By Buffalo Sports Chatter -Meg
It’s chilly as I type this, but of course it is. It’s January in Buffalo. We all expect that bite in the air this time of year, it comes standard. But floating along with the blowing snow this season is a familiar, yet somehow foreign sound; it bellows, and it echoes as it transports us back in time. It shouts, if you will, songs of resilience, appreciation, and excitement into a merciless cold. It’s the Bills, baby! They’re on primetime in January, and it feels like the entire world is celebrating.
I’ve never really considered why I’ve always been one of those staunch, if not stubborn, Bills fans. It was always just part of the package; I’m Meg, I’m from Buffalo, Go Bills. It’s one of my personality traits, and unapologetically so. These past few years however, everything has felt different. Every game has felt more important than the last. Every loss, heavier. Every win, feeling like a championship. I’ll never pretend to know everything (or even most things) about the intricacies of the sport itself. However, I will very happily call myself the curator of my own potentially unhealthy obsession right here in a public domain. Stay with me.
“It wasn’t even an option,” my mom scoffed, when I asked her how she kept my brother and I such big Bills fans as kids, even when there may not have been a tangible reason to do so, “it never even occurred to me, to not be a Bills fan. Why would you say such words!”. It’s a sentiment I’d be met with often as I followed this thread of curiosity from one family member to the next, and a statement I had already known to be true. There is rarely a memory or a family photo that doesn’t have Bills merch in it somewhere, it’s just what we did. It’s what we do. We don’t work for the weekend around here; we work for game day. It’s never a matter of if you’ll watch the game, it’s just where. It’s going from being a little stitious and holding your beer in the same hand for every field goal, to being superstitious and hanging up the winning outfit immediately after every game, and putting it back on for the next one - without washing it. It’s forever Billieving in next year.
I turned to my loved ones for memories that I was surely too young to appreciate, and I was regaled with stories of frozen perms, layers of ice covering jeans and jackets, and jean jackets. According to my mom, my late grandmother even asked to have her ashes placed beneath her season ticket seat at the 50-yard line so she could always scream “Go Jacky Baby!” for her dearest, Jack Kemp. My Grammy recalled memories of getting a color TV in 1968, and finally being able to distinguish the teams. From then on, she, my Grampy, my dad, and aunt Linda would pile in the car and drive wherever they had to in order to watch a game when they were blacked-out. One Sunday would find them in Alexandria Bay, the next they were somewhere near Syracuse, it did not matter. Come hell or high snow pile, they were going to find a screen to scream at. That passion isn’t exclusive to Buffalo, I know. But the passion of the Bills Mafia is undoubtedly unique. That specific passion, I am now convinced, is genetic. After all, Mafia means family.
As I listened to these tales of almost reckless loyalty, I was struck by how familiar it all felt. They are me, my friends, and all of our memories (or lack thereof). My parents’ childhood, in terms of Buffalove, was my childhood. My dad’s black and white picture of Dennis Shaw on his bedroom wall is now my Cole Beasley appreciation station. My stepmom’s ticket stub from a game against the Jets in 1986 is now my barcode for the last game I went to before the world slowed down. Their folding tables are now our victims, it’s amazing.
What I’m trying to say is, a fair few of my fellow Mafia members and I came up in the era of “there’s always next year”, and frankly, a lot of us wore it proudly. Always ready to announce that nobody circles the wagons like we do, regardless of the circumstances…or the state of the wagons. I remember when we broke the playoff drought with Tyrod in 2017; it felt like we had finally busted down a door after years of knocking. As local living legend, Keith Buckley, sings, “though it was brief, it meant everything”. It catapulted any timid, fair-weather fan directly into Mafia mode, and so many of us have never looked back since. To me anyway, it said “see, we’re more than four missed chances and a wide right”. It said it all.
Today we get to revel in the Era of Allen. We’re back, and we’re changing the names of streets, and pizza places, and neighborhoods. We’re changing the narrative, and we’re changing the minds of all those non-billievers. I think I speak for a good percentage of the Bills Mafia when I say these glory days feel twice as glorious because of all the waiting we’ve done. Not to mention all the waiting our parents have done, and all the waiting our grandparents have done. When we beat the Colts in the Wild Card game, the second-best moment for me was running to hug my dad, and FaceTiming everyone I know, crying. And everyone I know was crying. We were separate, but together in that moment. It didn’t feel real then and I can’t be sure it’ll feel real until it’s all over.
Before I wrapped up, I asked my parents what their favorite part of this winning momentum was, and they both held the same sentiment; they love how excited my brothers and I are about everything. They love to see that their passion really did make it to us, and grew even stronger somehow. They love to know that we’ll carry on these traditions for the rest of our lives because as my mom said, we know there isn’t an option.
“But the best part is,” my dad declares, “if we get there and win it, we will all, young and old, be experiencing a whole new feeling at the same time, that none of us have ever felt before.”
Better bring a tissue, might be emotional.
When I started this Mafia monologue, I knew I would be taken on a vicarious journey of Buffalo sports passion. What I didn’t expect was to become so aware of the parallels between my experiences and those of the loved ones I talked to. I know my family’s style isn’t unique throughout this fandom, and I think that’s the best part. It’s a common thread of relentlessness and looking forward that we share here in The Mafia. All those times we’ve been reduced to our follies, every time it wasn’t about how we won, but rather why the other team lost, even when we had nothing at all…there was always next year.
Well, family, it’s finally next year. So let’s do the damn thing…by a billion.
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