to-be-determined preseason game.

To pull the plug on the last four years of the deal would cost the Bills about $15 million. Some $3-4 million per year is not significant when you consider a new river of coins starts pouring into Orchard Park next year thanks to the league’s new $28-billion TV contracts.

On the field, the Bills have dropped five of six of in Toronto for a .167 winning percentage. That’s worse than the club’s awful overall success rate this century (.400).

That alone is a reason for the Bills to pull out. This franchise, of all NFL franchises, cannot afford any self-imposed obstacles to winning.

2. FOR WESTERN NEW YORK

Bills fans in Western New York boycott the Toronto games practically en masse.

One Buffalonian who knows dozens of season-ticket holders told me last week that two -- TWO -- attend the Bills-in-Toronto games.

Western New Yorkers always will view buying tickets to the relocated games as tantamount to subsidizing the franchise’s future possible relocation to Toronto, hence they’ll never get on board.

The state of New York and Erie County lose tax revenue because of the lost annual home game, too.

3. FOR ROGERS

If, as reported elsewhere, it really is the goal of Edward Rogers III -- son of company founder Ted and deputy chairman of the Rogers empire -- to some day lead an NFL ownership group, how in God’s name can this endeavour be helping him in that cause? His surname effectively is all over those empty blue seats on game day.

From an NFL standpoint, the Rogers name in Toronto for a long time will be synonymous with overpriced tickets (in Year 1, the company ridiculously overpriced tickets to an average of $183), papered crowds (more giveaways went out late last week, to “loyal” Rogers Communications customers) and months of advertisements that over-trumpet a steak not worth the sizzle.

4. FOR THE ROGERS CENTRE

Former Toronto Sun colleague Craig Daniels wrote it best about 20 years ago. The SkyDome, as it was then known, “is the place where atmosphere goes to die.”

Joe Carter’s dramatic home run won a World Series for the Blue Jays there in 1993, but it killed apparently for all time the ability of that empty-crater of a stadium to create buzz ever again.

When, years from now, the site of the Rogers Centre is home to a dozen more downtown high-rise condos, the Bills-in-Toronto series will be raised as one of the chief examples of how coldly impersonal the stadium could be, unless filled to its retractable roof with rabid fans.

Said one Bills season-ticket holder: “I’d rather drive two hours each way to experience a Bills game at The Ralph than watch one game literally across the street from where I live in that f---ing morgue.”

5. FOR TORONTO

A city as big as Toronto is deserving of a franchise in North America’s premier, most popular sports league.

The failure of the Bills-in-Toronto series has to be undermining the belief in the eyes of Americans, NFL executives and prospective NFL owners looking to bug out of their current town that Toronto has a voracious appetite for NFL football and would pack a new, proper stadium in support of its own franchise.

Why has Bills-in-Toronto failed then?

What few people outside of Toronto and Buffalo know is this: the two cities’ residents pretty much despise one another.

Buffalo sees itself as Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, and Toronto as Boy George and Culture Club.

Toronto sees itself as a world-class, five-star restaurant and Buffalo as a soon-to-be shut-down greasy spoon.

Both look down on the other. The dislike is palpable, and seared into the rivalry between each city’s NHL team -- Buffalo’s Sabres and Toronto’s Maple Leafs -- and their fans.

This is not an insignificant reason why Torontonians aren’t supporting a Buffalo football team, and why Bills fans in Buffalo won’t spend a football dime to help them.

6. FOR THE NFL

The league is lovestruck with the thought of expanding internationally. The NFL triumphs every tiny inroad into the U.K.

By contrast, there aren’t any Bills-in-Toronto series benchmarks for the NFL to brag about.

The NFL dislikes embarrassments. Intensely. And this fast is becoming one.

As much as commissioner Roger Goodell, himself originally a Western New Yorker, probably has no desire to see the Bills ever leave Buffalo, he and many of the owners who employ him must look at Toronto as a market not to be spoiled.

Well, it’s spoiling.

Dammit.

john.kryk@sunmedia.ca

@JohnKryk

blogs.canoe.ca/krykslants/