This one hurt. Maybe because this almost seemed like a fairy tale season for the Buffalo Bills… winning the division with five weeks left in the season and making it all the way to the AFC Championship game with a team not expected to win the AFC East division.
It was a great story.
But the end was swift and left many fans in Buffalo and around the world feeling a little lost and empty. Here we go again. Our team can never seem to win it all. Social media was its usual dysfunctional mess. Reasons to blame this latest failure to win a championship include examples A, B, C, D all the way to X. Fill in the blank. Pick a reason out of your hat. Analyze this thing until your brain is completely fried.
Go ahead.
Having the benefit of decades of experience at this, it’s probably fair to state I’ve seen most, if not all of it. Also just as likely I’ve experienced the entire spectrum of emotions about losing. When you reach a certain point in life, things start to gel in your brain (the first phase of atrophy). Being a ‘fanatic’ fan of the NFL and specifically the Buffalo Bills requires stubborness, stupidity and a whole lot of rationalization.
Yet here we are again.
We blab about community while behaving like petulant children at times. We love each other and give our resources and ourselves freely without hesitation. We FEEL every slight because most of us raised in Buffalo or the Western New York area believe we’ve been ignored in the midst of a shadow cast by the lights of New York City, or disparaged as the ‘Mistake on the Lake’.
We take things personally.
However we choose to blow off steam when the Bills inevitably fail to live up to our sometimes unrealistic expectations is our own business. Grieving takes many forms and letting people figure it out for themselves is probably the best approach for all of us.
The only thing I see on social media that’s troublesome for me personally is how fans will go after each other’s personhood instead of their opinions when people are grumpy after a loss. It happens with every fan base but I wish fans of the Buffalo Bills would raise the standard a bit. We don’t HAVE to tear into or ridicule each other because someone isn’t responding the way someone else thinks they should.
Also, as one begins to petrify, perspectives change. Wisdom accumulated suggests its best to be more mindful of where to allot mental energy because there is precious little of it to go around when you get old. It’s not only much easier to be kind, it takes less energy overall. So losing a football game in the grand scheme of things seems like a big energy sink if you attach too much of your self-image to outcomes of a game.
If you find yourself mourning to the point of barely being able to function a couple days after a big loss by the Buffalo Bills, it’s time to ask yourself why you’re not shaking the mood. It’s really important to keep things in perspective. Football is a game and should not negatively impact our quality of life over any length of time.
These are the moments when our real character is defined. How do you handle a negative outcome? Do you pout, shout or rout the people around you? If so, ask yourself what benefit do you get from doing so? Sometimes these can be interesting moments of personal awareness. It’s important to take time to do a personal inventory.
Because with every loss, a little piece of our heart dies… because we are Bills fans.
Editor’s babble: This too shall pass. Find me on Xwitter @RobynMundyWYO or Bluesky @RobynMundyWYO.bsy.social.
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