Having grown up across the lake in Toronto, Buffalo was always a quasi-second home for me, as it was for many Torontonians of my generation. We grew up watching and mocking Buffalo television, largely because of its endless coverage of multi-alarm fires, often reported as being near the same intersection of Main and Fillmore.
Irv Weinstein, the bespectacled anchor of Channel 7’s ratings-dominant Eyewitness News, had as much of a following in Toronto as he did in Buffalo.
It was through watching Buffalo TV that I developed an appreciation for NFL football and a fondness for the Buffalo Bills, the city’s NFL franchise. American football allows four attempts, or downs, to advance the ball ten yards, while Canadian football allows only three. That extra down gives teams more room to improvise, recover, and take chances, which makes for a more fluid and compelling game.
My fondness for the Bills has stayed with me over the years, and I shared the sadness of heartbroken Buffalonians when the team lost to Denver this past Saturday in a nail-biting playoff defeat. The Bills played with heart, and many believe that were it not for a controversial officiating decision late in the game, Buffalo would have advanced. Instead, the season ended on a field goal in overtime.
Despite the disputed call, and despite making a number of spectacular plays, Bills quarterback Josh Allen took full responsibility for the loss.
“It’s extremely difficult,” Allen said afterward, fighting back tears. “I feel I let my teammates down.”
Let me pause for a moment on Josh Allen himself.
Allen is not a marginal figure or a developing talent searching for his footing. He is the Buffalo Bills’ franchise quarterback and was named the NFL’s Most Valuable Player for the 2024 season. Through the 2025 season, he has led the Bills to the playoffs seven times, reaching the postseason in every year but his rookie campaign. Along the way, he helped secure five consecutive divisional titles and delivered some of the most remarkable performances the league has seen in the modern era, often while absorbing enormous physical punishment.
In other words, this was not a man deflecting blame from a position of weakness.
And yet, after a game that turned on a disputed officiating call and a handful of plays that could easily have been explained away, Allen chose not to litigate the loss. He did not point to the referees, his coaches, or circumstance. He did not even point to the obvious fact that football, especially at an elite level, is a team sport shaped as much by randomness as by design.
Instead, he said he had let his teammates down.
That choice, the language he used and the responsibility he assumed, revealed more about Allen’s character and leadership than any stat line or award ever could.
Allen’s response stood in sharp contrast to General Motors CEO Mary Barra’s reaction when asked recently about the company’s retreat from its electric-vehicle ambitions, a decision that has already resulted in more than $7 billion in write-downs and cost thousands of workers their jobs.
At a town hall with automotive reporters in downtown Detroit, in a building where GM rents four floors that supposedly serve as the automaker’s “headquarters,” Barra was asked about walking back her pledge that GM would manufacture only electric vehicles by 2035.
She expressed no regrets.
“As I go back and look, everything that we knew at that point in time, we would have made the same decision,” Barra said. “Once someone buys an EV, they’re 80 percent more likely to buy another EV. Some of our ICE vehicles are more fuel-efficient than a hybrid.”
Perhaps it is true that EV owners are more likely to buy another electric vehicle. What Barra did not address is that GM showed little appetite for persuading gasoline-engine loyalists to make that leap. In 2022, Barra cut GM’s marketing budget by $1 billion, a decision her newly hired chief marketing officer later said he first learned about by listening to an investor conference call.
Barra also declined to name the gasoline vehicles she claimed were more fuel-efficient than hybrids, and a company spokesman did not provide any examples when asked.
Her posture contrasts not only with Josh Allen’s, but also with Ford CEO Jim Farley’s.
On December 15, Ford announced it would take a $19.5 billion write-down related to its EV investments and explained why. Farley did not go into hiding. He went on television, spoke with reporters, and addressed the decision directly.
“It didn’t make sense to keep plowing billions into products that we knew would not make money,” Farley said on Bloomberg TV. “We had to make this choice.”
Farley, a competitive racing driver, may have learned early that in that sport, responsibility is unavoidable. When something goes wrong, there is no one else to blame.
Farley was not merely taking a swipe at a rival when he once noted that, inside Ford, GM was long regarded as the kid born on third base who yells, “Hey Ma, I hit a triple.” He was describing a corporate culture shaped by decades of market dominance, political influence, and accommodating coverage, one in which success is often treated as a rightful inheritance and accountability as something to be managed rather than assumed.
GM’s handling of its EV retreat reflects that culture. The company first highlighted its overall positive 2025 sales results, while later disclosing through a regulatory filing that it would record a $7.1 billion fourth-quarter loss, largely tied to diminished EV and battery investments. Barra, who is quick to claim responsibility for GM’s successes, did not meet with reporters to discuss the write-down.
In fairness to Barra, she has enjoyed remarkably gentle media treatment throughout her 12-year tenure running GM. That insulation reduces the need to choose words carefully, since few reporters press her to account for consequences. It stands in sharp contrast to the accountability sports reporters routinely demand from players, coaches, and managers.
The passion in The Athletic’s reporting on the Bills, a publication owned by the New York Times, is a reminder that relentless accountability journalism still exists in sports. Coverage of Barra’s town hall, by contrast, largely amounted to stenography.
Auto writers were once among the elite in American journalism. General Motors once pulled its advertising from Fortune over critical coverage. A few years ago, the publication declared Mary Barra one of the best CEOs in America, featuring her alongside Elon Musk as an electric-vehicle trailblazer.
Fortune has long been known for its business leadership coverage. This week, its editor Alyson Shontell is in Davos, where the rituals of modern leadership are performed on panels and stages far removed from consequence.
But leadership is not ultimately revealed in alpine resorts or curated conversations. It often shows up elsewhere: in locker rooms after losses, on car racetracks where mistakes cannot be explained away, and in sports stadiums where accountability is immediate and public.
Josh Allen lost a football game and took responsibility.
Mary Barra presided over billions in losses and said she had no regrets.
The difference is not about football or automobiles. It is about how leaders respond when outcomes can no longer be spun.
And it is a lesson that increasingly appears to be absent from leading business schools.