Were there ever years you were disinterested in the Bills?

[Ed_Formerly_of_Roch]

33 minutes ago, Mikie2times said:

Front runner 

 

If I had moved 30 or 40 years ago from Western NY to NC, I probably would have more given up on Bills as much harder back then to follow an out of market team.  Today doesn't make a huge difference whether you live in Orchard Park or SE Asia, can pretty much follow just as well from anywhere.  Just takes a little more money with subscriptions to things not needed as much if local.

[Augie]

I was never disinterested, but there was a time in the 80’s into the early 90’s when it was hard to follow them. I wasn’t living locally, and the NFL had yet to take over the media world. I would go to Chili’s for lunch on Tuesdays because they had the USA Today at the bar and they had maybe two sentences on each NFL team. THAT was my weekly Bills fix. Imagine that today with the NFL being a 24/7 non-stop hype machine! 

[JerseyBills]

Startrd really getting into the Bills around 07 , was always a Bills fan but was too young. I remember crying after the Music City miracle. During the drought I was still very obsessed 

 

Only sport and team I'm like that with, I'm a Knicks/Yankee fan also and have little interest if they stink and don't take losses nowhere near as bad as with Buf. 

[BuffaloBillies]

All those years after they were mathematically eliminated my gear went back in the closet - didn't care much about the last 6-7 games each of those seasons. But always renewed hope at the start of the next year. 

[Gregg]

I wonder what the answers would be on this board if this question of disinterest applied to the Sabres instead of the Bills. To an outsider like me (born on LI now live in NJ) Buffalo is known as a good hockey market but it has the reputation as a football mad city. I don't see interest in the Bills ever declining but the Sabres I am not so sure. But again, I am not from WNY, so I really don't know.

[Artful Dodger]

My interest gradually decreased after 2000 or so.  It bottomed when the Pegulas bought the team and hired Rex Ryan to be coach.  At that point, I almost gave up on the team.  

[Desert Bills Fan]

After the music city miracle, my interest waned.

I moved out of WNY in 1984 (for work) but hung on for 6 or 7 years - had a subscription to Shout! for years- that would typically arrive after the game they were previewing LOL. But kept me feeling in touch.

Then I still tried to follow them, but only a couple nationally televised games a year - and typically those were Billsey losses😒

 

got excited again with the season the drought ended…Bean, McDermott & then Josh! 
now live checking TBD every morning. Watch every game! Passion reignited.

 

[Fleezoid]

1 hour ago, HOUSE said:

I had more fun when the Bills were horible.  Rob Riddick was Rob Ridiculous,  Kenny Jones was Kenny sure grip (always holding)

So I was never down on the team but it was exhausting. 

Look at the board now, it was busier when the Bills were bad. 

 

Never been disinterested.  And there was certainly something about those crappy years. There was always hope early in the season. Perhaps a little displaced hope, but hope.  It was just wanting to make the playoffs. The problem was, all hope was dashed, usually around late Nov, early Dec, sometimes earlier. At least when it all ended, we didn't come crashing down to earth like what happens now with all the expectations so high. 

 

So now we've traded the merry-go-round of the drought years with the roller coaster of today. 

[Johnnycage46]

For many of the drought years I became disinterested by mid-season. I watched most, if not all, of the games, but there were definitely times late in the season when all hope was lost that I would run errands and just check in on the game via the radio in the car.

[Jauronimo]

1 hour ago, loedward22 said:

No, never disinterested.  The least interested I ever got was during my college years ~1998-2004 and even then I was heavily interested. Just not as much as before and after because of how many distractions there are associated with college.

Based on the timeline, it doesn't look like going to class was one of those distractions. 😅

[Mikie2times]

1 hour ago, Ed_Formerly_of_Roch said:

 

If I had moved 30 or 40 years ago from Western NY to NC, I probably would have more given up on Bills as much harder back then to follow an out of market team.  Today doesn't make a huge difference whether you live in Orchard Park or SE Asia, can pretty much follow just as well from anywhere.  Just takes a little more money with subscriptions to things not needed as much if local.

Just kidding man!

[Toledo Bill]

I never lost interest, There were years I sadly accepted that they sucked.

Fan since their inception. Even their horrible years they were a constant source of discussion with my family.

Many years of disappointment but never lost interest.

[Ethan in Cleveland]

1984-1985 was rough. How could you have any interest in Joe Dufek and Vince Ferragamo?  All this while Kelly was in Houston.  Those were the two darkest years in franchise history. 

[WotAGuy]

Ugh. No.  And I regret it. 

[Augie]

12 minutes ago, Ethan in Cleveland said:

1984-1985 was rough. How could you have any interest in Joe Dufek and Vince Ferragamo?  All this while Kelly was in Houston.  Those were the two darkest years in franchise history. 

 

I was married in 2/85. My bride asked “Why do you do this to yourself?” when we had back to back 2-14 seasons. She now proudly wears a Bills shirt that says “I Married Into This”. She gets it. 

[Shaw66]

Late 70s through the mid-80s.  I was living in Connecticut and the Bills games were rarely on TV.  There was no way to see them, and there was limited reporting about them on local TV and in the local newspapers. I was newly married, raising young kids, starting a career, and working on an old house.  Before then, from 1960, I was all in. 

 

As the Bills began building a powerhouse team in the mid- to late-80s, they started showing up on TV more often, and my sons became Bills fans.  Have been full bore ever since. 

[Ned Flanders]

From 1968-1972, Raiders were my AFL/AFC team...always on TV, exciting offense, etc.

 

Watched OJ run for 250 yards in the 1973 opener, went to the first home game at the new Rich Stadium on Sept. 30, 1973, and have never looked back.

[SoCal Deek]

Simple, I’m disinterested after every loss starting early Monday through around Tuesday mid-afternoon. And then I snap right back into my cycle of dependency. Yes….it’s a problem, but I’m dealing with it. 

[El Guapo]

Disinterested? Never. I’ve had NFL ticket since it started. I never miss a game. The rules when I got married were Sundays or football days. Do not schedule anything on a Sunday after 11 AM. My wife became an NFL fan and a huge buffalo fan. And Sundays were our day together. We had seasons from Bledsoe‘s first year until 2012 when my job changed and I lost all the travel perks which made it affordable to go. We still try to make it to a game or two every year. We have great friends from Canada that had seasons next to us. Good times.

 

when things got boring, during the drought years, we came up with a silly game, called scoring shots. We’d pick a shot for the week, and every time the bills scored we do a shot. Well, there were a lot of games where we only did two shots. So we added turnover shots. If the ball was taken from the opposing team boom another shot. Well that didn’t work very well either. We added kickoff shots. So the beginning of the game and the halftime kick became another shot. That was about where we were OK with it. We were not getting hammered, and it just made those miserable games a little more fun.

 

Well, then, Josh Allen came along. All of a sudden, we were drunk by halftime, and comatose by the end of the game. We had to stop playing the game. The kids still play it. Although, they’re not kids all of them are in their 20s and 30s. i’m just too old for that *****. 🤪🤪

[Mat68]

Vanpelt year.  At the Sunday night game vs Tennessee. They won but I knew they were not going anywhere.  Can’t remember if that was the Elvis Gerback, Billy Joe Holbert year or if that was the following.