COMMENTARY
Sorry, Sabres, this is still a football town
Updated: 06/13/08 7:12 AM
The Buffalo Sabres recently were honored as the NHL’s “Professional Sports Team of the Year” in Sports Business Journal’s annual awards. They were cited for increasing their season ticket base from about 5,800 to 14,800 since the lockout, with a waiting list of 6,000. They were hailed for maintaining reasonable ticket costs, instituting variable single-game pricing and enhancing the attractiveness of their product to sponsors.
Who can quibble with any of those distinctions? Outside of some dubious hockey personnel decisions, the franchise has done right by its fans and given Sabres hockey a local presence unequaled since the team’s nascent years. The recognition is well-deserved.
My gripe is with a stand-alone quote that appears with the SBJ story. Under the headline, “What People Are Saying,” comes this bold-typed snippet from John Cimperman of Cenergy Communications: “The fact that they have turned Buffalo from a football town into a hockey town is well recognized.”
Whoa. Let’s stop right there, take a breath, think that over, because it’s blatantly untrue.
Buffalo is a football town before it’s a hockey town, always has been, always will be so long as the Bills are around, and may even if they’re not. We’re not an exemplary football town on a par with the likes of Green Bay, Denver and Dallas. But we’re a football town the same way Boston is first and foremost a baseball town. New England’s primary passion is the Red Sox no matter what the Patriots, Celtics or Bruins achieve.
Granted, we will front-run, like fans in every city, which might account for the confusion, the misguided notion that somewhere along the line the torch changed hands. The Sabres made the conference finals two of the past three years while the Bills last made the playoffs in 1999. The Sabres have been playing to great expectations while the Bills have been trying to regain their footing, re-establish their competitiveness. As a result, the Sabres have garnered increased attention, but that by no means indicates that they have supplanted the Bills as the primary love of Buffalo sports fans.
The Bills already have sold out individual seats for five regular-season games. Season-ticket sales have reached a level unseen in years. Fans aren’t jumping onboard only after it’s been confirmed that the franchise is a championship contender, as was the case with the Sabres. For the Bills all it takes is a hint of credibility to rekindle the hunger of the fan base. When it comes to the Bills, Buffalo responds to a glimmer of hope.
Doubtless there are those who pledge their full allegiance to the Sabres. I understand. I spent hours during my teens standing in line for tickets to a Sabres game weeks away. But the Sabres are in the NHL and the Bills are in the NFL and it’s obvious which league affords a city a greater dose of national exposure and validates it as a member of the elite sports scene. The nation knows what “Wide Right” means. It’s clueless as to “No Goal.”
All the NFL’s games are televised, usually three or four per week on a national basis. The Super Bowl has become the equivalent of a national holiday. Is there such a thing as a Stanley Cup squares pool? Ask someone in Sacramento, Calif., what channel Versus is on their television system.
Buffalo’s football passion is multileveled. The University at Buffalo is drawing larger crowds as its program matures. College hockey, meanwhile, remains a niche sport here despite the ever-increasing number of local players advancing to the NHL.
The idea that hockey has overtaken football in the minds of Buffalonians just doesn’t wash. Ask the typical Buffalo sports fan if he or she would rather win a Stanley Cup or a Super Bowl. Would the vote be remotely close?
