Billieve
- Mike Dickey
- 1 hour ago
- 3 min read
"Go Bills, for we are here to cheer for you.
Go Bills, we are your fans so true.
With victory in sight, we'll yell with all our might, so
Go Bills, Fight Bills, Go! Come on lets win for Buffalo!"
-Anon
A short post today, because I spent a chunk of this morning talking Jim through what to do about a deadbeat employer and how he might refine his job search. One of the few really good things that's happened in 2025 is really reconnecting with Jim, rather than making the occasional small talk on a Facebook Messenger check-in.
Trying to ride this theme of things that make me happy in this annus horribilis, I have to say the Buffalo Bills always bring a smile, even as they sometimes disappoint and always have, as the old-timers will tell you.
We noticed not long after arriving up here that the one thing that seems to pull together this vast community stretching from here to Rochester and Buffalo is allegiance to the Bills. I've never seen anything quite like it: Bills flags on every other front porch on Fall afternoons; barns painted Bills red, white and blue; Wegman's on a Sunday a sea of Bills stocking caps and Josh Allen jerseys. A rare moment in this fractured time when everyone around you is united around the one hope that this will be the year the Bills finally go all the way. I mean, except for the occasional guy in a Jets hoodie. You just have to feel badly for those folks.
Acknowledging at the outset that all sports is basically a pointless distraction, I find myself wondering why this Bills obsession up here?
Part of it is, as any brainwashed fan will tell you, that our guys are just so damned nice. Peg and I started watching the HBO series Hard Knocks in the late summer, following the Bills through training camp at St. John Fisher University in Rochester and into their preseason games. Along the way you start to see these guys as people, remember their stories and see them hugging their kids in the morning when they leave for work. I guess that's every NFL team if you drill down a little, but the added element here is that for whatever reason, these guys really love Buffalo and this part of NY.
One of their stars, getting toward the end of his career, announced a few months ago he'd take a pay cut to stay with the Bills in Buffalo instead of getting traded.
The fact that the players love this place and this team like that does make it a different animal than, say, the Cowboys.
And of course we have Josh Allen, the walking embodiment of what you'd hope your kids would grow up to be. Besides being probably the greatest quarterback ever to not win a Super Bowl, he's just a nice guy--raised on a farm, overlooked by the recruiters, and now a multimillionaire and NFL MVP.
The finale to his acceptance speech when he won the MVP award earlier this year has become a wall hanging, T-shirt, and coffee mug you see all over this part of the world.
"Be good
Do good
God bless
Go Bills"
Which sort of feels like western New York, in a nutshell.
You can see his whole acceptance speech here. It begins at 3:30. One of the most gracious you'll ever hear. He thanks the guy in the mailroom, by name, for Pete's sake.
It helps that Josh is really, really good, with two absolutely epic comebacks this year, the most recent from three touchdowns behind in Foxborough last Sunday.
So, a good way to end the week, living into Marcus Aurelius's observation that your soul takes on the color of your thoughts. No DJT this morning, but instead the things that make us happy, that bring this community together in a time of great division.
Be good
Do good
God bless
Go Bills!