I’m really not a jealous person. I don’t spend a lot of time looking at what other people are doing and wishing I was there, or wishing I had what they had. For the most part, I’m pretty happy sitting in Queens and doing my thing. Buffalo is still home to me in a lot of ways, obviously, but I’ve also lived in New York City for more than two decades now. I have a wife and two kids here, my life is here, and Queens is home too.
But then the Bills home opener happens and, for about 24 hours, all of that goes out the window.
Every year I start doing the same completely ridiculous math in my head. What if we moved back to Buffalo? What if we got season tickets? Or what if we didn’t move back and I just bought season tickets anyway?
I mean, it’s seven hours.
Drive up Saturday, go to the game Sunday, drive back. Maybe I stay with somebody. Maybe I take a cheap mega bus. Maybe I split the tickets with somebody. Maybe I only go to five or six games.
See how quickly I’ve already started negotiating with myself?
Then I remember that I have two little kids, a wife, an unstable career, responsibilities, and driving 14 hours round trip eight or nine times a year to watch football is probably not something a responsible 46-year-old man should be considering.
But when it’s the home opener it makes perfect sense to me.
Because I start looking at social media, and that’s where the jealousy really kicks in. I see people pulling into Orchard Park while I’m drinking coffee in Queens. I see the first beers being cracked open at an hour when most normal people are figuring out what they want for breakfast. I see grills going, tables set up and coolers everywhere, and then I start seeing my friends, or people I haven’t seen in years, or people I basically only see at Bills games. Everybody is bouncing from tailgate to tailgate and having the greatest morning imaginable, and I’m sitting seven hours away thinking, fuck, I wish I was there.
Today obviously has another layer to it because it’s the first regular-season game at the new stadium. The new Highmark Stadium, the new Ralph, Rich Stadium 2.0, whatever the hell we’re all eventually going to call it.
And I’m sure walking into the new place for the first time is going to be incredible. But I also don’t think the building is what makes opening day in Buffalo magical.
We’ve seen some absolute dog shit football in Orchard Park over the years. I’ve been going to Bills games long enough to know that the product inside the stadium hasn’t always exactly been magical. There were plenty of Sundays when you sat there freezing your ass off watching some mediocre Bills team lose 17-13 and wondering what decisions in your life led you to this moment.
And yet I still loved going.
Because the magic has always been everything around the game.
It’s the tailgate and the booze and the food and the smells and the people. It’s walking through a parking lot and somehow running into six different people you know. It’s having a beer with somebody you haven’t seen in five years and then walking another 50 feet and seeing somebody else. It’s the people you only see once or twice a year but somehow you pick up the conversation like you just saw each other last Tuesday.
And I’m also a crazy person when it comes to tailgating.
I’ve started tailgating at 6 a.m. for a 1 p.m. game. (Thanks Tom for picking me up)
Six in the fucking morning.
There are people waking up to go to work and I’m standing in a parking lot in Orchard Park with a beer.
Last year we started at 11 a.m. for an 8 p.m. game, which is nine hours of tailgating before the football game even starts. That’s basically an entire workday, except instead of answering emails you’re drinking beer, eating somebody else’s food, wandering around parking lots and probably having an argument about the Bills offense.
And here’s the funny thing about all of that: I don’t actually want to get wasted at Bills games. Don’t get it twisted, because I’ve gotten twisted numerous times in my life. I’m certainly not going to sit here and rewrite history and pretend I’ve always been the guy nursing two beers over seven hours and making responsible adult decisions.
But Bills games are different for me because I want to remember everything.
I want to remember the smell of the parking lot and the grills going, the drunk guy three cars over who has been screaming since 8:15 in the morning, seeing a horny fan try and pick up another fan, trying the food and who made it and what I stole off somebody’s table. I want to remember the first beer, the walk toward the stadium and that moment when you finally see the field. I want to remember some completely stupid conversation with my friends that somehow becomes the running joke for the next six hours.
There are only so many of these days.
Last year made all of this hit me even harder because my wife bought me a ticket to the home opener for Christmas, and I don’t know if she realized when she bought it how much that gift was actually going to mean to me. It might have been the best Christmas gift I’ve ever gotten. I hadn’t been to a Bills home opener in about a decade, and there was something about knowing for months that I was going back that made me feel like a kid again. She didn’t just buy me a football ticket for Christmas. She basically bought me opening day in Buffalo.
And then I got there and remembered immediately why I had missed it so much.
The game was incredible, but when I think about that day I don’t only think about the game. I remember everything before it too. I remember tailgate hopping and seeing random friends, walking up to somebody’s setup because I recognized someone, and then somebody has food and obviously I’m going to eat it because I have never been above mooching at a tailgate.
That’s half the fun.
You walk around, see somebody you haven’t seen in years, have a beer, eat something, tell some stories and then move on to the next group. There doesn’t have to be a plan, and it’s probably better when there isn’t one.
And then, hours later, we’re in the fourth quarter against Baltimore and this incredible day looks like it’s going to have a pretty shitty ending.
The Bills are down by around two touchdowns, and people are starting to leave.
You know that scene. People start putting their jackets on, the aisles start filling up and you can see empty seats appearing around the stadium. You can feel that little bit of air coming out of the building where everyone knows there’s technically enough time left, but you’re also starting to accept that this probably isn’t happening.
And that’s when I turned to my friend Megan and made one of those completely stupid football promises that makes absolutely no sense. I told her, “If the Bills pull this game out, I’m going shopping.”
At that point, it probably felt like a pretty safe financial commitment.
Then the Bills actually fucking did it.
They came back and won, and now I had a problem because I had said it out loud. Megan heard me. I couldn’t pretend it never happened or suddenly announce that I had been speaking metaphorically.
I had made a deal with the football gods.
I ran to the team store after the game with thousands of people still buzzing over what we had just watched, and I bought my son a Josh Allen jersey because apparently the logical way to celebrate a completely insane Bills comeback is to immediately start spending money. Then I bought my wife a pink bedazzled Bills hat, which felt appropriate because she was the reason I was standing there in the first place. She bought me the ticket for Christmas, she gave me my first home opener in about a decade, and now I was returning from Buffalo with a pink bedazzled hat for her.
That’s marriage…And then, obviously, I bought myself a hat too.
Was that responsible? Absolutely not. Did I need another Bills hat? Absolutely not. Did my son desperately need a Josh Allen jersey at that exact moment? Probably not. But I had just watched the Bills come back after people were leaving the stadium, and I had made a promise.
What was I supposed to do?
It’s the home opener.
Someday my son is going to be way too big for that Josh Allen jersey, and maybe it’ll end up in a box somewhere with a bunch of other clothes that don’t fit anymore, but I’m going to remember exactly why I bought it. Dad made a stupid promise when the Bills were down in the fourth quarter, and the stupid Bills made Dad pay up.
That’s a Bills memory to me, and it’s exactly why I don’t want to get so drunk at these games that half the day becomes somebody else telling me what happened.
I want all of it.
Because the home opener is the home opener whether your team is complete shit or whether you’re going into the season with Super Bowl aspirations. Before the opening kickoff, nobody has lost yet. Nobody is pissed off about a fourth-down decision. Nobody is complaining about the offensive coordinator. Nobody is screaming about the defense giving up a third-and-14.
Maybe that’s what I’ve always loved about opening day at the stadium. You get one day every year where everything that happened before doesn’t really matter yet and everything that might happen is still out there. And now I’m hours away watching everybody else get their opening day.
That’s when I start thinking about season tickets again. That’s when I start wondering whether the drive is really that bad, or whether we should move back someday, and for a few hours all of those ideas that sound ridiculous the rest of the year seem completely reasonable.
Tomorrow, I’ll remember why I live where I live.
Today?
Seven hours feels like another planet.
God, I wish I was there.
Maybe I’ll check season-ticket prices tomorrow.
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