The article proclaims Buffalo as the “last simple place in the NFL.” But the article shows the very opposite. The rest of the nation sees being so tied and loyal to a football team as simple; but actually, if the Bills and Western New York were in a Facebook relationship, we’d have to check off, “It’s Complicated.”

For example, the Buffalo Bills regionalization plan isn’t exactly simple – nor is it exactly new or limited to NFL football. The Bills became the first NFL team to regionalize marketing in an effort to grow a fan base. Now team vice-president Russ Brandon’s regionalization plan kicked off in 1999 – years before the team’s Toronto series started. Brandon kicked off this plan by moving training camp to Rochester, opening a ticket office in Pittsford Plaza, and engaging the Syracuse community in marketing plans. Regionalization isn’t new – before the Bills existed, the 1940s and 1950s Cleveland Browns engaged in a more primitive form of extended reach, leaving pockets of Browns fans as far out as Syracuse to this day.

Regionalization is also not an idea limited to the Bills – many entities have gone regional in an effort to survive. Currently, TV news in the area is going regional – Time Warner local news is now run out of Buffalo for both Buffalo and Rochester. Colleges are going regional – Medaille College, located down the street from the Buffalo Zoo, opened a robust Rochester campus a few years back.

So regional marketing is not simple – it’s a strategic and complicated decision to keep entities afloat. And it’s a decision that would not work everywhere – it works in Buffalo and Rochester because inherently the two cities are tied to each other’s fates – geographically close, but philosophically closer.

The Bills’ emotional impact in the area – an idea demonstrated in the Yahoo! piece by the fact that Buffalo workers are much more productive the days after a Bills win – is also not exactly simple. Western New Yorkers are more tied to the Bills than most areas are to a sports franchise because it provides a sense of belonging and a horizontal allegiance for a geographical area that has always seemed rejected by two countries. We have Canadian tendencies, but Canada wants nothing to do with us. Like them, we tell long stories because we have to kill a lot of time indoors during the winter. We make idle chatter in grocery stores because, like Canadians, we’re too friendly. We have strange Canadian like accents. And we share Canada’s love affair with hockey and lacrosse. That Canadian way of living elicits scorn from the rest of the United States. Canada labels us pretenders and the United States laughs in our faces. Thus Western New Yorkers tightly grasp the allegiance that the Bills provides us. It is an identifier for an area outsiders do not wish to acknowledge.

The Bills also are a barometer of the economic fate of the region – another “simple” fact alluded to in the Yahoo! article. When the Rust Belt wrapped itself along the Great Lakes, the Bills suffered. Bills football became the escape for the downtrodden and out-of-work lower middle class abandoned by the flight of manufacturing jobs, but that football suffered because the economy was in the tank. Buffalo and Rochester have now started to find their way by engaging in the tech and education industries, becoming the two fastest growing areas economically in New York. And as that economic recovery starts up, the Bills have gotten better.

So to say that Bills football is simple could be considered misleading. There are few sports entities that are so embedded in the identity of a geographic area like the Bills are. The Bills are a cultural touchpoint and regional indicator instead of an aggressively promoted pastime. Let’s put it bluntly – there are not too many sports franchises you can make so many doctoral thesis style points about. But you can about the Bills.

While reading the Boston.com home page this afternoon, I glanced over at the “Most Popular” widget on their right sidebar. During this visit, the widget was showing their most emailed stories.

What is Boston.com’s most emailed story?

“Wegmans to open Burlington store.”

Don’t believe me? Here’s a screen capture, with my mouse hovering over the link for full effect:

Yes, more people have emailed a news story about Wegmans tearing down an office park in the most quintessentially suburban of all Massachusetts suburbs to build its first store within a half hour drive of Boston proper than anything about the giant Texas wildfires, secrets to anti-aging, and exercise recommendations.

(And I promise I wasn’t logged into any Facebook or other social applications to skew those results any.)

Soon enough, all Massachusetts residents will be able to know the wonder that is Wegmans. What can us Rochesterians, Buffalonians and Syracusans influence next? The second coming of Tim Hortons coffee in New England? The availability of real Buffalo wings in Boston? The garbage plate? Tully’s?

The possibilities are endless.

The Buffalo Bills new uniforms, one part of a throwback Friday in Western New York. (Photo: BuffaloBills.com)

For Western New York, Friday was a day where old things were new again in the world of sports.

One of the American Hockey League’s traditional franchises, the Rochester Americans, were purchased by Terry Pegula and the Buffalo Sabres. My hometown Amerks had fallen on some tough times in the past few years, with a declining attendance and a lack of talent coming with their 2005 affiliation with the Florida Panthers. Even with increased effort (which kept being promised, but rarely seen), it was going be very difficult for the Panthers to live up to the classic days of the Sabres-Amerks affiliation, where the Amerks developed Ryan Miller, Marty Biron, Jason Pominville, Steve Shields and many others.

Buffalo’s sports teams – the Bills and Sabres – have had to take the more regional approach to maintaining a fan base due to the area’s declining population and economy. Pegulia’s purchase of the Amerks and their reaffiliation with the team makes huge overtures to the regional appeal of the Sabres franchise. Pegulia gets it – he knows that the Amerks are a key part of keeping the sport of hockey popular in his fan base’s region.

———

Friday evening, the Buffalo Bills held a grand new uniform unveiling – despite the design being leaked in a Madden 2012 promo a few weeks back. The design harkens back to the 1970s and 80s, with a white helmet and a heavy use of classic styling.

With Ralph Wilson Stadium as a backdrop, the Bills trotted out players from the Super Bowl heyday – Jim Kelly signed autographed and modeled the new jersey, while Steve Tasker hosted – and used local service people to show off the new-old gear.

One of my Facebook friends commented, “Why are they outfitting the Bills in the styles of the old days? These teams will never compare to the players that wore these styles in the past.” I don’t think the duds are something to be lived up to – they are distinctive from uniforms past – but more of a statement. The Bills, as a franchise, are classic, much like the Packers or Cowboys. No need to go futuristic for a team that has represented for so long what the sport of football’s most dedicated fan base has always been, for a team whose fans weather thick and thin. The new Bills uniforms remind us of the tradition and the circular nature of the NFL – how the Bills were woeful once before, then turned it around and had a run unlike many other teams in history.

Plus, everything old is eventually new again. That means that dark navy, silver and red of the 2000s should come back in 2030, right?

Last spring, the band released their first album without co-founder Steven Page. The second song on the album, “Summertime,” is an ode to Western New York-Southern Ontario weather; a response to those not from the area who ask, “How do you put up with all the lake effect snow, wind and cold?” The answer? “We’re all pushing through till summertime.”

I have been fielding many questions in the same vein lately now that Greater Boston has been hit with three snowstorms in a month’s time. “How did you put up with weather like this?! How does your family back there handle it?” So, Bostonians, my answer and advice to you in song form. “Keep on pushing through for summertime.” May it become your winter 2011 anthem.

Summertime – Barenaked Ladies (YouTube)

The glimmer of hope at the Bills-Pats game on September 26th. (Photo taken by Kat)

This is what being a Buffalo Bills fan in Boston is like.

It is going to work for sixteen Mondays every year and having your boss throw his hands in the air, sigh heavily and say, “Kat! Those Bills! So close!”

It’s your newest star wide receiver Tweeting his best Nancy Kerrigan impression (StarGames and Jerry Solomon, jump on that like a trampoline and sign him up.)

It’s your mother-in-law asking you for sixteen Sundays every year if your team lost again and asking you why you don’t root for that “Brady fella.”

It’s snagging some hope, however mis-derived, that your Harvard educated quarterback resembles a quarterback more than any since our Doug Flutie experiment of a decade ago. It’s overhearing two Monday morning quarterbacks jump on the commuter rail at Swampscott, joking that while the Bills might be horrible, that Fitzpatrick has the story of the year, given we have such a stereotype of quarterbacks as oggling knocking-up Neanderthals (thanks Brett Favre.) It’s Patriots beat writers and radio hosts trying to find something to talk about on an off Sunday, and asking if Fitzpatrick is the only active quarterback who wears his wedding ring while he plays.

It’s knowing that your owner is on his last legs, and that born-in-relevancy-again Jim Kelly can only pray that he has enough investors to buy the team when the phone eventually rings. It’s knowing that the region you’re from is so economically depressed that it’s not a breach of fandom that caused season tickets holders sell their tickets to Steelers fans, but most likely holiday economic necessity.

It’s knowing that if you ever have children, they probably won’t grow up knowing the Buffalo Bills. That they may be in Toronto or Los Angeles. And for that reason you hang on despite three painfully close overtime losses, despite balls slipping through wide receivers fingers, through waiver pick ups who go straight to the injured reserve, through all of it. Because you know, no matter how much you want to fight it, that it’ll soon be a relic; something to remember, not something to experience.

The Bills don’t just hearken back to a time where they won AFC Championships, but a time before Buffalo and Rochester were victims of the Rust Belt. Back when the blue collar workers of the region had jobs, drove American, could afford season tickets, and loved players seemingly as blue collar as themselves. That’s all gone – my dad and his punch press manning colleagues have the perpetual sense of dread hanging over their heads that today could be the day no more parts need to be made, and don’t have an extra cent to drive out to Orchard Park. Their friends couldn’t renew their season tickets because their jobs left for the sunnier and cheaper climate of Mexico or don’t exist because us Americans only like our Hondas these days.

So I am a Bills fan in Boston, though it would be easy to give into the Brady and Belichick of it all. Because being a Bills fan represents where I am from is and now was. It’s football fandom as a means of keeping relevant a region that, unless it gets 23 inches of snow on December 1st, is no longer relevant to most of this country.

It’s keeping something alive that no one seems to want to root for anymore: the underdog.

twoeightnine's "Franchise Quarterbacks - Buffalo Bills" shirt. (Photo: TwoEIghtNine)

Featured several times on Yahoo Sports’ Puck Daddy (the pantheon of hockey blogs, if you will), twoeightnine Design’s t-shirts have become a hot commodity for hockey fans all over. With shirts featuring those always present allegations of diving towards Sidney Crosby, and an Shepard Fairey-esque salute to the single man who turned around Washington (hockey, that is), the online shirt shop struck a chord with fans that wanted witty and intelligent fan t-shirts.

Of course, once I found out Matt Johnson, the founder of twoeightnine, was running his business out of Western New York, and that he features the following “Franchise Quarterbacks – Buffalo Bills” shirt in his store, I had to feature him on the blog. Besides talking t-shirts, I of course had to ask Matt’s thoughts on the always depressing state of the Buffalo Bills.

Kat: How long have you been designing shirts? How did you get start up twoeightnine?

Matt: I think I’m at 2.5 years now? Maybe three? The last few years have been a strange trip for me and I really have no sense of time anymore. I got my start designing a t-shirt for Deadspin. It was back when the site was still “underground” but starting to make a name for itself. There was a small loyal group of commenters who joked about the start of a revolution. I took a sketch I did of Will Leitch as Che Guevera down to my neighbor in Philly who was a screen printer and twoeightnine was born.

Kat: Your designs run the gamut of sports, teams, and regions. Do you come up with all of the design ideas, or are some ideas submitted by fans of that particular sports or team?

Matt: They’re all mine. I tend to gravitate towards the Sabres and Bills because those are my teams and I prefer to work on ideas that I’ll enjoy working on. I’m in the process of expanding from that while killing some older designs at the same time. Right now I know I have limited periods where I do most of my sales. Mainly NFL training camp and Christmas. Plus most of my sales come from the Upstate NY region. It’s something that I want to break away from.

I’m always open to anyone’s ideas but the fact of the matter is that 99% of the time they suck. It’s a very inside joke or something that has no staying power past a week or two. As much as I love designing shirts at the end of the day I have to sell them too in order to make it worth my time. Something that only sells a handful of shirts isn’t going to do that.

Kat: What has been your best selling design?

Matt: The Beast Mode shirt for Marshawn Lynch, hands down. It’s not even close. Even with the suspension and the down year people were still buying it. Unfortunately I still haven’t sold enough to make a dent in those “lovely” I ♥ Buffalo sports shirt. If you’re a guy and you wear one of those please check your balls at the door.

Kat: As a Bills fan, I thought the Bills Franchise Quarterbacks design was depressing…until I saw the new Browns Franchise Quarterbacks one. Then I felt just a twinge better. Personally, which franchise do you think has a better chance of escaping their QB woes sooner?

Matt: Can I vote for neither? I guess if I had to choose I’d pick the Browns. I trust Holmgren and Co. more than I trust Ralphy and his crew. I’m not sure what happened this season in particular as opposed to the last ten but the switch finally flipped for me. My diet is now koolaid free. I need results before I get any sense of hope up. Unfortunately those results this year look like they’ll be even more losses.

twoeightnine's "Beast Mode" homage to Marshawn Lynch

Kat: Marshawn Lynch (subject of your Beast Mode shirt): lost cause or a risk to continue taking by the Bills organization?

Matt: The second one, by far. I don’t understand the “cut or trade him now before he screws up again people” at all. Nothing he’d bring back in a trade is worth it; he’s still a talent on a team seriously lacking it. And frankly anyone who says cut him is an idiot. I’m not sure what the real risk is. If you cut him now you don’t have him, if he gets suspended you don’t have him. But if he doesn’t get suspended you have a pretty good one two punch with Jackson and Lynch. It’s not like if he gets his third strike the Bills are going to have to forfeit the rest of the season or people are going to think that they’re a poorly run franchise that only has a future in Toronto and is one of the laughingstocks of the league.

twoeightnine’s shirts are available for sale on their website, and Matt is also active on Twitter.

That is, until today.

On December 20, the ECHL’s Elmira Jackals will present “Christmas CD” night during their game against the Johnstown Chiefs. Attendees at the game will receive a Christmas CD of Jackals players singing Christmas carols. Yes, residents of the Twin Tiers and Southwestern New York, you can celebrate the holidays by being serenaded by ECHL players such as twin forwards Justin and Tyler Donati and minor league hockey journeyman Olivier Proulx (Look at his Hockey Database profile. Journeyman might be too mild of a term.)

In anticipation of their CD release, the Jackals posted the following behind-the-scenes video of the recording session. The voices. The majesty. The command. The….resemblance to thirteen year olds with cracking voices.

If this isn’t the perfect accompaniment for your family’s various holiday activities – such as driving around to find that street with the paper candelabras and white lights only to realize that the two feet of lake effect snow has buried the candelabras and knocked out the power (or maybe that’s just my family?) – I don’t know what CD is.

So given all that has happened to me sports-wise in the past year, I have nearly too much fodder for a “What I’m Thankful” for post. I’ve whittled it down to some of the most amusing or important points – I apologize if I’ve left out anything or anyone.

Thank you, Rian Lindell (#9). (Photo: BuffaloBills.com)

- Like last year, I am thankful for Rian Lindell. He is the only consistent part of the Buffalo Bills. I still do not understand why more baby boys born in the Western New York area are not named Rian. He’s made 90% of his field goals this season, and is a perfect 100% on point after touchdowns. He’s trick play savvy, and may actually be a better quarterback than any other quarterback currently on the Bills roster (just kidding…I think.)

- I am thankful for the Penn Quarter Sports Tavern, located in Washington, DC. This tavern became our home base while in DC for the Frozen Four. The bartenders were accommodating, hysterical, and can handle large crowds of somewhat rowdy college hockey fans extremely well. When I was back in DC for some work travel in August, I went inside and the bartender – who is known to wear either a UNH hockey jersey or a Normar green Red Sox jersey when he tends bar – remembered me and got excited because another New Englander was at the bar. Penn Quarter, hands down, is my favorite sports bar of all time. Thank you for taking good care of us college hockey fans.

- Thank you to Curt Styres and the Rochester Amerks for making AHL hockey relevant again in my hometown of Rochester, NY. I attended an Amerks game at Christmas time last year, and while it was the one of the highest attendances of the year, it was anemic compared to the crowds of my youth.

This season, the Amerks have turned it around. After owner Styres contracted Ted Nolan to work for the franchise over the summer, forked over thousands of his own wealth for player salaries, and seemingly convinced Florida (their parent) that it was important to grow quality players in Rochester, the team has gone 15-2-1. 15 wins, including 11 consective wins. This is Amerks hockey, folks – they’re back, and the rest of the AHL needs to get used to it.

- I’m thankful that I can listen to WHTK, Rochester’s young sports radio station, online. It’s important that I perform my Boston-sports-blogger penance and listen to WEEI and The Sports Hub on a regular basis, but listening to anything more than the bare minimum of both stations leave one screaming at their radio dial and lamenting the downfall of society. To reaffirm my faith in human sports-fan kind, I’ll turn on WHTK online. It doesn’t always work, but when it does and I get the opportunity to listen to the John DiTullio Show, I am a happy camper. People talking about sports – all kinds of sport, all teams, all genders, with a understanding of sports history thrown in – in an intelligent, civilized, indoor-voice manner is wonderful.

- Thank you to the Food Network for keeping me company while I was recently dignosed with H1N1. Your channel was the only one I could watch in my fever induced dizziness. I am especially thankful for Sandra Lee, whose programming may be funnier than anything on Comedy Central. (I’m a lazy cook, don’t get me wrong, but Lee takes it to new levels of laziness.)

- Thank you to the 2008-09 Boston University men’s hockey team. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. Their season not only gave me awesome blog fodder, but convinced me that there is no better sport in this country than college hockey.

- Thank you to every blogger, Twitterer, writer, journalist and editor that I have worked with or who has promoted my work in my first full year of actively pursuing freelance sportswriting as a large hobby/second job. Thank you for giving me venues to share my writing. I may not be the world’s best writer, but regardless, I’ve been given so many opportunities to contribute.

- Thank you to the bloggers and journalists out there who I am not huge fans of. Just because I don’t like their work doesn’t mean I don’t respect it. Additionally, many of them have much larger audiences than I have, meaning they have to be doing something right.  As someone still working up the ladder, I can learn from every single one of them, even if I do not agree with them.

- Lastly, thank you to my fiance and my cat. They put up with me writing lacrosse stories until 2am after coming home from my full-time job at 8pm. I have no idea why they let me do what I do, but I am thankful they do so.

Not an iced coffee, but an example of how much both my cat and I run on Dunkin'. And why it's weird to go in there as a Bills fan.

Sunday morning, I woke up earlier than usual, and decided to take advantage of this extra time and do laundry. I got ready, threw on my Buffalo Bills sweatshirt, Bills earrings and jeans, and beat the crowd to my local Allston laundromat by all of five minutes. I snapped up my three washers, started my laundry, and headed over to the Dunkin’ Donuts across the street. This is the DD’s where one of the employee’s routinely refers to me as “Ms. Cinna-mina-mon”, after the morning I was more dead to the world than usual and couldn’t say cinnamon to save my life. (Because I live on a small cinnamon iced coffee with cream and sugar. If this is not drank in the morning, than my day will be largely unsuccessful.)

Being 8am on a Sunday morning in Allston, Massachusetts (aka college party central of America), my usual swamped Dunkin’ Donuts was dead. One person in front of me getting a Coolata, one person at the doggie window getting something equally as complicated, so my Bills clad self waiting patiently in line, ready to order my iced cinnamon when it was my turn.

Someone else entered the Dunkin’ Donuts and got in line next to me. He cleared his throat and then stifled a laugh. I snuck a glance. This young man was wearing a new but fashionably antique-y looking Pat-the-Patriot-sporting New England Patriots sweatshirt.

I snapped my head back just as it was my turn to order.

“May I please have a small iced cinnamon coffee with cream and sugar?” The worker went on her way to prepare my coffee, and I moved down to the cash register.

The worker that had been helping the customer at the doggie window came back to the main cash register, turned to Pat-the-Patriot, and asked, “How can I help you?” He ordered a medium coffee of some sort, but while he was saying his order, she looked at me. Then looked back at him. Then looked at me again. Then Pat-the-Patriot looked at me. Feeling stared at, I looked at them.

The Dunkin’ Donuts worker, a young girl who is friendly with everyone that has ever walked into that store, pouted in my direction. “I’m so sorry,” she said, hurrying off to get Pat-the-Patriot’s coffee.

I looked down at my Bills sweatshirt. “Oh,” I said. “That.”

Pat-the-Patriot nodded.

I thought about a smart comeback, but it was 8am on a Sunday and I had not yet had coffee. I couldn’t think of anything quick enough. Luckily, my coffee was ready, I paid my worker – who didn’t give me two glances, because she sees me a good four times a week, and grabbed a straw and was on my way.

Being a fan of a team other than the home team – especially when said team is more unlucky than Brian Urlacher trying to play an entire season – is a never-ending study in sociology. As long as I choose to wear Bills wear outside my own home, I’ll experience these uneasy interactions.

******

Quotes actually said to me this week from friends, colleagues and family who know I’m a Bills fan:

“After that fumble, I immediately thought of you and laughed.” – a colleague

“Hi, how are you? Are you…okay?” – my future mother-in-law

“Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.” – a comment on my Facebook wall

“Being a Bills fan must be like getting up in the middle of February, looking out the window to find a freak snowstorm, knowing you still have to go to work, and not having your car start. Every single day.” – a local news anchor on Tuesday morning.

As any early reader of this blog might have discerned, I may have been a giant Bills fan as a youngster, but in addition, I was a giant Steve Young fan. After Young won Super Bowl XXIX in 1995, thirteen year-old me asked my father if he thought Young would make the Pro Football Hall of Fame. “Maybe. It really depends what else he does,” said my father.

“Well, if he does, can we go to Canton to see the ceremony?” I asked.

My father, knowing that this was several years down the road at that point, if it happened at all, nodded. “Sure. Why not?”

I’m sure he thought I had forgotten his promise, until I called him on a Monday morning in February of 2005 – ten years later – to tell him I had four tickets to the Enshrinement Ceremony, and that we were going to see Steve Young get inducted.

Being in Canton during Enshrinement Weekend was one of my favorite experiences as a sports fan. It is a true celebration of the sport of football, one that even the most marginal of football fans will appreciate. To read about our trip to Canton in 2005 – the first family vacation my immediate family had ever taken – read the following blog post: “Earning the Fabiola.”

I plan on returning to Canton at some point – hopefully for a 2010 induction of Jerry Rice and Steve Tasker? Rice is next year’s shoo-in, and as evidenced by both Wilson’s and Smith’s speeches this evening, Tasker greatly deserves the honor, but he’s been overlooked by voters for a few years now. Maybe his continued broadcasting career will help him in securing spots in the voters’ minds. All I know is that if I was choked up watching Smith’s induction speech on NFL Network tonight, I would just bawl through Tasker’s.