MY VIEW
Let’s hold Bills fans to higher standards
Anyone who has attended a Bills game in the last 20 years didn’t need the Wall Street Journal to tell us of what we already are painfully aware: The Buffalo Bills have the “worst-behaved fans in perhaps all of sports.”
I wrote a My View column last fall about an experience I had with a couple of louts sitting behind me at a Bills game and how the boors managed to spoil a beautiful Sunday afternoon for my daughter and me. As I stated at the time, the Bills organization is making a concerted effort to rein in the minority of fans who don’t feel they’ve gotten their money’s worth unless they’re drunk by 11 a. m. and bellowing their loyalty to the team in the foulest, most obnoxious manner possible.
But try as the Bills might, it’s like putting toothpaste back in the tube. The culture surrounding a Bills game has become institutionalized over the last few decades — drunken, raucous, foul-mouthed behavior is the norm for enough people that they’ve managed to spoil the entire stadium experience for the rest of us.
The reaction to the piece was stunning in its consistency. Every person who mentioned it to me prefaced their comment by saying, “I used to go to Bills games” and then they would recount how they got so disgusted with the environment that they gave up their tickets. I got the impression that you could fill Ralph Wilson Stadium three times over with people who won’t go anymore because of the drunken buffoons who have taken over the asylum in Orchard Park.
I’m not willing to surrender — yet. But I’m getting close.
For one recent game I decided to time my arrival so that I would get into my seats at 1:15 p. m. in order to avoid the mass of humanity lined up in cattle-chute fashion at the turnstiles that results from each person being patted down before entering the stadium. Talk about degrading and insulting. Standing in those cattle chutes you hear the foulest language possible, and the drunken miscreants couldn’t care less that there are small children taking it all in. My plan failed: I still had to wait to get through the turnstiles, seething as I inched forward wondering why I was subjecting myself to this nonsense.
I can’t help but compare and contrast it to attending a UB Bulls game, which I did recently with my 8-year-old son, Charlie. What a great atmosphere!
We walked right into the UB stadium without being patted down, no one was drunk, no one was swearing, families and kids were everywhere, the students and cheerleaders and band were infectious in their enthusiasm — and Buffalo and Army played a great game and we won in overtime. Needless to say, Charlie isn’t going to a Bills game anytime soon but we’ll be back at UB, that’s for sure.
Many people, including me, are worried about the future of the Bills in Buffalo. But as I see it, the only way the abominable fan behavior is going to change is if we do what they did in Philadelphia: blow up the Ralph and build a new stadium and insist on higher standards of fan behavior right from the start.
We’re going to need a new facility built to the standards of modern-day NFL stadiums eventually if Buffalo has any hope of keeping the Bills in this region, and if it’s done right and it’s a pleasant game-day experience, it will be a magnet for corporate support and attendance from throughout upstate New York and Southern Ontario. Right now, the situation at the Ralph repels more than it attracts.
Log into MyBuffalo to post a comment
MyBuffalo is the new social network from Buffalo.com. Your MyBuffalo account lets you comment on and rate stories at buffalonews.com. You can also head over to mybuffalo.com to share your blog posts, stories, photos, and videos with the community. Join now or learn more.
Reader comments