‘Shake It Off:’ Bills fans have to heed Taylor Swift’s advice after heartbreaking loss
It’s the day after the Buffalo Bill’s loss to Kansas City. I’m in my doctor’s office for a checkup.
“I have to ask you this,” says the assistant who takes my vitals. “Have you felt depressed in the last two weeks?”
“Well, yes,” I reply. “I have. Just last night.”
I go on at length to talk about wide right and dropped passes and all the other might-have-beens that led to the Bills’ season-ending loss. Yes, I felt depressed. Yes, I still feel depressed.
This was probably happening in doctors’ offices throughout western New York.
Patients didn’t want to talk about their bum knees or persistent coughs. All they really wanted to do was rehash the game. If they were lucky, they would get a handful of mood-altering drugs in return.
Depression comes with the territory for Buffalo Bills fans
The gloom persisted. A week after the loss, I was walking out of Wegmans. A friend I hadn’t seen in a while came up.
“Are you OK,?” he asked.
“No,” I responded.
We both knew what we’re talking about. Wide right, Dropped passes. All of it.
Bills-related depression just seems to come with the territory, like lake effect days without sunshine.
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But depression was not a price I had to pay when I was a working journalist. I was obligated to be neutral, objective, disengaged. I had no stake in their game. I’m a fan now, but then I was above the fray.
During the 1993-1994 season, one of my assignments was interviewing Bills fans at the home games in Orchard Park.
The Bills were riding high, on their way to their fourth straight Super Bowl. It was glory days.
The fans weren’t a brand yet, as the Bills Mafia label hadn’t been devised. But the faithful were, as they are now, loud, fun, strange, ritualistic.
On game days everything was the same as it ever was. To bring the team luck, the fans wore the same clothes, ate the same food, chanted the same chants.
“How many layers?” I would ask when the weather had turned cold. Fans would list their protections against frostbite or defeat, the Bills T-shirts, topped by Bills sweatshirts, topped by overalls, all beneath a batteryoperated puffy coat.
After the clothing inventory, the fans would go on, tell me how many years they had been coming, how many friends they had made in the parking lot, and why this was the Bills’ year.
Riding the wave of the Bills’ success, I found myself at the Super Bowl in Atlanta, talking with Buffalo fans who knew that, after three Super Bowl losses, their time had come. The Bills would win. Finally, their patience, their prayers would be rewarded.
They were right until they were wrong. The Bills led at halftime, but the fates turned cruel. and the Dallas Cowboys came roaring back to win 30-13.
‘We’re getting used to it’
“It’s kind of depressing,” Tony Garofalo, a Bills fan from South Buffalo told me after the game. “But what are you going to do? We’re getting used to it. You can put that down. We’re getting used to it.”
As instructed, I put it down. “We’re getting used to it.” While he talked, Tony was loading up on Bills pennants and T-shirts. He remained loyal.
Maybe that’s the mark of a Bills fan. You get depressed, and then, to steal the words of a well-known Kansas City fan, you shake it off.
However, the medical assistant who asked me about my depression certainly wasn’t ready to shake it off. Turns out he was a Bills fan.
We talked. I lied and told him that things will get better. If I say that enough, I’ll even believe it myself.
Baby steps, baby steps, shaking it off can take time. By September my depression may have lifted. The Bills will be on their way to the Super Bowl. All will be well. You read it here first.