Nobody Smashes Tables Like the Buffalo Bills: A Short Ethnography of Some Bills Fans

“Do you know who I am?” A man in a white jersey emblazoned with a stitched number seven asks me. Of course I knew who it was. Standing there in the middle of a Target in front of the tampons was the Buffalo Bills starting quarterback from 1998–2000.

Back, pictured from left: Hall-of-Fame nerf thrower, bus flipper, young Thurman Thomas, and confused author. In front: very small, lone Steelers fan of the family.

“You’re Doug Flutie!” I wrapped my arms around his neck to give him the tightest squeeze possible. I then woke up to the strange taste of corn flakes in my mouth (See: Flutie Flakes)and to the startling realization that I was no longer eight years old and that one of my childhood fantasies had not come true. I looked to my phone and saw the news that the Buffalo Bills would be playing the Baltimore Ravens that coming Sunday at 8:15pm Eastern. The Bills had just fended off the Colts in the wild card round in their first playoff win since 1995. Fragments of my childhood growing up in a family deeply entrenched in the drama that is the Buffalo Bills fandom have been stampeding over me like a herd of bison since the beginning of the 2020 regular football season.

I was born in the midst of the Jim-Kelly heyday of the Buffalo Bills football franchise. The story of my birth, as eulogized by my mother, always incorporates the part where I made my way into existence just in time for all 6.9 greased-up pounds of me to be placed on her chest…