For many of us sports and our favorite teams provide a marker for meaningful events in our lives. Some of those events are sad and painful and for some they remind us of good times that have passed us by. Being a Bills fan is filled with many moments of frustration and some good years we wish they would return to. Here’s why I keep holding on to the hope they will one day win a championship.
Before the summer of 1991 I didn’t follow any sports outside of being aware of the Super Bowl and those stripes on the Bengals helmets I thought were so cool. Before starting 7th grade my family moved us to another town in Ohio. I tried to keep in touch with friends but knew I had to make new ones. The friends I made in my new neighborhood were all about sports. I really wanted to keep up with them. Backyard football, pickup basket ball and whiffle ball filled my summer. Not only did i have to learn how to play these sports I had to figure out what teams were good in each sport. For some reason I didn’t want to follow the same teams as my friends. So in my limited knowledge, after looking at various football cards, I picked the Buffalo Bills. My choice came down to the colors of their uniforms and the charging buffalo on their helmets, that’s it. Thankfully they were good and had plenty of coverage on Sportscenter.
It was a fun year to see my new favorite team find it’s way to their second straight Super Bowl. I barely knew what I was watching but if they won I was excited. In making new friends I was trying hard to fit in and be included with the popular kids. Middle school was brutal so if I could dress better and have better friends I figured that would help get me through the move and adapting to a new school. That barely worked.
The next season, as we all know, the Bills make their third straight trip to the Super Bowl. I wanted to have a Super Bowl party and have all the cool kids over. Sadly as that season was going my parents marriage was starting to fall apart. That Super Bowl was not only crushing as a fan, but it seemed to be a living metaphor for what was going to happen with my family. The hope that the Bills might win when they scored that first touchdown along side the hope my parents might reconcile. That 52-17 score contained more than just a final score of a football game, but the heartbreak and uncertainty of what might come next. My new friends weren’t that great, my family was deteriorating and I didn’t know what to hold on to. Being a Bills fan was a sort of comfort because I was, what I felt like, the only Bills fan around. No one was going to jump me for my big blue starter jacket.
Another season later, another Super Bowl loss. This one hurt the most because at that point the divorce was final and it was a stressful time to try to watch a game that should have been a celebration of another chance at a championship. Super Bowl 28 was such a letdown, like everything else in my life at that time.
As I got through my high school years I kept up with the Bills, but toward the second half of high school I wasn’t as invested in following sports in general. I knew their glory days were slowing down, maybe that was part of it. But really the biggest part was meeting the girl who I would later marry. We both had a bigger interest in music and spent a lot of time going to shows, listening to our favorite bands and hanging out as much as possible. She was not the biggest sports fan outside of rooting for Ohio State, which is a whole other kind of sports fan.
Fast forward a bit: I picked up interest in watching the Bills again more intently. My wife kind of married into the whole being a Bills fan thing. Our first game we went to together was late in the 2005 season when the Bills faced the Panthers. We were excited to go. It was our first NFL game and I had a dumb hope the Bills would turn around their season. Even though that was a frustrating loss and season we had fun watching together. Every season since then we’ve become bigger fans together while we expanded our family with three kids.
Moving on to this past spring my wife and I watched ‘The Four Falls of Buffalo’ together. That film brought back so many memories. I can remember just about everything about where I was and how I felt at that time seeing those Super Bowl seasons retold. While it was a bit painful to watch I felt a hope that day for something that could come later.
Here’s where I realize that seeing a championship would bring a sort of healing to those painful years of my youth. I tell my wife often that if I get to see the Bills win a title it will be deeply emotional. To have the chance to celebrate a championship with my family, my kids and my wife would be incredibly meaningful. It would not erase the pain of those years but it would definitely take the sting away from them.
Being a fan of this team is incredibly frustrating. When people say you should have faith I get it, but I’m not going to just blindly believe in what they’re doing. My hope comes from the possibility that the Bills will be champs one day. That victory will mean something more than just watching my favorite team win a title. It will mean that those years of pain and tension don’t have to be final. That sharing in the celebration of a title with my family could be a huge mark in time that we can look back on fondly and look forward to more possibly. This hope is sometimes the only thing that keeps me rooting for Buffalo. Each season since those glory years seems to be filled with new ways in which to challenge that hope.
Here’s to the day that we all celebrate a championship. Who knows how many years will pass until it’s a reality.
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