‘McProcessing’ fallout in Buffalo

Regardless of how you may feel about Sean McDermott’s firing, the press conference from Hades and/or the faith or lack thereof you may feel about the Buffalo Bills at this time, one thing is clear. The national media (if you’re reading this you know the names) is using all of us to make money via click bait. It’s really that simple, folks. If you are giving ANY of your precious mental resources to being frustrated with the national narrative regarding the Bills right now, you may want to reevaluate your priorities.

We are out of practice with what happens in the national media when Buffalo fires a coach. It doesn’t matter if it’s professional football or hockey, ripping the city of Buffalo for any reason is low hanging fruit. After literally decades of taking a beating in the national press you would think our fan base would have thicker skin, but we don’t. Even scar tissue will rupture more easily when stressed than resilient skin that hasn’t been subjected to abuse.

So what can we do to change the narrative?

For one thing, we could stop listening or watching the asshats that know nothing about our fan base… and worse… enjoy watching us repeatedly melt down. I’ve literally written about this for decades. First on the old Buffalo Bills Message Board in the form of regular rants. Technology now allows for me to share my disdain on our Tee Time with Robyn podcast. Thank God for Tee. She keeps me sane. And thank goodness for this blog. It gives us a voice as fans.

Since it seems our fan base has a masochistic streak and cannot stop ourselves from the faux professional media who feast upon our every demise, I’m here yet again to try to appeal to your common sense. If we stopped caring a lick about what other people think, we would all see enormous gains to our mental health. Most of us native WNYers have an insecurity complex deeply rooted in being the lowly step-brother of New York City. That’s where I believe it started and flourishes today.

People from other places LOVE to ride WNYers about the “horrible weather” despite half of the year being more tolerable than some of the nation’s ‘most desirable places’ are all year long. But we take everything that is said about weather, or any other measure we have no control over as a personal insult. I still feel it and haven’t lived in WNY since 1982.

But at some point if we ever want to rise above the serpents who torment us, we have to let go of caring about how other people view us.

Lovable losers?

OK, bring it on. We are the experts at handling disappointment, disparagement and despair. No one fan base in sports is tormented the way we are. You would think it would teach us to not get suckered in by the national media, but we inevitably fall for it each time like Lucy pulling the football away from Charlie Brown at the last second. Every. Single. Time.

Again, what can we do to change this narrative?

One of the things I found most beneficial is to use the “McProcess”. I found it extremely unhelpful listening to pregame shows when the Bills are going through a thing. Just turn on the playoff games (if you’re going to watch at all) and skip all the hoo-ha on television for hours beforehand. The vast majority of these talking heads have little good to say about Buffalo, unless the Bills are winning. Their hypocrisy is sickening.

Furthermore, the cesspool that has become ESPN obviously provides the most egregious click bait of all. With the exception of Dan Orlovsky and a handful of others, the rest are circus clowns. I realized that some years back and scaled way back on ESPN viewing and found myself in a much happier state. Really… if you haven’t asked yourself why you listen to that tripe and wonder why you feel despondent, I highly recommend doing so. Don’t let the habit you’ve created be the reason you feel angry.

So today’s little “Ted Talk” is a suggestion that as we move forward through this next bit of drama finding a new head coach, take a good hard look at how some in the national media may be affecting our mental health overall. They are not worth our time.

When there’s ‘Buffalo drama’, I stick close to local reporters/fans for my Buffalo Bills content. As much as people complain, the Western New York media are for the most part a very professional group who sort through the garbage and tell us what we need to know. We all know the names so I don’t need to repeat them here because I’ll forget someone and I don’t want to do that.

There are literally hundreds of podcasts and some of them we are downright blessed to have in our fanbase community. The professional media in Buffalo generally don’t resort to click bait and have pride in the work they publish. I honestly don’t know if people in WNY appreciate their professionalism at times. They will not break their code of ethics chiefly for sensationalism and I appreciate them very much.

When you go about your day, if you choose to watch the AFC and NFC championship games (hurray for those choosing to do something else), be sure to walk away from the pregame, halftime and postgame shows and see how you feel. Let me know in the comments if you find it helpful.

Editor’s babble: You can find this and more of my nonsense on X @RobynMundyWYO.