Once a Bills Fan

When I moved to Texas in the 90’s, I moved my Buffalo Bills fanship with me.  My Buffalo roommates and I, along with relatives and friends, would meet every Sunday at Snuffers; ostensibly to root for the Bills in a bar that aired them, but mostly to drink underage beer and eat every-age cheese fries.  I don’t know if you know, but Cowboys fans are crazy and when my roommate and I wore our Bills’ shirts to Target to get supplies for the Superbowl, we were honked at, cursed at, told “for shame”, and even had cars swerve dangerously close to us.  We were shocked and hurried to get our errands done and return to the safety of our apartment and our little Bills’ nation.  I think it was the first time we learned it can be rough to be a Bills’ fan.

I will admit that there are a lot of years after that where I didn’t always catch a Bills’ game.  They are not often aired in Cowboy country.  When I moved from Dallas to Austin in the 2000’s, it was nice to get out of central Cowboys territory but I found people here rooted not only for the Cowboys but the Texans as well.  I was also busy raising small kids and again, rarely caught an actual game.  That didn’t matter; if anyone asked what team I was going for, my answer was always “the Bills!”.

I am proud of being from Buffalo. I tell my classes every year that I am from Buffalo and ask who else in the class is.  I have never had a student tell me they are from there but occasionally they will have a parent who is from Buffalo and I will get excited and say “Go Bills!” and they will look embarrassed or indifferent.  Fair enough; it is the first day of school and I teach Juniors and Seniors and they do not want to be seen sharing a moment with an over-eager English teacher.  Usually someone will say “Didn’t they lose like four Superbowls in a row?” and I will counter with “Didn’t they make four Superbowls in a row?” and this gives us a great time to talk about perspective.

This year, however, I have seen students at school with Bills’ gear on. I stop every single one of them and say “Nice shirt, sweatshirt, hat, etc.”  Kids in class will talk about who they have on their Fantasy Football teams and I always say that I hope they have Josh Allen.  They will either readily agree and talk to me about football or they will learn to whisper and sit farther away from my desk.  Yesterday, I may have spoken very loudly to a man across a restaurant to say “I love your shirt” because he was wearing a Bills’ shirt.  Later, I stopped to consider that maybe this man really just wanted a taco and coffee and not to be accosted by a strange woman talking about his shirt.   But for me, at that time, it was a very nice moment of being Bills’ fans together in a sea of confused Texans and it made me feel like home wasn’t so far away. 

If you are wearing something with this logo, I am 100% talking to you.

It’s easy to be a Bills’ fan this year; they look great and the games are exciting!  Except that one where they won and lost and won and lost 18 times in the last two minutes.  That one was more ulcer-inducing.  I can say confidently that I will always be a Bills fan and proud to be one.  I had a kid scoff earlier this week and say “I don’t know, Miss, think this is really their year?”  I answered yes immediately.  After a few seconds I added, “I always think it’s their year.  That’s what being a fan is all about.”