How I became a Buffalo Bills fan – and learned what home means

https://sports.yahoo.com/article/became-buffalo-bills-fan-learned-080047677.html

On 14 October 2024, having never supported a team before, or, to be honest, especially liked sports at all, I became a Buffalo Bills fan. I’d been going out with my Buffalonian boyfriend for more than a year, which I think in his parents’ eyes meant my introduction to the team that animates their entire hometown was overdue. They drove down to New York City, kitted me out in a Bills baseball cap, hoodie and blanket (and plastic Bills bag to hold it all in) – and took me to a game.

I thought I’d seen enough Super Bowls to know I didn’t care about football, but wrapped in that staticky blanket, one of the few spots of Buffalo blue in a snake-green sea of Jets supporters at MetLife Stadium, I realized what I’d been missing: a team. Or more specifically: this team.

In Buffalo, the Bills are everywhere. I used to find this bewildering on my trips up to western New York (never call it upstate); now I find it comforting. Signs saying “Billieve” welcome you into people’s houses; babies wear Bills onesies; coats, T-shirts, jewellery and underwear all feature the team’s chic streaking buffalo. Even in the off-season, a car’s horn tooting “Let’s go Buffalo!” can set off canon of identical beeps from nearby vehicles. “Go Bills” means both hello and goodbye, sometimes even the last goodbye, as I discovered in a local cemetery, where a grave featured the phrase as an epitaph. I’m sure it’s not the only one.

That’s because the Bills are Buffalo. They’re the spirit of the city, and for many Buffalonians, a metaphor for it too. Buffalo’s boom times are long behind it, though the architectural marvels built by the money flowing through the Erie Canal speak to its former importance as an industrial hub. The city is generally depicted as hard on its luck, featuring in the news usually only when there’s a disaster, like the shooting of 10 Black people in 2022, or the more recent bus crash that killed five. But what that narrative misses is the story of a town that’s quietly been undergoing an economic and cultural revival thanks to significant public spending and committed local preservationists.

Buffalo’s state of almost-thereness is reflected back to it by its beloved home team, who’ve got so close but never quite secured the win. There were the devastating four Super Bowl losses in a row from 1991 through 1994, then a play-off drought that lasted for nearly a generation. The Bills kept inching ever closer to Super Bowl greatness, their efforts turbocharged by Josh Allen, the NFL’s reigning MVP and widely considered one of its best quarterbacks. “You have to be pretty tough in a place like this,” Allen has said of his adopted hometown. “We feel like we have guys in this locker room that maybe haven’t gotten all the recognition they deserve, coming here on the last leg of their career and just coming here trying to prove something to not just the world but to themselves.”

The Bills are no hardscrabble minor team – next year they’ll move into a new $2.1bn stadium – but this kind of underdog tale is addictive. It’s a story of hard work and capability, of striving for something that’s always just out of reach. When the Kansas City Chiefs crushed the Bills’ dreams in last season’s AFC Championship Game, I almost felt the whole city’s heart breaking.

But here’s the thing: failure bonds people, and there’s nothing like rooting for a losing team to glue a community together. The immense positivity required to defend a team – or a town – you love when it’s on the back foot can be an irresistible draw. You’ll find none of the hauteur of the fans of a winning team up in Buffalo. I’ve yet to attend one of their legendary tailgates outside the stadium – I’ll admit that I’m somewhat scared of doing so, having seen the videos of fans hurling themselves around trying to break tables – but you needn’t look far to see their dedication. When one of Buffalo’s regular snowstorms roll around, Bills fans turn up to clear the snow from the stadium. It goes without saying that these are not fair-weather fans; indeed, the trick to keeping chills at bay in freezing temperatures, my boyfriend’s mother explained, is bringing cardboard to stand on.

The idea of home means a lot in team sports. People rarely root for a team based on performance – allegiance is usually inherited, or geographical. But what I’ve learned as a previously teamless person is that it can also be gifted. I thought I wasn’t into football because it was hard to follow or boring or maybe even just too male, but I realise now that the only thing I needed was a person to extend a hand to me and say: you can be part of our team.

My boyfriend and I moved to London earlier this year, and he’s further than he’s ever been from the town that calls itself the “city of good neighbors”. But every once in a while, we see a blue No 17 jersey or spy a Buffalo keyring dangling off a bag, reminding us that his neighbors, his community and his family are closer than we think. So we say hello, Buffalo-style: “Go Bills.”

https://sports.yahoo.com/article/became-buffalo-bills-fan-learned-080047677.html