Over the past two decades, Razorback fandom has registered prominently on one part of the sports misery index — the heartbreak category.
Hog fans’ collective heart has been ripped from our collective chest numerous times. Whether through the hands of corrupt/incompetent officials (football at Florida, 2009; basketball against North Carolina in the tournament, 2017), the fickle winds of fate (the pop foul in Omaha, 2018), the politics of Birmingham itself (Auburn, 2020) or even our own self-inflicted wounds (White-Long-Morris), our heartbreak has taken wildly creative forms, it seems.
But watching Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs force overtime and then pull a rabbit out of their NFL playoff hat on Jan. 23, I realized something: We’ve got nothing on Bills fans. It requires some serious fortitude to be a fan of the Buffalo Bills.
I can’t imagine attempting to get over that loss in KC. The injustice baked into the NFL’s — for lack of a better word, dumb — overtime format is surpassed only by the inevitable branding that will further attach itself to the team: The Bills lost another one on the big stage.
Of course, the Bills won four straight AFC championships in the early 1990s and two straight AFL titles in the mid-60s, let’s not forget. But for “wide right” in Super Bowl XXV following the 1990 season, the Kelly/Levy Bills of the first half of the ’90s might be remembered more like the Brady/Belichick Patriots of the 2000s.
The utter dismay evident on the faces of Bills players and fans in the aftermath of the Chiefs game reminded me of a weird, independent film made in the late ’90s called Buffalo ’66. The life of its hapless protagonist was impacted in a significant way by a fool hearty bet on Buffalo to beat the Giants in Super Bowl XXV.
From “wide right” in January 1991 to “13 seconds” in January 2022… Did Frank Reich’s laces-right hold cause Scott Norwood’s 47-yard attempt to drift a hair right? And following Josh Allen to Gabriel Davis for what appeared to be the winning score, did the decision to kick the ball out of the end zone give Mahomes and crew too much time? Apparently, it did.
One had a feeling the winner of the OT coin toss was gonna win the game. If the NFL’s rules committee doesn’t change the OT format in the wake of that one, it never will.
Even though Allen didn’t get a chance to counter in OT, the game capped what arguably must be considered the greatest weekend of playoff football ever. Each game decided in dramatic, walk-off fashion, capped by the Chiefs’ epic, fairy tale win over the Bills.
Except that, for the Bills Mafia, anyway, it was less fairy tale and more Tales from the Darkside.
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As always, thanks for reading. Let me know how we’re doing, good or bad. Reach me anytime at MCarter@ARMoneyandPolitics.com.
