Orchard Park, N.Y. (WBEN) - Over the course of the 2025 football season, WBEN will reflect on the legacy and lore of Highmark Stadium in its final season, with a number of current and former players, as well as fans and others with deep connections and memories of the building that has played home of the Buffalo Bills since the 1973 season.
Bills fans are known to be some of the most dedicated fans not just in the entire National Football League, but in all sports across the world. There's, perhaps, no fan more dedicated to the Bills than Ken Johnson, who is more famously known as "Pinto Ron".
For nearly 50 years, Johnson has traveled near-and-far to follow his beloved Bills, whether it's just down the New York State Thruway from his home in Rochester or traveling to every road city the team pays a visit to. Remarkably, Johnson has been to more than 500-consecutive Bills games, if you exclude the games fans were unable to attend due to the COVID pandemic.
And, of course, this also includes his game day rituals of bowling ball shots, or grilling food off the hood of his old red Ford Pinto, or even being showered by fans with ketchup and mustard before kickoff.
Johnson says the dedication factor has been his calling card over the years cheering for the Bills, and his family has embraced that with him.
"Your kid's turning 16 at her birthday, your best friend gets married, you just don't let things get in the way. And after three or four years of doing that, nobody would let anything get in my way. There's no way. It could be a family reunion and they don't want to see me there. They want to make sure I'm at the game, or Thanksgivings I've missed, or Christmas I've missed. So after a few years, it got easier. But dedication is the word for it," said Johnson in an interview with WBEN.
Since 1976, Highmark Stadium has become a second home for Johnson.
"It's just become like my living room, like a comfort place that I live in for a period of time," he said. "I'm going to miss it, I'll tell you that. I know why they have to build a new one."
Johnson does admit there are a few things that he will not miss with the old stadium along Abbott Road in Orchard Park.
"The narrow concourse, not going to miss being rained down because my new seats are under cover under the press box. In fact, if I hear something wrong in the radio, I'm going to have a little stick in my hand and whack the top of the press box a couple times," Johnson said with a chuckle. "I know why they have to move it. I love my sight lines, I love what I see right now, I think I've got equivalent seats. I'll get over it."
Johnson can remember the first time he stepped foot in the current stadium, and can still feel the chills he felt when walking into the lower bowl.
"When you look at the outside of the stadium, you just see the upper deck plates, and it's not very overwhelming. I was in the lower bowl for that seat, it was 1976, as I recall. When I came through the tunnel and all of a sudden the lower bowl just emerged, it was like goosebumps. I was just awestruck, because I had no idea how big it was because we just see those upper deck plates," Johnson recalled. "And a couple games later, I took my wife on the first date there, so that's a memorable thing, I think that was 1977. Just lots of memories rolling from that."
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Over the years, Johnson has been in attendance for a plethora of memorable games at Highmark Stadium. Which one does he remember and cherish the most?
"My favorite game of all-time was the AFC Championship Game leading to our first Super Bowl. The reason why it's my favorite of all-time - I mean, I've been to a lot of playoff games - is because we were winning so big at halftime, I think it was 42-3, that with an entire half of football left, you knew you were going to the Super Bowl," Johnson explained. "And back then, you can party in the stadiums a little bit more hardy than you can party in the stadium now. That whole second half was just a giant party. It was just awesome running around the stadium, everyone was going crazy."
A couple of other games that stick out to Johnson over the years was the comeback game in 1990 against the Denver Broncos with 21 points in 77 seconds, as well as "Hail Mary" game of 1981 with Roland Hooks catching pass from Joe Ferguson on the last play of the game.
Who were some of Johnson's favorite players to watch in his years as a Bills fan? He clings on to some of the older names he watched in his younger days.
"I just managed to get to a game in time to see O.J. Simpson once or twice, so that goes way back my first couple of games, he was actually running in those games. You have Roland Hooks, Jimmy Braxton, nobody's gonna know these names, just old farts. There's so many names. I'm drawing a mind block on this," Johnson said with a laugh.
As the stadium in Orchard Park gets ready to be decommissioned, shortly after Sunday's regular season finale against the New York Jets, what is it from the stadium that Johnson would love to be able to take home with him as a keepsake?
"Any souvenir from this stadium will be a good thing. Ideally, which I know can't happen, is I find a way of cutting my seat off in the last game and carrying my seat out. I'm an upper deck guy, so it's the benches, so it's a little hard," Johnson said. "I'd have to smuggle a hacksaw. Maybe I can slide the hacksaw right through the metal detector, put it with your keys, cell phone, hacksaw, see if they notice!"
In the history of the current Highmark Stadium, many fans would likely pick out "Pinto Ron" as one of the staples of not just the stadium, but also a symbol of "Bills Mafia". Johnson admits he's quite humbled by the thought.
"That's actually pretty cool to think that I've got legendary status with some stupid things that I started doing 35 years ago. I hope I'm remembered for the new stadium equally as well," he said.
As for the new stadium across the street on Abbott Road, Johnson has a good sense of what to expect, especially after visiting Tottenham Hot Spur Stadium in London, which was sort of the model for the new stadium in Orchard Park.
"First of all, the escalators. Look at me, I'm 100-years-old. That excites me a lot," Johnson chuckled. "I like the cover, I'm going to have the cover over me so nobody's going to rain on my parade. The concourses are going to be really wide. I actually kind of know what this stadium is going to look like, because it was designed after the London stadium that we played in, and I knew that they used the same design when I went to London. So I spent a lot of time walking around that stadium, and it's going to be a nice stadium. The upper deck concourses are going to actually look almost like our club seat concourses right here, and it'll be a nice stadium. It'll be different. I'm going to miss the old one, but life goes on."
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