Toronto Globe and Mail

‘At this point, what else is Allen going to do? Promise to retire if it happens again? The Allen of two, three years ago might have felt compelled to make a great show of emotion – ‘I just feel like I could have done mooooore.’’

‘There are geographic and cultural reasons for that, but most of it is temperamental. As we are both losers and, at least superficially, sad sacks, Buffalo and Toronto get each other.’

‘The devotion is born from a few things. Buffalo exudes the closeness of a small town, and is also a place where sports teams have mostly failed. The Bills last won a league championship in 1965 when they were in the old American Football League. Does that count? The Sabres have been in the NHL a half-century but haven’t won a Stanley Cup. Buffalo was also home to an NBA team that never won there or in the other two cities to which it has moved.’

‘Again – there were 6,700 people in the stands, every one of them dressed up like they were attending a graduation ceremony at a clown college. Sixty-seven hundred is nothing. It’s as many people as used to watch third-tier rugby in Toronto. Bills Stadium can hold more than 70,000. But those ragged few created so much noise that Baltimore false-started, twice, back to back. It was glorious. In terms of fan impact, Charge of the Light Brigade stuff.’

‘Even a few weeks ago, asking someone to marry you at a Bills game would be the sports metaphoric equivalent of suggesting, say, the morgue. Or a slaughterhouse. But things are better these days. Now it’s just reasonable legal grounds for your future divorce.’