Buffalo Bills won the AFC East division for the first time in 25 years and secured their first playoff game at home in almost the same time. Thousands of joyful Bills fans waited hours in the cold to greet the team, which arrived at Buffalo airport at 1:30 am after defeating the Denver Broncos on December 19 to win the division title. The diehards were restless after being barred from Bills games throughout the season. Whether Bills Stadium will join the 13 others who allow fans to enter before the playoffs may now depend on the wisdom of Howard Zucker – the state health commissioner, who passed the now infamous March 25 New York directive banning health homes to refuse Covid- positive residents.
I grew up in Buffalo in the 1970s and 80s, tough times for Bills fans. When I went to college in 1990, the team promptly made it to the Super Bowl, but lost when Scott Norwood’s last-minute goal attempt swerved to the right. Bills returned to the Super Bowl during my second year, first and last year, but lost every time. In 1995, when I was 23, Bills won the division, but lost to Pittsburgh in the second round of the playoff. I hardly knew I would be 48 years old when my team won AFC East again.
Suffering is an integral part of being a fan of Buffalo sports, as is loyalty. Possibly with the exception of the Green Bay Packers, I can’t think of a team more closely tied to your city’s identity and fortune than Bills. In a hellish year, the team and its faithful – affectionately known as “Bills Mafia” – finally have a reason to be hopeful and proud.
The coal in our Bill’s socks is the absence of fans at the stadium. Governor Andrew Cuomo sent mixed signals about the opening of Bills Stadium throughout the season. On September 30, he said he would tour the stadium and meet with the team’s leadership to “discuss” issues about the reopening. On November 6, he stepped back and said that Dr. Zucker – whose order for the nursing home led to the deaths of at least 6,200 people – told him that it would be “unwise” to allow all fans to return to the stadium ( outdoors), which has a capacity of more than 71,000.
The governor never came to tour the stadium, but recently said he would “love nothing more” than to watch a playoff game at Bill’s. He insisted that Dr. Zucker’s Health Department needs to give the go-ahead to any deal to open the stadium, including a cautious proposal to admit about 6,700 fans.
Even that may not be enough. Erie County executive Mark C. Poloncarz recently poured cold water on the proposal. The Democrat scolded Bills fans for greeting his team at the airport and berated reporters who asked if he would agree to allow fans to enter the stadium, telling them, “Organize your priorities. Maybe football just isn’t your game. In late September, he was photographed on a golf course with 16 other people, all without a mask. “I just forgot to wear one,” he said after the photo was published. Mr. Poloncarz will receive advice from the generously compensated Gale Burnstein, who raised $ 166,319 in overtime and paid vacation from March to December 4 as the county health commissioner – in addition to his $ 202,312 salary.
The Bills Mafia has science on its side. There was only one reported case of a positive fan test for Covid-19 after a game at the 13 NFL stadiums that allow fans, and that was months ago, at the opening of the season in Kansas City. Others may have been infected and unreported, but clearly the games were nowhere near over-spreading events.
Many officials, including Mr. Cuomo and Mr. Poloncarz, seem to savor the newfound powers they assumed during the pandemic. But they will never be able to show their faces in western New York again if they decree that the stadium should remain closed to fans. And that may be why the governor made a dagger for Dr. Zucker.
Bill fans suffered four consecutive Super Bowl losses, a 17-year drought in the playoffs (2000-16 seasons) and a 25-year hunger for the division title. We know the risks of Covid-19 and we also know that we haven’t played a tiebreaker at home since December 1996. It’s time for politicians and health bureaucrats to kneel and allow us to meet up with our stadium team again.
Mr. Seminara is a former diplomat and author of “Federer’s steps: a fan pilgrimage through 7 Swiss cantons in 10 acts”, to be launched in March.
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