Let’s go, Buffalo. Please.
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What’s happening to that city and its football team is un-American. In real life and in sports, this nation roots for the underdog. We don’t pull for U.S. Steel, General Motors or the Yankees. It’s against our nature. The guy in the bowling shirt should win the lottery, not the guy in the three-piece suit.
But with Buffalo and the Bills, it’s different. We want no part of them. What does BILLS stand for? Boy, I Love Losing Super Bowls. That will get a few laughs, but only a few, because they’re not even funny anymore. The Cubs can’t win a World Series since 1908 and they’re teddy bears. The Bills go to their fourth straight Super Bowl and they’re abominable snowmen. It’s Goliath versus the sparring partners again, only it’s not a fight and we can’t stop it before it’s too late.
Even President Clinton, leader of the free world, can’t seem to resist. He plans his State of the Union Speech to Congress Tuesday night. What will be one of his main topics? Three-time losers and how to be harder on them. He’s dealing in felons, not football, but the timing is all wrong. It always is for the Bills. They bomb a year ago in the big game 52-17, and they become a monologue. What, says Jay Leno, 52 and 17? That’s not a Super Bowl score, that’s Woody Allen’s dating habits, ho, ho.
Well, enough already. You stay right there on the Dallas Cowboys’ bandwagon. I’ve got my ticket for the Titanic. Marv Levy, the Buffalo coach, has come up short more often than his lookalike, Pat Paulsen. Levy’s players are scruffy and feisty and resilient. Jim Kelly, the quarterback, has a receding hairline and he runs a bar. Bills fans wear ski masks to work, eat chicken wings that taste like they’ve been dipped in 10W40 and think of a weekend in Syracuse as a dream vacation. On Sunday, they booed the Chiefs back to Kansas instead of Missouri, but you’d be sheltered, too, if you spent nine months a year digging for your mailbox.
Compare that with Dallas, where they drill for the oil that goes on those chicken wings. The owner, Jerry Jones, spends $50 million on a golden boy, Troy Aikman, who looks like a model and poses for GQ. He probably never had acne. Jimmy Johnson, the neatness freak coach, thinks humility is what comes after the temperature. Everything is bigger and better in Texas, and if you don’t believe it, just ask. Even when the Cowboys were 1-15, they masqueraded as America’s Team.
The Bills should be, but they aren’t. A lesser bunch of athletes would lose Super Bowl XXV in heartbreaking fashion 20-19 and vanish. But, no, they go back the next year and lose by 13. Then they try again a year later and lose by 35. They hadn’t removed the tape from their ankles Sunday and they were installed as 10-point underdogs for Super Bowl XXVIII in Atlanta. This was Las Vegas’ way of warning us that disasters come in fours. America was at war when this trend began. With Iraq, not Japan. It only seems that long. Still, the Bills evoke no sympathy.
Granted, it would be nice for the Bills to do things a little differently this time. Maybe drive to Atlanta instead of fly. Arrive the day of the game. Or the day after. Perhaps they should make peace with Scott Norwood and start all over again. If his field-goal attempt hadn’t sailed wide in Tampa, the Bills would have won their first Super Bowl. They might be regarded as a dynasty. Instead, we treat them like they have dysentery.
But the Bills keep the faith and, more importantly, keep their players. An upheaval for them is changing general managers. Yes, winning teams can have general managers. And what did John Butler say when he took over? Why fix what’s not broken? We win here every year. We win everything except the Super Bowl. Maybe this year will be our year. No reason to back up the truck.
It’s been 25 years since Joe Namath led the New York Jets, 19-point underdogs, to a Super Bowl victory over Baltimore. We loved it then. The Bills need you. All aboard for the Titanic.