It's Miami Week. Squish the Fish, right? Are you pumped?

Didn't think so. No way to rekindle those old feelings. And that's really too bad. Don't you have to have some hate for the other side to really feel like it's football season?

Miami Week used to mean everything. Now it's just game one. What a shame. Fans can't hate the Dolphins anymore. Who's the quarterback? Who's the coach? You barely know. Can you hate guys who end practice on their knees searching for a diamond earring?

There's no sign of The Jaw or Jimmy on the sidelines. No Marino. No Super Duper and Clayton. Where's Bryan Cox and his digits protruding to the sky?

The Bills are completely irrelevant so they can't even have a rival. Do the Patriots think of the Bills as a rival? Of course not. Pats-Jets is going to be big-time stuff this year. The Bills are facing the ugly reality they'll be big losers. The Jets are reality stars.

Miami Week meant everything. It's that wonderful NFL Films footage of Lou Saban in the locker room prior to a 1974 heartbreaker at the Orange Bowl: "You can get it done. You can get it done. What's more. You gotta get it done."

The Bills didn't, of course. They lost, 35-28. One of 20 straight losses. Oh-for-the-decade.

It finally ended on Sept. 7, 1980. It was a sun-soaked, 17-7 win that finished the futility and saw the fans storm the field to take the goalposts. Remember when that used to happen?

Remember the 31-point first half here on a Monday night in 1981? Or ending the 17-year drought in the Orange Bowl in '83 on Joe Danelo's field goal?

You started to think the Bills were on to something in 1987, really getting on to something, when they posted a 27-0 fish-squishing at the Ralph late in the season. Will we ever forget Jim Kelly's dive into the end zone on the final play to win the 1989 season opener down south? And you always remember who AFC championship No. 3 was against (even if it did lead to that debacle in Pasadena).

How about that 1991 playoff game in our winter wonderland? That 44-34 snowglobe victory was two weeks before Wide Right and two weeks after a 24-14 win here over the Dolphins, who blamed that defeat on their own failings.

That, recall, was the first Buffalo Super Bowl team. Respect was a big theme that year. After the playoff win, Thurman Thomas uttered one of the classic news conference jabs in team history.

"I really don't think Miami gives us the respect we deserve because of the way they shoot off at the mouth saying they didn't play well the last time," a straight-faced Thomas said. "I think they played pretty damn well today, but they still got their butt kicked."

The room exploded, largely because Thomas didn't say butt. Even though that's what our paper said and most other ones in America did too the next morning. ESPN and local television, however, showed the word he said without the bleeps.

And suddenly newsrooms across the country were thrust into the debate about whether family newspapers could use a certain three-letter word.

I was in the office that night and it was nearly go time before "butt" finally won out. I remember some editors, and maybe even a writer or two, who wanted to get down in three-point stances and go mano a mano to get the word in print.

We use it from time to time now when it really counts. He had a Hall of Fame career but Thomas also made a major contribution to journalism, too. All because he was verbally fileting The Fish. Thanks, Thurm.

Ralph Wilson was dead-on when he wanted to preserve Miami games as the league did some modest realingment over the years. That feeling is gone.

A regular-season "home" game, drab as it was, against the Dolphins has been played in Toronto. Especially if the NFL goes to 18 games, I would just as soon make sure the Bills play Cleveland and Pittsburgh every year.

Hard to believe I said that. Miami Week used to mean everything.

mharrington@buffnews.comnull