It’s finally over.
No, not the actual financial negotiations and political wrangling that’s gone along with a new Buffalo Bills stadium over the past year or so, but something we’ve been dealing with for a much, much longer time.
I can remember growing up in the 1980s and people saying that the Bills wouldn’t be long for Buffalo. Owner Ralph Wilson was getting older and, some day, wouldn’t own the team anymore.
The population of Western New York was declining rapidly. It was being passed in TV market size by other cities on a yearly basis. We were constantly told that NFL owners couldn’t wait to get the Bills out of Buffalo and into another larger area with the ability to make a lot more money.
Even through the glory days of the Super Bowl years, it was always lingering in the background, and almost more of a point of when the team would eventually leave, not if.
We were conditioned to think it was happening at some point down the road.
The first time I remember it getting really real was during the stadium renovations of 1998. The 25-year lease for the stadium, which was built in 1973, was expiring. Ralph Wilson wanted to keep up with the rest of the league, as far as revenue, and even spoke openly about relocation if it wasn’t able to happen.
Wilson was asking for close to $60 million to increase the number of suites and luxury boxes. At the same time that was happening, the team signed Doug Flutie as a free agent out of the Canadian Football League.
The signing of Flutie opened the floodgates for a lot of Canadian fans to buy season tickets and start pouring across the border to see the Bills play. Negotiations with New York State and Erie County ramped up, and Wilson ultimately got what he wanted. The Bills then signed a new lease to remain in Orchard Park.
14 years later, as that lease was expiring, the same type of situation was unfolding. This time, Wilson was in poor health, and there was a lot of uncertainty about how it would all play out.
After Wilson passed away in 2014, the team went up for sale and, of course, Terry and Kim Pegula bought the Bills, with the understanding from the league that someday they would build a new stadium.
Here we are eight years later. While there’s never been the overt threat of the team leaving Western New York, as far as we know, it’s always still lingered in the back of all of our minds.
Will they get a new stadium? What if they don’t? What city will come calling to take our Bills away from us?
But now, we don’t have to answer those questions anymore. We don’t even have to ponder them.
It’s all done.
The Bills are ours. They’re here to stay.
Not only for me, as I approach 50-years-old, but for my eight-year-old son, who will see them play in their new digs when he turns 12. He won’t have to grow up thinking about the Bills leaving the same way I did.
None of us have to watch Josh Allen’s incredible career unfold while wondering at the same time how much longer he’ll be playing in our community and for our team.
Instead, we can all envision what his first touchdown pass is going to look like and feel like in 2026, when a new stadium opens across the street from Highmark Stadium, for the Bills.
The Buffalo Bills.
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