ORCHARD PARK – When a group of travelers has taken a wrong turn, the most forward thinking among them are those who are first to urge turning around and getting on the right road.

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When it comes to the proposed stadium for the Buffalo Bills, we’ve taken the wrong road in multiple ways.

We need to turn around and get on the right road.

¯ First, the current Bills’ stadium once had just over 80,000 seats.

The American Football Conference championship game following the 1990 season had only 38 no-shows.

Not 3,800. Not even 380.

Thirty-eight out of 80,000 plus. That’s just under 0.05 percent.

The next day, Larry Felser, then-sports editor of the Buffalo News, admonished all 38 to bring notes from their mothers.

Subsequent stadium renovations cut the capacity, yet it’s still well above 70,000.

Which works. Not as well as 80,000 plus, but it works.

It’s tempting to think a team in one of the National Football League’s smaller markets doesn’t need a big stadium. But the Bills need exactly that.

Each year from September on, the Bills are in many ways the life blood of Western New York.

Many people who aren’t fans of any other sport root for the Bills. Those fans may well not know all of the players’ names. They may well not know a cornerback from a linebacker. Or a tight end from a wide receiver.

But, in the words of the song, the Bills make those fans – and all of the fans – want to shout.

Especially now that the Bills have what may be the best team in the six-decade history of the franchise.

For reasons such as these, the proposed new stadium’s capacity of just over 60,000 just won’t do.

By the standards of Bills’ fans, it’s tiny.

The new stadium may well be around for a half a century, just as the current stadium has been.

If we build a tiny stadium, we’ll be sorry.

¯ Second, personal-seat licenses, or PSLs, are in the offing.

What are personal-seat licenses?

They’re a fee you pay for the right to buy a season ticket.

No, it doesn’t get you a season ticket.

It allows you to buy one, for which you then pay the ticket price.

Now, it would be one thing if a PSL were a nominal fee. Yet nominal isn’t exactly the right word.

The hard truth is that non-nominal PSLs will push some fans out of the ticket market.

Yet, if we’re going to have PSLs, one would think we’d at least have a big enough stadium.

And, if we’re going to have PSLs, one would think it would have one particular feature that a stadium in this part of the country really needs, thank you very much.

¯ Which brings us to the third point.

You, faithful reader of this column, know where this is going, don’t you?

If you don’t recall, here’s a hint: Stadiums for the teams based in Detroit, Minnesota, Indianapolis, Atlanta, New Orleans, and Houston have one.

The one thing is a dome.

If we build a stadium without a dome, we’ll be sorry.

The question isn’t whether we’ll be sorry. It’s when.

Raw games in December or January can be bad enough when they start at 1 p.m.

But what about when they start at 4 p.m.? Or worse yet, 8 p.m.?

How many raw games in December or January will it take before we put our heads into our frozen hands and say, “Why didn’t we build a dome?”

Will such a stadium be far more expensive than the proposed one? Yes, indeed, it will.

Yet it doesn’t have to have every bell and whistle that the new Los Angeles stadium, which is home to two teams, has in a bigger, wealthier market.

Think of it this way: Amortize the extra cost over 50 years. That is, divide it over the 50 years – or however many more – that the stadium will last. That puts the extra cost into perspective.

But no, some in Western New York are thinking small, just as many in Western New York often do when, instead of reaching for the stars, they reach for the ground.

And guess what? Those who reach for the ground make it every time.

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We have one chance to get the new stadium right. Let’s turn around, get on the right road, and get it right.

Randy Elf has been a Bills’ fan since he was little.

COPYRIGHT ç 2022 BY RANDY ELF