What It's like to Be a Buffalo Sports Fan

In the ancient Mayan culture, the ruling priesthood practiced a form of self-injury, where they would deliberately wound themselves in a ritual exercise. Self-injury, or self-harm, is defined as a conscious infliction of pain upon oneself. In our culture, these acts may be designed to relieve unbearable emotions, or may be a symptom of depression or even mental illness.

As a Buffalo sport's fan, I believe I can wholeheartedly relate to this description.

To be a fan of our beloved Bills and Sabres is to know heartache. It's safe to say that we've been subjected to more last second, buzzer beating, overtime, wide rights, knife in the back losses than most other die-hard fans. And yet we keep coming back for more. Albert Einstein unknowingly defined our pain with a pithy phrase. He said that insanity is "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." If that's the case, we all need to jump off our team's bandwagon, strap on the straightjackets and take a ride on the paddy wagon.

Our memory lane seems to now be laden with hot, burning embers. Nevertheless, let's remove our shoes and socks and take a stroll anyway, shall we?

I remember the waning moments of Super Bowl XXV, when Marv Levy joined hands with Lofton, Reed and the other players of that memorable team. It was the famous field goal miss that cost the Bills the Super Bowl, but displayed their unity nonetheless. I was a teenager at the time, but I had followed the Bills since childhood. We were eager for a championship, still smarting from the previous year and "The Drop" by Ronnie Harmon in the AFC Divisional Playoff game. I too had instinctively locked hands with those around me, some of them people I barely knew. But the ball sailed a few feet outside of the upright, and the Bills have never been as close to the Vince Lombardi trophy since.

Outside of those four straight AFC Championships and Super Bowl blowouts, the Bills have truthfully been mediocre to awful. Oh, there were those few teams in the mid 90s that teased us with playoff losses in 1995, 1996 and 1998. But as those Jim Kelly era teams slowly were dismantled, so were our aspirations for a championship. The last time the Bills even qualified for post-season play, in 1999 against the Tennessee Titans, they suffered a loss so heartrending and identifiable, it has become a Wikipedia entry.

The Music City Miracle was one of the most astonishing playoff losses in NFL history. Throughout the first half, the Bills were determined to shoot themselves in the foot. Surfer Boy Rob Johnson, a surprise start, was sacked six times, including one for a safety. The Bills had gained only 20 yards more than they gave up in penalties.

Yet somehow, with just a buck and a half left on the game clock, a one-shoed Johnson led the Bills into field goal range, and Steve Christie kicked it true. Then the impossible happened. If you want the details, You-Tube it. I remember the camera shot of befuddled Wade Phillips after the Titan's Home Run Throwback. He was shaking his head as if he knew the call would be overturned. But under that forged steadfastness, you could see the panic. Was there any question on the outcome? We all knew, deep in the pit of our guts, that the call would stand and that it was over. The Bills have yet to make the playoffs after that incident.

Since then, the Bills have essentially lost two games for every game they have won. A 2008 loss to the Browns on Monday Night Football was just another acupuncture pin to the neck. Another 47-yard field goal sailed Wide Right. That loss only paralleled the previous year's Monday Night disaster to Dallas, where the Cowboys overcame six turnovers and kicked a game-winning 53-yard field goal as time expired. Or does the 2009 season opening last minute loss to the Patriots trump both of those? Too many games with too many last minute misfortunes.

You know things are bad in Buffalo when web sites pop up that call for the firing of their front office staff, and enough money is raised to rent out a billboard, posted along a major route into the city, that demands the jobs of the coaches.

But we are a resilient bunch, and we have our hometown hockey heroes to liberate us out of the doldrums of disparity. Unfortunately, our Buffalo Sabres have followed suit too often, thrilling us with electrifying moments only to drop us back to the earth at terminal velocity.

After failing for nine years to get out of the first round of the playoffs, the 1993 Sabres blew out the Bruins with the infamous May Day goal. Brad May gave his stick a prophetic kiss, and then proceeded to make Ray Bourque look like he was in a Chinese fire drill. The Sabres swept the Bruins out of the first round, only to find themselves swept by the Canadiens in the Division Finals. The Sabres' teams that followed slowly got deeper and deeper into the playoffs however, until they found themselves playing for Lord Stanley's Cup in 1999 against the Dallas Stars.

Whether or not the Sabres would have captured the Cup that year is difficult to say. Odds are that the Dallas squad, packed to the rafters in big names, would have taken a game seven. But No Goal left that what-if feeling burned in our sides, one that lingers on Western NY bumper stickers to this day. The legality of that goal, with Brett Hull's foot planted firmly in the blue paint as he shot in the game winner over a sprawled Dominik Hasek, has been debated ever since, and the skate in the crease rule, a perplexing regulation, was quickly changed shortly thereafter.

The next year's playoff run against the hated Flyers brought about another controversy. In game two, Flyers' winger John LeClair put the puck in the net through a hole in the mesh. While replays clearly showed the puck going in through the side of the net, the goal was allowed to stand. The Flyers would win that game 2-1 and go on to win the series 4-1. Another hot poker to the eye of the Buffalo fan.

Two years after No Goal, the Sabres were within 78 seconds of eliminating the Pittsburgh Penguins in game six of the Conference Finals. But Mario Lemieux somehow found a puck that went airborne to the left of Hasek and batted it in to tie the game. The Sabres later lost the game in overtime. Game seven, back at Buffalo, was a tight game. Again, the Sabres went to OT.

Darius Kasparaitis, a scrapper who scored only three goals in the regular season, took a floater of a shot from the top left face-off circle and beat Hasek just inside the post. I remember sitting disgusted at HSBC arena, after most of the rank and file fans had already left. It was the last goal Hasek would allow in a Sabre uniform. A fluke of a goal that casts shadows on an otherwise breathtaking career. His disreputable exit out of Buffalo marred that season's summer.

Thereafter, the Sabres were absent from post season contention for two years, and hockey itself was gone for a whole other year due to the lockout. In addition, we saw elderly Sabres' owner John Rigas paraded in front of TV cameras under arrest for bank, wire and securities fraud.

Out of the ashes, the 2005 - 2006 Buffalo Sabres squad seemed destined for it all. Taking advantage of new NHL rules that limited obstruction, the Sabres raced to a hot start, had an exhilarating year and a post-season that was even more stirring. Who can forget Briere's game one double OT winner against the Flyers? Or the 7-6 game against the Senators in round two? In the Conference Finals, the Sabres forced a game seven against the Carolina Hurricanes, another upstart team that most had picked to finish close to last. But fate would have its way with Buffalo again. The Sabres went into game seven absent three of their starting defenseman, and then lost D-man Jay McKee to an infection of the leg. It was too much for the Sabres to overcome. The Hurricanes won game seven and went on to capture a Stanley Cup that many felt belonged to Buffalo.

Buffalo dominated the following year from the drop of the first puck, setting records for consecutive victories, consecutive wins to start a season and consecutive road wins to start a season. They captured the President's Trophy for the first time, and tied a club record for most points. We wanted the Cup; we expected the Cup. But we again had our hearts ripped out and urinated on, this time by the Ottawa Senators after five games into the Conference Finals. The winning goal was scored in the first overtime by Ottawa captain Daniel Alfredsson. Coincidentally, Jason Pominville had beaten Alfredsson to score the clinching overtime goal over Ottawa in game five of the previous year's Eastern Conference Semi-finals. Payback.

Some say the Buffalo sport's teams are cursed or jinxed. There is even a web site devoted to this notion. Not true, but it's an easy argument to make, considering the above. As fans of the Bills and Sabres, we will persevere, continuing to live and die with every goal and every touchdown, every field goal that sails just outside of the mark and every puck that bounces off two skates and a soft pretzel and finds its way into our net. We wear our hearts on our sleeves, awaiting another team to come wipe their big noses on us. But my friends, one day we will have a championship team, and as the banner is raised to the roof, it will make all the anguish and all the despair float away with it.

Either that or you and I will be checking the wanted ads for an opening for Mayan Priest.