My complicated relationship with the Buffalo Bills and Western NY

Originally published in Aethlon: The Journal of Sport Literature — Vol. 35.2

Geoff Graser is a freelance writer based in Rochester, NY. His work can be found at geoffgraser.com.

[Boom Town Editor’s note: While this was written 4 years ago, the topic seems especially relevant now in the wake of yet another Buffalo Bills close playoff loss…]

Trapped inside my studio apartment by a foot of snow one Sunday in January 2019, I learned exactly what it takes to make me Tweet. A Buffalo Bills fan gloated on Twitter that Bills QB Josh Allen, who’d just completed his rookie season, gave fans another reason to love him, and included a link in his Tweet to Allen’s quote about rooting against the New England Patriots winning the AFC Championship and making the Super Bowl. I’m a Bills fan, too, but relying on other teams to knock off the best demoralized me. We should want to be the best. We once were.

“Let’s keep Brady and Pats out of Super Bowl ourselves from now on,” I replied to the Tweet.

It might seem natural I’d root for the Bills, having grown up in Rochester, NY, an hour drive from Buffalo (at least the snowless half of the year). In fact, I was a convert, and the occasion for my conversion seems either tragic or fated, or perhaps both.

I was likely eight when I opened one of my best Christmas gifts ever…

(to read the rest of this essay go to Geoff Graser’s Medium page at: https://medium.com/@gngraser23/still-here-ac0f5aabb81a )